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ISRAEL AIDED HAMAS
Supporters of Israeli government policies frequently point to Hamas as justification for Israel's brutal policies in the occupied territories. Never do they mention that Hamas was aided and abetted by Israel. Governments throughout the Middle East have used Islamists as a counter-force against secular and anti-capitalist movements. Not only are Islamists inclined to attack authentic radical currents, they also provide the perfect pretext for state repression.
ISRAEL GAVE MAJOR AID TO HAMAS
Saturday, 24 February 2001 11:28 (ET)
By RICHARD SALE, Terrorism Correspondent
NEW YORK, Feb. 24 (UPI) --
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, speaking of the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas recently described it 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 has gained notoriety with its assassinations, car bombs and other acts of terrorism.
But Sharon had 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”, 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.
According to documents obtained from the Israel-based Institute for Counter Terrorism (ICT) by UPI, Hamas evolved from cells of the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928. Islamic movements in Israel and Palestine were "weak and dormant" until after the 1967 Six Day War in which Israel scored a stunning victory over its Arab enemies.
After 1967, a great part of the success of the Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood was due to their activities among the refugees of the Gaza Strip. The cornerstone of the Islamic movements success was an impressive social, religious, educational and cultural infrastructure, called Da'wah, that worked to ease the hardship of large numbers of Palestinian refugees, confined to camps, and many of whom were living on the edge.
"Social influence grew into political influence," first in the Gaza Strip, then on the West Bank, said an administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity. According to ICT papers, Hamas was legally registered in Israel in 1978 by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the movements spiritual leader, as an Islamic Association by the name Al-Mujamma Al Islami, which widened its base of supporters and sympathizers by religious propaganda and social work.
Funds for the movement came from the oil-producing states and directly and indirectly from Israel, according to U.S. intelligence officials. The PLO was secular and leftist and promoted Palestinian nationalism. Hamas wanted set up a transnational state under the rule of Islam, much like Khomeini's Iran. What took Israeli leaders by surprise was the way the Islamic movements began to surge after the Iranian revolution, after armed resistance to Israel sprang up in southern Lebanon organized by an Iran-backed movement called Hezbollah that bore similitaries to Hamas, these sources said.
"Nothing stirs up the energy for imitation as much as success," commented one administration expert. A further factor of Hamas' growth was the fact the PLO moved its base of operations to Beirut in the 1980s, leaving the Islamic movements to strengthen their influence in the Occupied Territories "as the court of last resort," he said. When the intifada began, the Israeli leadership was further surprised when Islamic groups began to surge in membership and strength. Hamas immediately grew in numbers and violence. The group had always embraced the doctrine of armed struggle, but the doctrine had not been practiced and Islamic groups had not been subjected to suppression the way groups like Fatah had been, according to U.S. government officials.
But with the triumph of the Khomeini revolution in Iran, with the birth of Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorism in Lebanon, Hamas began to gain strength in Gaza and then in the West Bank, relying on terror to resist the Israeli occupation. Israel was certainly funding the group at that time. One US intelligence source who asked not to be named, said that not only was Hamas being funded as a "counterweight" to the PLO, Israeli aid had a more devious purpose: "to help identify and channel towards Israeli agents Hamas members who were dangerous terrorists."
In addition, by infiltrating Hamas, Israeli informers could listen to debates on policy and identify Hamas members who "were dangerous > hardliners," the official said. In the end, as Hamas set up a very comprehensive counterintelligence system, many collaborators with Israel were weeded out and shot. Violent acts of terrorism became the central tenet, and Hamas, unlike the PLO, was unwilling to compromise in any way with Israel, refusing to acknowledge its very existence.
Even then, some in Israel saw some benefits to be had in trying to continue to give Hamas support: "The thinking on the part of some of the right-wing Israeli establishment was that Hamas and the other groups, if they gained control, would refuse to have anything to do with the peace process and would torpedo any agreements put in place," said a U.S. government official.
"Israel would still be the only democracy in the region for the United States to deal with," he said. All of which is viewed with disapproval by some former U.S. intelligence officials. "The thing wrong with so many Israeli operations is that they try to be too sexy," said former CIA official Vincent Cannestraro. Former State Department counter-terrorism official Larry Johnson told UPI: "The Israelis are their own worst enemies when it comes to fighting terrorism. They are like a guy who sets fire to his hair and then tries to put it out by hitting it with a hammer. They do more to incite and sustain terrorism than curb it."
Aid to Hamas may have looked clever, "but it was hardly designed to help smooth the waters," he said. "It gives weight to President George W Bush's remark about there being a crisis in education." Cordesman said that a similar attempt by Egyptian intelligence to fund Egypt's fundamentalists had also come to grief because of over complication.
An Israeli Embassy defense official, asked if Israel had given aid to Hamas replied: "I am not able to answer that question. I was in Lebanon commanding a unit at the time, besides it is not my field of interest." Asked to confirm a report by U.S. officials that Brigadier General Yithaq Segev, the military governor of Gaza, had told U.S. officials that he had helped fund "Islamic movements as a counterweight to the PLO and communists," the Israeli official said he could confirm only that he believed that Segev had served back in 1986. The Israeli Embassy press office referred UPI to its Web site.
Copyright 2001 by United Press International. > All rights reserved.
Saturday, 24 February 2001 11:28 (ET)
By RICHARD SALE, Terrorism Correspondent
NEW YORK, Feb. 24 (UPI) --
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, speaking of the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas recently described it 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 has gained notoriety with its assassinations, car bombs and other acts of terrorism.
But Sharon had 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”, 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.
According to documents obtained from the Israel-based Institute for Counter Terrorism (ICT) by UPI, Hamas evolved from cells of the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928. Islamic movements in Israel and Palestine were "weak and dormant" until after the 1967 Six Day War in which Israel scored a stunning victory over its Arab enemies.
