Posted on 12/29/2011 5:53:03 PM PST by mnehring
Hamas was encouraged and started by the Israelis as a tool to counteract Yasser Arafat, so says Ron Paul.
Need I say more? Skip to 1:20 (Video at link)
(via Hotair)
***
UPDATE: Ed Morrissey described earlier today how Hamas came to be, and it wasn’t as Paul suggests:
So who started Hamas? Was it really Israel? Er … no, not really, and the suggestion that Israel wanted Hamas as a counterweight to the PLO is simply ludicrous. Hamas developed from a network of Muslim Brotherhood charities in Gaza in the mid-1980s. The Muslim Brotherhood was one of the most notorious of anti-Israeli organizations in the region, formed in the 1920s in opposition to the collapse of the Caliphate and the British Mandate that followed. At the founding of Hamas, it called for “jihad” to seize Israel and create an Islamist state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. They formed in direct opposition to the PLO (now called Fatah in the Palestinian Authority government), to some extent because Yasser Arafat was negotiating with Israel, albeit in bad faith while trying to drum up financial and political support in the West. Hamas gets its funding from Iran, hardly a disinterested third party in this conflict — and the main engine of radicalizing Muslims, eclipsing the Muslim Brotherhood ever since the Iranian revolution of 1979.
Also, Ron Paul fans, stop sending me the WSJ article that you think backs up Paul’s argument. Ed Morrissey took that apart as well. Jump over to Hotair and read the update.
If you look at the history, Hamas was encouraged and really started by Israel.To grasp how evil and dangerous is this lie of Ron Paul, look at the vile charter of Hamas.
This book, by a Palestinian Political Science professor, quotes the Israeli general in charge of the Gaza Strip saying he and the Israeli government financed Hamas.
http://books.google.com/books?id=jrTG5sdLHD8C&pg=PA35#v=onepage&q&f=false
Tony Greenstein just published an article saying the same thing.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.