Playing with Fire

by Dr. Reuven Berko

The Qataris have essentially acknowledged their role as the bank for global Islamic terrorism, as practiced by the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaida, Hamas, ISIS, and the other Islamic terror movements active in our region.

Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani (left) with Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah | Photo credit: Reuters

As Israeli soldiers search for weapons-smuggling tunnels and IAF fighter planes target rocket launchers in the Gazan terror swamp, there is a growing chorus in the Israeli media talking up the need to dry up the terrorist cesspool. Rather than making do with treating the symptoms of the disease that goes by the name "Hamas," but also being rid of the causes of the illness itself. 

Recently there are a growing number of signs that Israelis have come to their senses and understand what we are dealing with is a malfunction in the main valve, which incites and expedites the motivation for murder while streamlining huge funds to build a large Islamist emirate for Hamas in the violent Gaza Strip.

While still somewhat tardy, Israelis have finally managed to pinpoint the source of the problem -- the flow of cash and indoctrination originating in Qatar. This largesse allows Hamas to purchase arms form Iran and other terror havens. Still, the root of this malady remains, and the protective sheath around it -- including the United States -- is preventing those who wish to nip this illness in the bud from doing the job. 

This is the third military operation in which IDF exterminators have gone in to disinfect this malarial swamp. Nonetheless, it continues to spawn new maggots. The useless argument raging in Israel pits those who support a withdrawal and a cease-fire while keeping a weakened Hamas in power, against those who believe that the re-occupation of Gaza must be completed and that Hamas must be destroyed. There are even those who are demanding that an alternative Palestinian leadership be permitted to rule Gaza.

Those who believe that it is possible to negotiate with Hamas have yet to read the Islamist organization's charter. They have yet to internalize its statements, declarations, and murderous intentions. Those who in their ignorance demand that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas ride into Gaza on the turret of an IDF tank and be installed as the ruler there have forgotten how the PLO was brutally evicted from the Strip in an unprecedented wave of violence in 2007.

Ever since Israel's disengagement from Gaza, the world anticipated that the sheer volume of investments from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab governments, combined with assistance from the United States and Europe as well as the windfall generated by Hamas' industry of underground smuggling tunnels would help turn Gaza into the Singapore of the Middle East. 

"When people have it good, they have something to lose; then they won't agitate for war," so the popular saying went. 

This errant approach led to international pressure on Israel to lift the siege, enabling the flow of dollars, weapons, cement, fuel, and components used to make explosive devices into the Gaza Strip. 

Hamas has poured massive funds toward procuring the means to destroy Israel. These means were made possible by the political, financial and ideological backing from the emirs of Qatar. Nearly everything that the Palestinians in Gaza managed to import came either from the tunnels or from the border crossings opened by Israel -- everything, except for the fairy tales being disseminated by the Israeli Left, which has spoken of peace and dialogue and economic prosperity as the basis for stability and co-existence. 

Meet the partner

Throughout his tortuous relationship with Israel, Mahmoud Abbas has steadily continued to move closer toward the murderous Hamas regime, the same organization that just a few years ago brutally killed his own people. The Palestinian leader's popularity was at an all-time low, but the recent crisis has provided a bit of comfort. 

It is an open secret that the unity government he formed was a foolish attempt to create the illusion of a "united" Palestinian Authority. The goal was to attain the necessary diplomatic and political status that would have enabled the PA to unilaterally declare statehood in defiance of Israel. 

Hamas, for its part, wanted to ensure an infusion of $30 million from Qatar as part of the terror funding and regular support it has received (along with the Islamic Movement in Israel) over the years. 

Immediately after the formation of the unity government, Hamas tried to kidnap Israeli civilians and win the Palestinian elections scheduled six months from that time. It hoped to ride the wave of popularity similar to that which it enjoyed in the wake of the Gilad Schalit swap. 

Its plans went awry. The Jewish teenagers who were kidnapped were murdered. The IDF smashed Hamas' infrastructure in the West Bank. The Hamas members who were freed from prison in the Schalit deal were re-arrested and again jailed. This is where the story takes a dramatic turn, the part of the narrative in which Hamas' missiles and tunnels went into action, aiming their murderous intentions at us. 

Now we have Abbas running around like a chicken without a head, shuttling from Qatar to Cairo, meeting with Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Mashaal and Ramadan Abdullah, the Islamic Jihad emissary. Abdullah realized that the Islamist nature of Hamas and his organization dovetails perfectly with the global Islamic terrorist landscape, essentially rendering them an enemy of Egypt. Now the Islamic Jihad official wishes to emphasize that he is not part of the global jihadist network, but is rather focused on liberating Palestine. 

In his public appearances, Abbas seeks to justify Hamas' struggle against occupation and continues to hold the title of president of a Palestinian unity government. As part of his efforts to bring about a cease-fire (which nobody in Israel sought), Abbas' government is demanding the opening of Gaza's border crossings, the release of the Hamas members who were freed in the Schalit deal and re-arrested last month, and the release of Palestinian prisoners which Israel pledged to free as part of the four-phased mass pardon during peace talks with the PA. It is as if nothing has happened since then. The good Palestinian boys want to start the game from the beginning, while expecting a prize. 

In a presidential address he delivered this week in Ramallah, Abbas threatened to pursue legal action against Israeli war criminals. 

"If there is no quiet in Gaza, there won't be quiet anywhere," he said. 