After 1967, a great part of the success of the Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood was due to their activities among the refugees of the Gaza Strip. The cornerstone of the Islamic movements success was an impressive social, religious, educational and cultural infrastructure, called Da'wah, that worked to ease the hardship of large numbers of Palestinian refugees, confined to camps, and many of whom were living on the edge.
"Social influence grew into political influence," first in the Gaza Strip, then on the West Bank, said an administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity. According to ICT papers, Hamas was legally registered in Israel in 1978 by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the movements spiritual leader, as an Islamic Association by the name Al-Mujamma Al Islami, which widened its base of supporters and sympathizers by religious propaganda and social work.
Funds for the movement came from the oil-producing states and directly and indirectly from Israel, according to U.S. intelligence officials. The PLO was secular and leftist and promoted Palestinian nationalism. Hamas wanted set up a transnational state under the rule of Islam, much like Khomeini's Iran. What took Israeli leaders by surprise was the way the Islamic movements began to surge after the Iranian revolution, after armed resistance to Israel sprang up in southern Lebanon organized by an Iran-backed movement called Hezbollah that bore similitaries to Hamas, these sources said.
"Nothing stirs up the energy for imitation as much as success," commented one administration expert. A further factor of Hamas' growth was the fact the PLO moved its base of operations to Beirut in the 1980s, leaving the Islamic movements to strengthen their influence in the Occupied Territories "as the court of last resort," he said. When the intifada began, the Israeli leadership was further surprised when Islamic groups began to surge in membership and strength. Hamas immediately grew in numbers and violence. The group had always embraced the doctrine of armed struggle, but the doctrine had not been practiced and Islamic groups had not been subjected to suppression the way groups like Fatah had been, according to U.S. government officials.
But with the triumph of the Khomeini revolution in Iran, with the birth of Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorism in Lebanon, Hamas began to gain strength in Gaza and then in the West Bank, relying on terror to resist the Israeli occupation. Israel was certainly funding the group at that time. One US intelligence source who asked not to be named, said that not only was Hamas being funded as a "counterweight" to the PLO, Israeli aid had a more devious purpose: "to help identify and channel towards Israeli agents Hamas members who were dangerous terrorists."
In addition, by infiltrating Hamas, Israeli informers could listen to debates on policy and identify Hamas members who "were dangerous > hardliners," the official said. In the end, as Hamas set up a very comprehensive counterintelligence system, many collaborators with Israel were weeded out and shot. Violent acts of terrorism became the central tenet, and Hamas, unlike the PLO, was unwilling to compromise in any way with Israel, refusing to acknowledge its very existence.
Even then, some in Israel saw some benefits to be had in trying to continue to give Hamas support: "The thinking on the part of some of the right-wing Israeli establishment was that Hamas and the other groups, if they gained control, would refuse to have anything to do with the peace process and would torpedo any agreements put in place," said a U.S. government official.
"Israel would still be the only democracy in the region for the United States to deal with," he said. All of which is viewed with disapproval by some former U.S. intelligence officials. "The thing wrong with so many Israeli operations is that they try to be too sexy," said former CIA official Vincent Cannestraro. Former State Department counter-terrorism official Larry Johnson told UPI: "The Israelis are their own worst enemies when it comes to fighting terrorism. They are like a guy who sets fire to his hair and then tries to put it out by hitting it with a hammer. They do more to incite and sustain terrorism than curb it."
Aid to Hamas may have looked clever, "but it was hardly designed to help smooth the waters," he said. "It gives weight to President George W Bush's remark about there being a crisis in education." Cordesman said that a similar attempt by Egyptian intelligence to fund Egypt's fundamentalists had also come to grief because of over complication.
An Israeli Embassy defense official, asked if Israel had given aid to Hamas replied: "I am not able to answer that question. I was in Lebanon commanding a unit at the time, besides it is not my field of interest." Asked to confirm a report by U.S. officials that Brigadier General Yithaq Segev, the military governor of Gaza, had told U.S. officials that he had helped fund "Islamic movements as a counterweight to the PLO and communists," the Israeli official said he could confirm only that he believed that Segev had served back in 1986. The Israeli Embassy press office referred UPI to its Web site.
Copyright 2001 by United Press International. > All rights reserved.
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The notion that Israel funded Hamas to, "divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative" has a certain plausibility to it, but is it true? The article below destroys this absurd notion, as well as taking a look at some of the characters quoted in the above article.
Reader Asks: “Doesn't Israel Fund Hamas?”
Francisco Gil-White* Replies
[Posted 25 May 2003]
========================================================
Dear Mr. Gil-White,
Please walk me through this article.
[Editor's Note: The article in question is a UPI wire that accuses Israel of funding Hamas.]
Do you concur that it is a foregone conclusion that Israel founded and continues to fund Hamas?
M. Stehly
========================================================
Francisco Gil-White Replies
========================================================
Dear M. Stehly,
I have examined the UPI wire, and I have done some research. Here is what I found.
The charge that Israel funds Hamas comes from two sources:
1) Undocumented assertions from "US intelligence."
2) The mass media, which, as we shall see, uses *itself* as a source of evidence!
Or we could say that it all comes from one source, for it is quite difficult, as you will see below, to find the place where the Establishment - including US intelligence - ends, and the mainstream media begins.
Good science and journalism rely on the dictum that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." For example, if Emperor's Clothes claimed that grass is green, we would not provide a single footnote. But since we claim that in the 9-11 attacks there was criminal complicity, at the highest level, by elements within the US government, and since this is an extraordinary claim, we have provided mountains of meticulously footnoted documentation.[1]
Hamas is an organization that goes around killing innocent Israeli men, women, and children. The assertion that Israel funds its own enemy, Hamas, is quite obviously an extraordinary claim.
What is the evidence?
This UPI wire which you referred to me is reposted more than once on the web, and some people appear to think this wire is "proof" that Israel funds Hamas.
It isn't.
I shall now walk you through UPI's wire.
