Will Biden Challenge Turkey/Erdogan for Funding Hamas?

Primer: The IDF spokesperson, LTC Jonathan Conricus declared in a recent briefing:

IDF had assassinated Hussam Abu Harbeed, who commanded Islamic Jihad’s northern Gaza brigade and led attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians for almost 15 years.

In a statement, the IDF said Harbeed “was behind several anti-tank missile terror attacks against Israeli civilians.” One of those attacks occurred on the first day of the current round of fighting when a civilian was wounded, Conricus said.

There was no immediate confirmation from Islamic Jihad or its armed wing, the al-Quds Brigades, about the assassination.

Conricus also announced Monday it had destroyed just about 60 miles of militant tunnels.

“Our fighter jets neutralized 9.3 miles of the Hamas ‘Metro’ terror tunnel system overnight. That’s 9.3 miles that can no longer be used for terror,” it said in a statement before the updated information was provided by Conricus.

I was asked 2 days ago who funds Gaza….there is no single name or organization actually…it is hardly that simple. The Islamic National Bank in Gaza served as a terrorist vault for Hamas, directly funding its rocket production operations. So, the U.S. Treasury has some extraordinary tools to investigate monies going in and out of financial institutions across the world, why not use them, or do they and just ignore their findings? Would other countries and nefarious organizations be cast in funding terror? Yes…much like Turkey.

Taken from The Investigative Project:

Turkish Support for Hamas

We should remember that Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Hamas have roots in Muslim Brotherhood networks. They share a similar anti-Western, anti-Israel ideology. Turkey’s ties to Hamas – and specific members who are Specially Designated Global Terrorists – have been extensively documented. Hamas officials and Egyptian Islamists have found shelter and have been free to pursue their financing and planning their operations there. For example, Hamas finance chief Zaher Jabarin developed a financial network in Turkey that enabled Hamas “to raise, invest, and launder money prior to transferring it to Gaza and the West Bank,” a 2019 U.S. Treasury Department statement said.

Turkish presence in the Palestinian territories, and especially the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, is cemented by official agreements and its actions are conducted under the guise of technical and humanitarian assistance. Turkey is already implicated in upgrading Palestinian military structures and forces against Israel.

Turkey has trained Palestinian Authority security forces, not only to fight organized crime, Deputy Foreign Minister Yavuz Selim Kıran said last year, but to “create a significant [Palestinian] resistance against Israel’s occupation policies and its oppression.”

The Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA), a relief agency, has permanent offices in the Gaza Strip and in Ramallah. TIKA funds are channeled to various field organizations controlled by Hamas, thus indirectly supporting Hamas operations. İHH (Humanitarian Relief Foundation) is a radical anti-Western and anti-Israeli Turkish NGO, also present in Gaza. İHH has been designated as a terrorist organization by Israeli authorities since 2008 due to its funding of Hamas’ military wing. IHH was also implicated in the notorious 2010 Mavi Marmara incident, when a flotilla trying to break a blockade on Gaza was boarded by Israeli commandos. Passengers attacked the Israeli troops, causing the soldiers to fight back, killing 10 people.

Erdogan broke off diplomatic relations with Israel and accused it of lying about the incident.

In addition to supporting Hamas, İHH has cooperated with radical Islamist groups in Algeria and Iran by helping with counterfeited passports, weapons trafficking, and assisting mujahideen to reach various war zones, such as Bosnia and Chechnya.

As Turkey provides financial assistance to Gaza through TIKA and IHH, it consciously assists Hamas, which can focus solely on preparing its aggression against Israeli civilians. Once again, Turkey proves to be an invaluable diplomatic ally of Hamas.

By appealing to the Muslim world and using the Palestinian issue as a pretext, Turkey repeats its attempt to head the Islamist International. Turkey has since long decided to part ways with the Western world and its values by affiliating itself with radical Islamists. It is time for the United States and for NATO to realize that Turkey is a state acting in contrast to the shared values and the geostrategic interests of the West.

In part from JW:

Now that the Islamic terrorists of Hamas and the PLO have responded to a pro-terrorist administration in the White House by restarting a full-scale war, the Biden administration is sending their best man out to mediate between Israel and the terrorists.

S Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Wednesday that he is sending an envoy to the Middle East to “seek to calm tensions” even as he urged Israel to avoid killing civilians.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Hady Amr, who oversees Israeli and Palestinian Authority affairs at the department, was to leave Wednesday. He is expected to meet with both Israeli and Palestinian Authority leaders.

If the man sounds at all familiar, it ought to.

“I was inspired by the Palestinian intifada,” Hady Amr wrote a year after September 11, discussing his work as the national coordinator of the anti-Israel Middle East Justice Network.

“I have news for every Israeli,” Amr ranted in one column written after Sheikh Salah Shahada, the head of Hamas’ Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, was taken out by an Israeli air strike.

Amr warned that Arabs “now have televisions, and they will never, never forget what the Israeli people, the Israeli military and Israeli democracy have done to Palestinian children. And there will be thousands who will seek to avenge these brutal murders of innocents.”

He also threatened Americans that “we too shouldn’t be shocked when our military assistance to Israel and our security council vetoes that keep on protecting Israel come back to haunt us”

Amr then got a gig from Qatar: the state sponsor of Hamas.

A few years later, the Beirut-born extremist had become an advisor on Muslim relations to the World Economic Forum before heading up Brookings’ Doha Center for Qatar. The tiny Islamic tyranny is allied with Iran, Al Qaeda, and the Muslim Brotherhood. It’s a backer of Hamas.

A decade after Amr had responded to the death of a Hamas leader by ranting that “there will be thousands who will seek to avenge these brutal murders of innocents”, the Obama administration made him a Deputy to its Special Envoy for Israeli Palestinian negotiations.

At Brookings Doha, Amr had urged that the “Muslim brotherhood organizations across the Muslim World should be engaged”. Then he wondered, “in Lebanese and Palestinian society, the faith-based organizations are seen as the least corrupt… Hamas and Hezbollah are often cited by their populations as being non-corrupt. This needs more analysis. Is this the case?”

Over the past few years, Amr has repeatedly urged negotiations with Hamas. When the Trump administration unveiled its proposed peace deal, Amr co-wrote an article declaring that it should be scrapped in favor of focusing on a deal with Hamas.

“By laying out the terms of a three-way Hamas-Israel-PA/PLO deal now, and building an international consensus around it, the United States could create a pathway toward resolution,” the article had argued. That would potentially not only restart Obama’s attempt to impose a plan on Israel, but would do so not only on behalf of the PLO, but also on behalf of Hamas.

Hady Amr got the flow of US aid restarted. Now the fighting will help him bring Hamas into the “negotiations”.

In 2019, Amr had co-written an article arguing that the United States should lay “out the terms of a three-way Hamas-Israel-PA/PLO deal now” and “build an international consensus around it.”

That would mean the Biden administration and its point man developing a plan to legitimize Hamas, gaining the support of the Europeans and the Russians, and then imposing it on Israel.

Hamas, according to Amr and his co-authors, would offer Israel nothing more than a cease-fire, while Israel would have to “incentivize” by “offering a significant move” on peace.

You can’t have a cease-fire without a war.