On Mon, 3 Dec 2001, Cian O'Connor wrote:
> Is it true that Mossad backed Hamas in the early days to discredit the
> PLO? I've often seen this stated, but never actually seen any evidence
> to back this up.
It is basically true and well known, and several cites follow below. There just two technicalities to keep in mind.
(1) What Israel in fact backed was Sheik Yassin's Gaza chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization that goes back to the 30s. Yassin, a quadraplegic cleric, set up the Gaza chapter in the early 70s, and Israel backed it in the 80s. During the period they backed it, it was a service organzation attached to mosques and universities. They were completeley non-violent and almost completley non-political. Sheik Yassin's conversion to the use of violent means was extremely abrupt. The first intifada traumatized him, and within 3 months he had set up a military organization to resist it. Sheik Yassin is still Hamas's spiritual leader today.
(2) Hamas is the Arabic acronym for "Islamic Resistance Movement" and means "zeal" in Arabic. When it first came into existence, the name only referred to the military wing under Yassin's control, and was distinguished from the service wing, which was still called the Muslim Brotherhood. So therefore technically, Israel can say it never supported Hamas. What it supported (with millions of dollars) was the non-violent group out of which Hamas was suddenly created.
Below is a short excerpt with URL, followed by footnote references.
Michael
The following article is at
http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0999/9909108.html
Footnotes follow. [BTW, FWIW, Graham Usher is both a trot and the Israel correspondent of the Economist, thus following in the tradition of Isaac Deutscher and Daniel Singer]
<excerpt>
Washington Report On Middle East Affairs
Middle East History: It Happened in September
Muslim Fundamentalists of Hamas Challenge PLO for Palestinian Support
By Donald Neff
SEPTEMBER 1999, pages 108-109
It was 11 years ago, on Sept. 9, 1988, when fistfights broke out among
a crowd of Palestinians in the West Bank city of Bethlehem. While
there were no fatalities, the melee was memorable because it marked a
serious challenge to the Palestine Liberation Organization by a
relatively new Islamic militant organization, the Islamic Resistance
MovementHamas, meaning Zeal.1 In the following years, acts of
terrorism against Israel by Hamas would make the PLOs efforts to find
peace more difficult and ultimately directly contribute to the
election of hard-liner Binyamin Netanyahu as the prime minister of
Israel on his promise to provide security.
Hamas emerged out of the Muslim Brotherhood, a pan-Arab nationalist
group. A branch of the Brotherhood was founded in Israeli-occupied
Gaza in the 1970s by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a fiery, wheelchair-bound
quadriplegic and Gaza clergyman. At the time, the Gaza Brotherhood
devoted itself to grassroots work in mosques, clinics and social work.
It abstained from all forms of the anti-occupation struggle. By 1986
it controlled 40 percent of all the mosques and the 7,000-student
Islamic University in Gaza.
Israeli authorities saw the Brotherhood as a useful counterbalance to
the largely secular PLO. Israel began secretly to contribute to the
Brotherhoods cause through favors and donations to mosques and
schools.2 Israeli donations to the Brotherhood were reported in the
millions of dollars, considerably strengthening Yassins organization.3
Israels brutal suppression of the Palestinian uprising, the intifada,
which began Dec. 9, 1987, traumatized Yassin, who was 51 at the time.
Within three months, he created Hamas as a militant organization
devoted to violent opposition to Israels occupation of Palestinian
lands. Hamas first official communiqué came in February 1988 stating
that the Islamic Resistance Movement is a branch of the Muslim
Brotherhood chapter in Palestine. The Brotherhood is an international
organization...[that] professes a comprehensive understanding...of the
Islamic precepts in all aspects of life.4
</excerpt>
Footnotes:
1Glenn Frankel, Washington Post, 9/18/88. Also see John Kifner, New
York Times, 9/17/88; Daoud Kuttab, The Brothers Join the Fray, Middle
East International, 9/9/88.
2Graham Usher, The Rise of Political Islam in the Occupied
Territories, Middle East International, 6/25/93. Also see Andrew
Whitley, London Financial Times, 9/8/88; John Kifner, New York Times,
9/17/88.
3Haim Baram, The Expulsion of the Palestinians: Rabin Shows His True
Colors, Middle East International, 1/8/93; Rowland Evans and Robert
Novak, Washington Post, 12/21/92. Also see Alan Cowell, New York
Times, 10/20/94.
4Graham Usher, The Rise of Political Islam in the Occupied
Territories, Middle East International, 6/25/93.
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com