========================================================
Let's take a look at UPI's 'sources'
========================================================
Below I list every last one of UPI's various 'sources,' as mentioned in their wire:
1) "according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials."
*My comment*: "U.S. intelligence..." The same people who secretly bloody their hands toppling regimes all over the world; the same people who funded (and still fund) Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan; the same people who...well, the list could go on for a while. Are such people trustworthy? Should we take the first thing they say at face value? No. A journalist should hardly consider the allegations of American spies sufficient for anything. But UPI sinks even lower: they don't bother to give any names. How can anybody verify?
2) "Israel 'aided Hamas directly...' said Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies."
*My Comment*: Oops! Tony Cordesman, rock thrower, lives in a glass house.
UPI got Mr. Cordesman's employer wrong. It is the Center for Strategic and *International* Studies (CSIS).[1a] This is one of those outfits calling themselves "Independent Policy Institutes" or "Non-Governmental Organizations" etc. The press quotes their statements in order to give the impression that they sought an academic or 'outside' opinion, but in reality these institutes are creatures of the US-led Empire.
Everybody involved with CSIS appears to be a creature of the US foreign policy and/or intelligence establishment. As their website explains, "CSIS is led by John J. Hamre, formerly deputy secretary of defense..."[2] And it has a select group of nine 'counselors' which includes a former secretary of defense (William S. Cohen), a former assistant secretary of state (Richard Fairbanks), a former intelligence-committee senator (Sam Nunn, who also chairs the board of trustees), a former CIA director (James Schlesinger), a general who was assistant for national security affairs in two administrations (Brent Scowcroft), a former secretary of defense (Harold Brown), a former US secretary of labor (William E. Brock), and Henry Kissinger, who needs no introduction.[3]
That's quite a crowd!
I saved the best for last: the ninth member is Zbgniew Brzezinski,[4] former national security advisor in the Carter Administration, and the man responsible for thousands upon thousands of innocent deaths in Afghanistan and elsewhere. This is the man who *invented* the idea of US sponsorship of Muslim terrorists to destabilize foreign countries.[5]
Cordesman, his underling, is on record stating his agreement with such policies.
You see, it turns out that Cordesman "is also a national security analyst for ABC News." In other words, this mouthpiece for the above Establishment crowd is who analyzes the world for ABC News (the free press at work...). And "[Cordesman's] television commentary has been featured prominently during...the conflict in Kosovo."[6] In this capacity, he falsely accused the Serbs of ethnic cleansing, and happily supported NATO's alliance with the KLA terrorists to attack Yugoslavia (as readers of Emperor's Clothes know, the official story about Yugoslavia is a long string of lies [8]). Cordesman even went so far as to make an unqualified, blanket defense for NATO-inflicted civilian deaths. The Associated Press wrote, "Tony Cordesman...argues that... NATO must inflict even more damage on Serb forces, with less concern for civilians."[7]
So Tony Cordesman, who defends NATO's illegal bombing of civilian Serbia; who endorses NATO's killing of civilians; who defends NATO's alliance with Muslim terrorists (the KLA); and whose 'counselor' is the man who invented the idea of sponsoring Islamist terrorists (Brzezinski)...*this* man, Cordesman, is who accuses Israel of funding Hamas!?
UPI will have to do better than that.
3) "a former senior CIA official."
*My Comment*: That's not better. Again, the CIA is not exactly a trustworthy source. And, again, no name is given.
4) "According to U.S. administration officials."
*My Comment*: See above.
5) "One U.S. intelligence source who asked not to be named"
*My Comment*: See above.
6) "U.S. government official who asked not to be named"
*My Comment*: See above.
7) "said former CIA official Vincent Cannestraro"
*My Comment*: At least this CIA official has a name, which means he can be investigated. I will have more to say about Vincent Cannistraro (that's the correct spelling) below.
========================================================
Where, exactly, did this all start?
========================================================
So much for UPI's documentation: they present none.
To print a claim that contradicts common sense without any documentation is bad ethics and bad journalism, but *at bare minimum* the accused party must be given a chance to rebut the charges.
UPI only *pretended* to do this. They approached a (nameless!) "Israeli defense official" who seemed to know nothing relevant. When "asked if Israel had given aid to Hamas" in the early 80s, this man replied that "I am not able to answer that question. I was in Lebanon commanding a unit at the time, besides it is not my field of interest."
It appears UPI set themselves up next to a defense building and interviewed the first person to walk out, choosing him at random! Is UPI trying to create the impression of an Israeli 'official evasion'? Probably, given that UPI persisted:
[Start Quote From UPI]
"Asked to confirm a report by U.S. officials that Brig. Gen. Yithaq Segev, the military governor of Gaza, had told U.S. officials he had helped fund 'Islamic movements as a counterweight to the PLO and communists,' the official said he could confirm only that he believed Segev had served back in 1986."
[End Quote From UPI]
The man knew absolutely nothing. Why is UPI questioning this man, let alone reporting his answers?
I did some research on Segev. UPI misspelled his name. It is not Yithaq, but Yitzhak.
There's a bigger problem, too. According to UPI's wire, the following supposedly came out of Segev's mouth: that Israel was funding "Islamic movements as a counterweight to the PLO and the communists." However, Segev did *not* say that. It was a newspaper, the Middle East Times, in November 2001, that wrote those words:[9]
[Start Quote From Middle East Times]
"Brigadier-General Yitzhak Segev, then military governor of Gaza, told The New York Times how, during 1979-84, he financed the Islamic movement as a counter-weight to the PLO and Communists: 'The Israeli government gave me a budget, and the military government gives [money] to the mosques.' "
[End Quote From Middle East Times]
First, notice that the phrase which UPI alleges to have gotten from unnamed "US officials" in 2002, was actually published in the Middle East Times *in 2001*. To make matters worse, The Middle East Times is using an article by the New York Times,[10] published in *1981* as a source! Why then does UPI mysteriously pretend to have heard such allegations against Israel from "a report by U.S. officials"? The whole thing is a phony.
