Ron Paul Rewind: Israel Encouraged Growth of Hamas

Ron Paul Rewind: Israel Encouraged Growth of Hamas

As the death toll from the Israel government’s air strikes increases and its military prepares for a ground invasion of Gaza that the Israeli government justifies as a response to Hamas hostilities, consider former Rep. Ron Paul’s January 9, 2009 speech on the US House of Representatives floor explaining that Israel helped encourage the growth of Hamas to counteract the Palestine Liberation Organization. Paul, RPI’s chairman and founder, proceeds to discuss in the speech the similarity between Israel’s past actions regarding Hamas and the US Central Intelligence Agency’s support for radicalizing Muslims to compete with the Soviet Union.

Watch Paul’s speech here:

Richard Sale opens a window on the Israel government’s effort to aid Hamas’ growth in his June 18, 2002 United Press International article:

In the wake of a suicide bomb attack Tuesday on a crowded Jerusalem city bus that killed 19 people and wounded at least 70 more, the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, took credit for the blast.

 Israeli officials called it the deadliest attack in Jerusalem in six years.

 Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon immediately vowed to fight “Palestinian terror” and summoned his cabinet to decide on a military response to the organization that Sharon had once described as “the deadliest terrorist group that we have ever had to face.”

Active in Gaza and the West Bank, Hamas wants to liberate all of Palestine and establish a radical Islamic state in place of Israel. It is has gained notoriety with its assassinations, car bombs and other acts of terrorism.

 But Sharon left something out.

Israel and Hamas may currently be locked in deadly combat, but, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials, beginning in the late 1970s, Tel Aviv gave direct and indirect financial aid to Hamas over a period of years.

 Israel “aided Hamas directly — the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization),” said Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies.

 Israel’s support for Hamas “was a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative,” said a former senior CIA official.

Read the complete article here.