Meanwhile, Yasser Abed Rabbo, a PLO official, made a dramatic speech in which he implored representatives from all of the Palestinian factions to converge in Cairo for a fateful meeting in light of the enemy's actions. With a partner like this, who needs enemies?

This Kafkaesque state of affairs will most certainly be pleasing to the left-wing activists in our midst. This terror conglomerate comprising the liberators of Palestine, led by Abbas, whose henchmen have committed countless atrocities and war crimes against Israeli civilians, is now accusing Israel of genocide. It wishes to see Israel tried in The Hague for war crimes.

Abbas is ignoring the fact that as the head of a "united" Palestinian government, he is directly responsible for the murder of the three teenagers near Hebron, the terrorists who emerge from their dens and illegally enter Israeli territory, and the missiles that are fired daily with the goal of killing Israeli civilians. 

We ought to remind Abbas that as the head of the Palestinian unity government, he is also responsible for the war crimes committed by Hamas against Palestinian civilians who are being exploited as human shields, this at a time when Israel did all it could in order to warn and dissuade Palestinian civilians from crossing the line of fire. 

Whoever pinned their hopes to a new generation of Palestinians could not have helped but be floored by the success of the PLO and Hamas educational systems. Postings on the Internet and social media gave expression to the hate-filled and violent attitudes with which the Palestinian youth have been inculcated. 

The streets of Palestinian cities were filled with demonstrators thirsty for Jewish blood and support of continued Hamas missile shelling of Israeli towns. Fortunately, the IDF denied Hamas the opportunity to do serious damage through its two main outlets -- the air and the tunnels. As such, it rendered Qatar's plans useless. 

The barrel and the match

During an appearance on the news program entitled "Gaza Fights," which airs on the Qatari-owned Al-Jazeera network, CEO Sahifat al-Arabi spoke on behalf the Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani. He bitterly branded Egypt's president, Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, an infidel and collaborator with Israel on the siege of Gaza. 

During the program, the network's Gaza correspondent reported that Al-Jazeera staff members in Gaza evacuated their offices after an Israeli aircraft fired two warning shots in their direction. The emir's spokesperson said that despite Israel's threats, Qatar will continue to maintain its commitment to help Hamas "and all of the other freedom-fighting organizations in the Arab and Islamic world, from Sudan to Lebanon."

The Qataris essentially acknowledged their role as the bank for global Islamic terrorism, the enablers of incitement as practiced by the Muslim Brotherhood and its leader, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qardawi, as well as that of al-Qaida, Hamas, ISIS, and the other Islamic terror movements active in our region. This was known even when U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was a senator. 

"Qatar can't remain a U.S. ally on Monday when it sends money to Hamas on Tuesday," Kerry said in 2009. Classified documents exposed by WikiLeaks prove that the Americans knew the Qataris were involved in financing al-Qaida. Despite this revelation, Kerry tried to "push" Qatar on us as a credible broker of a cease-fire in lieu of Sissi's Egypt. He did this knowing that Qatar incites and funds terrorism committed by the Muslim Brotherhood against the Egyptian regime, which continues to seek stability in the wake Hosni Mubarak's ouster. 

There are those who say that the inconsistent American strategy is motivated by weapons sales and large-scale financial investments. There are those who believe that the Americans have become completely dependent economically on Qatar. These ties were frowned upon by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the other moderate Sunni Gulf states who recalled their envoys from Qatar, which has been eager to sow discord and incite. 

As is customary in Arab tradition, Qatar recently sent emissaries to Saudi Arabia to "vouch for" Hamas in the eyes of the Egyptians. Qatar needs to be careful. Whoever hides behind a canister of gasoline should not play with matches.

In its provocative, anti-Semitic program "Murdering in the name of the country," Al-Jazeera continued its line of Israel-bashing by providing a retrospective of the targeted killings that the IDF has carried out over the years. The information provided in the program should have taught the leaders of Qatar that it would be best if they ceased their continued entanglement with Israel. 

Trying to save their hide

The emirs of Qatar have their hands on the terror spigot. Similar to the story of King Midas, who turned everything he touched to gold, the al-Thani family is sitting on a gold mine. The Qataris have no skills or positive attributes to offer. Their good fortune is entirely due to the fact that they were born atop natural gas fields that the West drilled for them. 

The Qataris rake in revenues of hundreds of billions of dollars a year, which go straight into the coffers of one small family that rules over a rinky-dink country. It is difficult for the al-Thani family to live on such a large pile of gold when all around them are millions of hungry, despair-filled Muslims who are constantly searching for ways out of their destitution. 

Qatar does not seek to heal the world. Rather, it wishes to safeguard its fortune in the face of threats all around. In light of its concerns over Iran's growing power, it has become "an Iranian agent." It finances al-Qaida and mediates in disputes between the United States and the Taliban. 

Qatar essentially paid off the Islamist radicals in their midst so that they would go blow themselves up in other parts of the world, far away from the al-Thani family. Since Qatar is also a problem for the moderate Muslim countries in the region -- Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates -- it is using America as its insurance policy against all of these countries as well as against Iran. 

Just as Qatar found ways to counter the influence of the moderate Arab states and is using Hamas to do the same against Israel, there is concern that these governments could look for their own clients who would help them take aim at the al-Thani family and render Qatar one large burning natural gas field.

It would be best for the Qataris to be alert, and to watch their backs.

Dr. Reuven Berko

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=19027

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.