Second, notice that UPI attributed to Segev the offending remark concerning Israel's supposed financing of "the Islamic movement as a counter-weight to the PLO and Communists." But it is perfectly clear above that this phrase comes from the Middle East Times author, who foisted an interpretation on Segev's remarks. Segev himself did *not* say that. The only thing he is quoted as saying is this: "The Israeli... military government gives money to the mosques."
Now, people who go to mosques are Muslims, and they go to pray. They are obviously not all Muslim fundamentalist terrorists. So if Segev said that Israel was giving money to mosques, he said...well, that Israel was giving money to mosques! He did *not* say that Israel was funding Islamic fundamentalist terrorists as a counterweight to the PLO.
Since the Middle East Times gives The New York Times as *their* source, I checked. As it turns out, nowhere does the NYT article quote Segev saying anything about funding Muslim fundamentalists, much less fundamentalist terrorists. What they quote is the same statement about giving some money to mosques.
Thus, since Yitzhak Segev is supposed to be the source for the claim that Israel sponsored fundamentalist terrorists, we now see that there is zero evidence for this allegation.
In fact, less than zero.
As you may recall, UPI alleged that Israel funded *Hamas*, not just any fundamentalists. But two things are true. First, the word 'Hamas' appears *nowhere* in the New York Times' article which is the ultimate source for all this. And second, in 1981, when the NYT wrote its piece, Hamas had only just come into existence three years before (and had not yet begun any terrorist activity).[11] So it is nonsense to say that the Israelis were funding the Hamas terrorists.
Moreover, at this time (as reported in the *same* New York Times article), leading religious figures in Gaza, such as the so-called 'Imam of Gaza,' were, in fact, leaders for *peace* with Israel. This suggests that when Segev said that "The Israeli... military government gives money to the mosques" he was explaining a detail in Israel's strategy for *peace*, rather than (absurdly) confessing to Israeli aid for the terrorists who attack it. [11a]
The claim that Israel supposedly funds Hamas has been constructed out of pure vapor, Mr. Stehly. But apparently this works, because your letter stated it was "a foregone conclusion that Israel founded and continues to fund Hamas."
========================================================
What is the CIA's policy towards Israel?
========================================================
Since UPI references nothing but US intelligence officials, let us look at the CIA's role in this more closely.
UPI's nameless intelligence sources not only accuse Israel of funding Hamas, they also make excuses for the PLO, claiming it was "secular and leftist and promoted Palestinian nationalism" (see for yourself).
But the PLO is neither secular, nor leftist, nor does it promote Palestinian nationalism (a bit like the mediaeval Holy Roman Empire, which was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire). The PLO has been fascist and has promoted genocide against the Jews from the beginning. If this is possible, it got worse when Arafat's Fatah - an organization founded by associates of the Mufti Hajj Amin, who led Hitler's Final Solution in Eastern Europe - took it over. At that time, the PLO also became Islamist because the Mufti was an Islamist and that has also been Fatah's character, as documented in my piece on the Palestinian movement.[12]
UPI's intelligence 'sources', of course, know all of this perfectly well. So why is the CIA making excuses for the PLO? And their act comes complete with overdone melodramatic touches. For example, UPI says that the supposed Israeli funding of Hamas "disgusts some former U.S. intelligence officials."
Now this is high comedy.
The slant is perfectly clear: Israel: bad guys; PLO: good guys. Given that, and given that this UPI report was obviously written by, or at the behest of, the CIA, the question is: why is the CIA attacking Israel?
We believe the US has a covert strategy to undermine Israel, and that it has worked intimately with the Palestinian terrorists for a long time. Undermining Israel covertly, while appearing to support it overtly, fulfills various geopolitical goals of the US-led Empire (see here for one example).[12b] We will examine such issues in more depth in future articles.
For now, consider what top CIA man Vincent Cannistraro says, and what it reveals of the love affair between the PLO and the CIA, as stated in a PBS Frontline interview: [13]
[Start Quote From PBS Frontline]
"Vincent Cannistraro: The Lebanese occupation by Israel caused the Palestinians to have to leave Lebanon eventually...They had been the protectors for the American diplomatic community in Beirut...There was liaison with the PLO, and the Americans were depending on them for their security."
[End Quote From PBS Frontline]
Again, the PLO, which was already a terrorist organization with genocidal goals, became even *more* radical (!) when it was taken over by Arafat's Fatah in the early 1970's.[12] And yet such people were so chummy with US intelligence that they were providing security for the American embassy in Lebanon in the early 1980's. Not so surprising, then, that when the Israeli military got ready to deliver a knockout blow to the PLO in Lebanon, in 1982, the US military stepped in to protect the PLO and evacuate the terrorists to safety.[13a] This is - take good note - *long* before the Oslo 'Peace' Process; that is, long before anybody bothered even to *pretend* that Arafat was something other than a brutal fascist and terrorist.
In fact, as reported in the New York Times as far back as 1981, the CIA *always* had a little-publicized and friendly back channel to the PLO terrorists, despite an agreement with Israel not to establish contact with them.[12a]
Hmm...
And this 'former' top CIA man, Vincent Cannistraro, is a real gem. His reach is so long that, according to the Pew International Journalism Program, where he gave a seminar, Cannistraro "organized an interview with Osama bin Laden for ABC News in 1998."[14]
Huh? There you have it!
A 'former' top CIA official arranged an interview with the man who, already in 1998, was supposed to be the CIA's main target. Regular readers of Emperor's Clothes will not be surprised, for they have seen the reams of documentation which Emperor's Clothes has posted and which establish a direct and friendly connection between the CIA and Bin Laden, which connection was never severed.[15]
And this 'former' CIA official, Vincent Cannistraro, now parades himself as "ABC News intelligence analyst Vincent Cannistraro."[16]
Who does that remind me of?
Oh yes, UPI 'source' Tony Cordesman, who accuses Israel of funding Hamas, who is a creature of CSIS, an organization saturated with the US-intelligence elite (among other prominent leaders of this Empire), and who is *also* an 'analyst' with ABC-News!
I'll say it again: It sure is hard to see where the Empire's stooges end and the American so-called 'free press' begins.
And we have come full circle, because there is one more similarity between Tony Cordesman from CSIS, and Vincent Cannistraro from the CIA. Cordesman, as you may recall, is one of only two named sources in the UPI wire that accuses Israel - with no evidence, but lots of fabrications - of supposedly funding Hamas. The other named source is Vincent Cannistraro, bin Laden's chum, and the man who explains the longstanding love-affair between the US and the PLO terrorists.
Hmm...
Best,
Francisco J. Gil-White
Deputy Editor
Emperor's Clothes
========================================================
Footnotes and Further Reading
========================================================
* Francisco J. Gil-White is Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and a Fellow at the Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict (SACSEC), at the University of Pennsylvania. He is an anthropologist and psychologist specializing in ethnicity and the psychology of ethnic conflict. He is Deputy Editor of Emperor's Clothes, and Editor of Emperor's Clothes Spanish Section. His email address is:
fjgil [at] psych.upenn.edu
[1] Emperor's Clothes' 9-11 page: An organized and annotated guide to all of our articles on 9-11
http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/911page.htm
[1a] http://www.csis.org/html/4cordesm.htm
[2] http://www.csis.org/about/index.htm
[3] http://www.csis.org/about/index.htm#4
[4] http://www.csis.org/html/4brzez.htm
[5] Brzezinski admits: Afghan Islamism Was Made in Washington
http://emperors-clothes.com/interviews/brz.htm
Brzezinski And Zalmay's Excellent Afghan Pro-Terrorist Propaganda
http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/zbi-zal.htm
To get a taste for just how enthusiastically the US sponsors Islamist terrorism, read about how the US has been - for years - writing, printing, and shipping violent Islamist textbooks for schoolchildren to Afghanistan!
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/jihad.htm
[6] http://www.csis.org/html/4cordesm.htm
[7] This footnote contains hyperlinked footnotes within it (in lowercase letters) for the documents that it refers to.
Here I document that Cordesman 1) slandered the Serbs, 2) defended the war on Yugoslavia, and 3) explicitly defended NATO's infliction of civilian casualties (as if the Geneva Convention were a nuisance).
About the Serbs, Cordesman said the following on ABC: "We know that the Serbs are in the midst of ethnic cleansing." (a)
In fact, all of the so-called evidence that the Serbs engaged in ethnic cleansing has been a series of hoaxes. Given the propaganda against the Serbs, this may sound astonishing, but it's true: NATO has not produced even *one* body of an Albanian massacred by Milosevic's forces. (b)
About civilian casualties, notice first what NATO's bombing policy became:
"Now that NATO's air campaign in Yugoslavia is taking aim at bridges, roads and rail lines used by civilians, it will be harder to bomb Serb forces without also killing ethnic Albanians fleeing Kosovo, U.S. defense officials and military analysts say." (c)
That's *NATO* talking, mind you.
Tony Cordesman showed himself quite understanding of the need to kill civilians. After the US bombed a civilian train in Serbia (one of many incidents of deliberately choosing civilian targets), NATO - as it sometimes did when caught red-handed - made an 'apology.' But Cordesman didn't think there was anything to apologize for: (d)
[Quote From ABC-News Starts Here]
GEORGE ROBERTSON, British Defense Secretary: I want to make a personal expression of regret for the injuries and fatalities which were caused by the bridge attack in Serbia on Monday...
JOHN DONVAN: (voice-over) And yet Cordesman says if NATO is serious about fighting this war, civilians will be killed.
ANTHONY CORDESMAN: If you do go ahead and fire when you see the targets, then civilian casualties are unfortunately the price of being effective in protecting the people as a whole.
JOHN DONVAN: It's just a fact of war?
ANTHONY CORDESMAN: Yes...
[Quote From ABC-News Ends Here]
It's "just a fact of war" that civilians will be killed. And you have to be "serious" - no pussyfooting. According to Cordesman, there was nothing to apologize for.
And soon enough, as NATO predicted, its bombs killed quite a few "ethnic Albanians fleeing Kosovo" - the same ones that NATO said it was protecting with its bombs. NATO tried to prevaricate at first, but in the end it had to admit this massacre.(e)
As usual, Cordesman was more reluctant, and once again he outdid even the official NATO spokespeople for sheer hawkishness and tactlessness, by alleging that the NATO bombing of Albanian civilians (who were fleeing on open tractors!), and to which NATO admitted, had supposedly been staged by the Serbs.(f)
But if any doubts remain about where Cordesman stands in relation to NATO's killing of civilians, they are laid to rest by the following quote:
"Tony Cordesman, a foreign policy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, argues that to win the air war NATO must inflict even more damage on Serb forces, with less concern for civilians.
Noting the restrictive rules of engagement, Cordesman said, 'We're either going to lose or have to send in ground troops.' " (c)
(a) ABC News, World News Tonight With Peter Jennings (6:30 Pm Et), April 15, 1999, Transcript # 99041505-J04, News, 854 Words, A Closer Look, Tony Cordesman, Ned Potter, Peter Jennings.
(b) See: "The Freezer Truck Hoax", by Francisco Gil-White.
http://emperors-clothes.com/milo/freezer1.htm
(c) The Associated Press, April 17, 1999, Saturday, AM cycle, Washington Dateline, 697 words, Civilian risks heightened as Kosovo targets shift, By LAURA MYERS, Associated Press Writer, WASHINGTON.
(d) ABC News, ABC Nightline (11:35 Pm Et), April 14, 1999, Transcript # 99041401-J07, News, 3578 Words, The Fog Of War -- Whom To Believe, Gen. Charles Wald, John Donvan, Jeremy Bowen, Ted Koppel.
(e) http://emperors-clothes.com/milo/freezer1app.htm
(f) ABC News, World News Tonight With Peter Jennings (6:30 Pm Et), April 16, 1999, Transcript # 99041602-J04, News, 490 Words, Questions Linger On Civilian Bombing, John Mcwethy, Peter Jennings.
[8] "The Cat is Out of the Bag"
by Jared Israel
http://emperors-clothes.com/news/ciaaided.htm
"The KLA: gangsters, terrorists and the CIA"
by Michel Chossudovsky, Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/chuss/kla.html
"The War NATO Wanted"
by Diana Johnstone
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/Johnstone/warNATO.html
"Which Terrorists Are Worse? Al Qaeda? Or the KLA?"
by Jared Israel
http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/kla-aq.htm
"The Freezer Truck Hoax"
by Francisco Gil-White
http://emperors-clothes.com/milo/freezer1.htm
[9] Middle East Times, 9 November, 2001; "Policy Blunders That Spawn Terror"
by Dilip Hiro, London
http://www.metimes.com/2K1/issue2001-45/reg/policy_blunders_that.htm
[10] The New York Times, March 28, 1981, Saturday, Late City Final Edition, Section 1; Page 2, Column 3; Foreign Desk, 1355 words, UNDER GAZA'S CALM SURFACE: DEATH, DRUGS, INTRIGUE, By DAVID K. SHIPLER, Special to the New York Times, GAZA
[11] "The Hamas movement was legally registered in Israel in 1978 by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the movement's spiritual leader, as an Islamic Association by the name Al-Mujamma Al Islami, which widened its base of supporters and sympathizers by religious propaganda and social work...
"...The significant change in the Muslim Brotherhood movement was the transition from passivity towards the Israeli rule to militancy and large-scale violent activity...
"...In August 1988 Hamas published the Islamic Covenant - its ideological credo, which presented its policy on all levels of the struggle..."
http://www.ict.org.il/inter_ter/orgdet.cfm?orgid=13
[11a] The New York Times article which quoted Segev (see ftn #10) also reported that, just two years earlier, "in March 1979. . .Sheik Hashim Huzandar, known as the Imam of Gaza, was killed near his home after leading a delegation to Cairo to endorse President el- Sadat's program of peace."
Given such strong support for peace from such high-profile religious figures in Gaza, Israeli support for the mosques actually looks like a political strategy to promote political moderation. Interpreting it as support for radical Islamic fundamentalism is simply bizarre.
[12] “Palestine Is Our Land And The Jews Are Our Dogs”, Anti- Semitism, Misinformation, And The Whitewashing Of The Palestinian Leadership, By Francisco J. Gil-White
http://emperors-clothes.com/gilwhite/Israel.htm
[12a] "The American Government has an agreement with Israel, dating back to 1975, not to have any contact with the P.L.O. In fact, however, the Central Intelligence Agency has for several years maintained and occasionally used a little publicized, so-called ''back- channel'' line of communications with P.L.O. headquarters in Beirut." -- The New York Times, May 17, 1981, Sunday, Late City Final Edition, Section 6; Page 77, Column 3; Magazine Desk, 11464 words, "Putting The Hostages' Lives First"
[12b] "U.S. & Iran: Enemies in Public, but Secret Allies in Terror"
by Jared Israel, Francisco Gil-White,
Petar Makara, and Nico Varkevisser
http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/deja.htm
[13] Who is Vincent Cannistraro? "Director of NSC Intelligence from 1984 to 1987, [Vincent] Cannistraro went on to serve as chief of operations for the CIA's Counterterrorism Center and to lead the CIA's investigation into the bombing of Pan Am 103..."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/target/interviews/
To see the Frontline Interview go to:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/target/interviews/cannistraro.html
[13a] "From Amman, the PLO troops left unheralded, in ridicule. From Beirut, they left in a compromise negotiated by the United States, waving their Kalashnikov rifles. Arafat left not in the middle of the night but with an emotional dockside sendoff from the Lebanese prime minister, a French Navy escort and U.S. air cover." - - The Washington Post, December 26, 1982, Sunday, Final Edition, First Section; A1, 2354 words, Arafat's PLO Once Again Rides Crest of Defeat, By Loren Jenkins, Washington Post Foreign Service, BEIRUT
[14] The Pew Fellowship source is here:
http://www.pewfellowships.org/seminars/fall2002/vincent_cannistraro.html
It appears that ABC-News used only two statements from their exclusive interview with Osama bin Laden. Here they are:
[Start Quote From ABC-News transcript]
[Sheila Macvicar]: (voice-over) May 14 -- the Islamic front, led by bin Laden, meets again. May 28 -- bin Laden gives John Miller of ABC News this exclusive interview.
[Osama Bin Laden]: (through translator) A great meeting took place a few days ago in Pakistan. There is now a higher council to coordinate rousing the Muslim nation to carry out Jihad against the Jews and the crusaders.
[Sheila Macvicar]: (voice-over) In very strong language, bin Laden repeats the threat of the fatwa against Americans.
[Osama Bin Laden]: (through translator) We do not differentiate between those dressed in military uniforms and civilians. They are all targets in this fatwa.
[End Quote From ABC-News transcript]
ABC News, World News Tonight With Peter Jennings (6:30 Pm Et), August 12, 1998, Transcript # 98081201-J04, News, 1025 Words, The Embassy Bombings -- Were Warnings Ignored?, Sheila Macvicar, Charles Gibson
How nice of Osama bin Laden to suspend the fatwa (which includes *all* Americans) long enough to spare American John Miller from certain death so that he could conduct the interview. The same goes for bin Laden's gracious sparing of Vincent Cannistraro, or else whomever Vincent Cannistraro sent to make the arrangements. And how gracious of bin Laden to cooperate so smoothly with the American CIA which, supposedly, he hates.
And how wonderful that the CIA did not use this opportunity to double cross bin Laden and capture him or assassinate him. Beautiful! Everybody is so kind...
emperors-clothes.com/letters/cia.htm
See also http://www.hirhome.com
The notion that Israel funded Hamas to, "divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative" has a certain plausibility to it, but is it true? The article below destroys this absurd notion, as well as taking a look at some of the characters quoted in the above article.
Reader Asks: “Doesn't Israel Fund Hamas?”
Francisco Gil-White* Replies
[Posted 25 May 2003]
========================================================
Dear Mr. Gil-White,
Please walk me through this article.
[Editor's Note: The article in question is a UPI wire that accuses Israel of funding Hamas.]
Do you concur that it is a foregone conclusion that Israel founded and continues to fund Hamas?
M. Stehly
========================================================
Francisco Gil-White Replies
========================================================
Dear M. Stehly,
I have examined the UPI wire, and I have done some research. Here is what I found.
The charge that Israel funds Hamas comes from two sources:
1) Undocumented assertions from "US intelligence."
2) The mass media, which, as we shall see, uses *itself* as a source of evidence!
Or we could say that it all comes from one source, for it is quite difficult, as you will see below, to find the place where the Establishment - including US intelligence - ends, and the mainstream media begins.
Good science and journalism rely on the dictum that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." For example, if Emperor's Clothes claimed that grass is green, we would not provide a single footnote. But since we claim that in the 9-11 attacks there was criminal complicity, at the highest level, by elements within the US government, and since this is an extraordinary claim, we have provided mountains of meticulously footnoted documentation.[1]
Hamas is an organization that goes around killing innocent Israeli men, women, and children. The assertion that Israel funds its own enemy, Hamas, is quite obviously an extraordinary claim.
What is the evidence?
This UPI wire which you referred to me is reposted more than once on the web, and some people appear to think this wire is "proof" that Israel funds Hamas.
It isn't.
I shall now walk you through UPI's wire.
========================================================
Let's take a look at UPI's 'sources'
========================================================
Below I list every last one of UPI's various 'sources,' as mentioned in their wire:
1) "according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials."
*My comment*: "U.S. intelligence..." The same people who secretly bloody their hands toppling regimes all over the world; the same people who funded (and still fund) Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan; the same people who...well, the list could go on for a while. Are such people trustworthy? Should we take the first thing they say at face value? No. A journalist should hardly consider the allegations of American spies sufficient for anything. But UPI sinks even lower: they don't bother to give any names. How can anybody verify?
2) "Israel 'aided Hamas directly...' said Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies."
*My Comment*: Oops! Tony Cordesman, rock thrower, lives in a glass house.
UPI got Mr. Cordesman's employer wrong. It is the Center for Strategic and *International* Studies (CSIS).[1a] This is one of those outfits calling themselves "Independent Policy Institutes" or "Non-Governmental Organizations" etc. The press quotes their statements in order to give the impression that they sought an academic or 'outside' opinion, but in reality these institutes are creatures of the US-led Empire.
Everybody involved with CSIS appears to be a creature of the US foreign policy and/or intelligence establishment. As their website explains, "CSIS is led by John J. Hamre, formerly deputy secretary of defense..."[2] And it has a select group of nine 'counselors' which includes a former secretary of defense (William S. Cohen), a former assistant secretary of state (Richard Fairbanks), a former intelligence-committee senator (Sam Nunn, who also chairs the board of trustees), a former CIA director (James Schlesinger), a general who was assistant for national security affairs in two administrations (Brent Scowcroft), a former secretary of defense (Harold Brown), a former US secretary of labor (William E. Brock), and Henry Kissinger, who needs no introduction.[3]
That's quite a crowd!
I saved the best for last: the ninth member is Zbgniew Brzezinski,[4] former national security advisor in the Carter Administration, and the man responsible for thousands upon thousands of innocent deaths in Afghanistan and elsewhere. This is the man who *invented* the idea of US sponsorship of Muslim terrorists to destabilize foreign countries.[5]
Cordesman, his underling, is on record stating his agreement with such policies.
You see, it turns out that Cordesman "is also a national security analyst for ABC News." In other words, this mouthpiece for the above Establishment crowd is who analyzes the world for ABC News (the free press at work...). And "[Cordesman's] television commentary has been featured prominently during...the conflict in Kosovo."[6] In this capacity, he falsely accused the Serbs of ethnic cleansing, and happily supported NATO's alliance with the KLA terrorists to attack Yugoslavia (as readers of Emperor's Clothes know, the official story about Yugoslavia is a long string of lies [8]). Cordesman even went so far as to make an unqualified, blanket defense for NATO-inflicted civilian deaths. The Associated Press wrote, "Tony Cordesman...argues that... NATO must inflict even more damage on Serb forces, with less concern for civilians."[7]
So Tony Cordesman, who defends NATO's illegal bombing of civilian Serbia; who endorses NATO's killing of civilians; who defends NATO's alliance with Muslim terrorists (the KLA); and whose 'counselor' is the man who invented the idea of sponsoring Islamist terrorists (Brzezinski)...*this* man, Cordesman, is who accuses Israel of funding Hamas!?
UPI will have to do better than that.
3) "a former senior CIA official."
*My Comment*: That's not better. Again, the CIA is not exactly a trustworthy source. And, again, no name is given.
4) "According to U.S. administration officials."
*My Comment*: See above.
5) "One U.S. intelligence source who asked not to be named"
*My Comment*: See above.
6) "U.S. government official who asked not to be named"
*My Comment*: See above.
7) "said former CIA official Vincent Cannestraro"
*My Comment*: At least this CIA official has a name, which means he can be investigated. I will have more to say about Vincent Cannistraro (that's the correct spelling) below.
========================================================
Where, exactly, did this all start?
========================================================
So much for UPI's documentation: they present none.
To print a claim that contradicts common sense without any documentation is bad ethics and bad journalism, but *at bare minimum* the accused party must be given a chance to rebut the charges.
UPI only *pretended* to do this. They approached a (nameless!) "Israeli defense official" who seemed to know nothing relevant. When "asked if Israel had given aid to Hamas" in the early 80s, this man replied that "I am not able to answer that question. I was in Lebanon commanding a unit at the time, besides it is not my field of interest."
It appears UPI set themselves up next to a defense building and interviewed the first person to walk out, choosing him at random! Is UPI trying to create the impression of an Israeli 'official evasion'? Probably, given that UPI persisted:
[Start Quote From UPI]
"Asked to confirm a report by U.S. officials that Brig. Gen. Yithaq Segev, the military governor of Gaza, had told U.S. officials he had helped fund 'Islamic movements as a counterweight to the PLO and communists,' the official said he could confirm only that he believed Segev had served back in 1986."
[End Quote From UPI]
The man knew absolutely nothing. Why is UPI questioning this man, let alone reporting his answers?
I did some research on Segev. UPI misspelled his name. It is not Yithaq, but Yitzhak.
There's a bigger problem, too. According to UPI's wire, the following supposedly came out of Segev's mouth: that Israel was funding "Islamic movements as a counterweight to the PLO and the communists." However, Segev did *not* say that. It was a newspaper, the Middle East Times, in November 2001, that wrote those words:[9]
[Start Quote From Middle East Times]
"Brigadier-General Yitzhak Segev, then military governor of Gaza, told The New York Times how, during 1979-84, he financed the Islamic movement as a counter-weight to the PLO and Communists: 'The Israeli government gave me a budget, and the military government gives [money] to the mosques.' "
[End Quote From Middle East Times]
First, notice that the phrase which UPI alleges to have gotten from unnamed "US officials" in 2002, was actually published in the Middle East Times *in 2001*. To make matters worse, The Middle East Times is using an article by the New York Times,[10] published in *1981* as a source! Why then does UPI mysteriously pretend to have heard such allegations against Israel from "a report by U.S. officials"? The whole thing is a phony.
Second, notice that UPI attributed to Segev the offending remark concerning Israel's supposed financing of "the Islamic movement as a counter-weight to the PLO and Communists." But it is perfectly clear above that this phrase comes from the Middle East Times author, who foisted an interpretation on Segev's remarks. Segev himself did *not* say that. The only thing he is quoted as saying is this: "The Israeli... military government gives money to the mosques."
Now, people who go to mosques are Muslims, and they go to pray. They are obviously not all Muslim fundamentalist terrorists. So if Segev said that Israel was giving money to mosques, he said...well, that Israel was giving money to mosques! He did *not* say that Israel was funding Islamic fundamentalist terrorists as a counterweight to the PLO.
Since the Middle East Times gives The New York Times as *their* source, I checked. As it turns out, nowhere does the NYT article quote Segev saying anything about funding Muslim fundamentalists, much less fundamentalist terrorists. What they quote is the same statement about giving some money to mosques.
Thus, since Yitzhak Segev is supposed to be the source for the claim that Israel sponsored fundamentalist terrorists, we now see that there is zero evidence for this allegation.
In fact, less than zero.
As you may recall, UPI alleged that Israel funded *Hamas*, not just any fundamentalists. But two things are true. First, the word 'Hamas' appears *nowhere* in the New York Times' article which is the ultimate source for all this. And second, in 1981, when the NYT wrote its piece, Hamas had only just come into existence three years before (and had not yet begun any terrorist activity).[11] So it is nonsense to say that the Israelis were funding the Hamas terrorists.
Moreover, at this time (as reported in the *same* New York Times article), leading religious figures in Gaza, such as the so-called 'Imam of Gaza,' were, in fact, leaders for *peace* with Israel. This suggests that when Segev said that "The Israeli... military government gives money to the mosques" he was explaining a detail in Israel's strategy for *peace*, rather than (absurdly) confessing to Israeli aid for the terrorists who attack it. [11a]
The claim that Israel supposedly funds Hamas has been constructed out of pure vapor, Mr. Stehly. But apparently this works, because your letter stated it was "a foregone conclusion that Israel founded and continues to fund Hamas."
========================================================
What is the CIA's policy towards Israel?
========================================================
Since UPI references nothing but US intelligence officials, let us look at the CIA's role in this more closely.
UPI's nameless intelligence sources not only accuse Israel of funding Hamas, they also make excuses for the PLO, claiming it was "secular and leftist and promoted Palestinian nationalism" (see for yourself).
But the PLO is neither secular, nor leftist, nor does it promote Palestinian nationalism (a bit like the mediaeval Holy Roman Empire, which was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire). The PLO has been fascist and has promoted genocide against the Jews from the beginning. If this is possible, it got worse when Arafat's Fatah - an organization founded by associates of the Mufti Hajj Amin, who led Hitler's Final Solution in Eastern Europe - took it over. At that time, the PLO also became Islamist because the Mufti was an Islamist and that has also been Fatah's character, as documented in my piece on the Palestinian movement.[12]
UPI's intelligence 'sources', of course, know all of this perfectly well. So why is the CIA making excuses for the PLO? And their act comes complete with overdone melodramatic touches. For example, UPI says that the supposed Israeli funding of Hamas "disgusts some former U.S. intelligence officials."
Now this is high comedy.
The slant is perfectly clear: Israel: bad guys; PLO: good guys. Given that, and given that this UPI report was obviously written by, or at the behest of, the CIA, the question is: why is the CIA attacking Israel?
We believe the US has a covert strategy to undermine Israel, and that it has worked intimately with the Palestinian terrorists for a long time. Undermining Israel covertly, while appearing to support it overtly, fulfills various geopolitical goals of the US-led Empire (see here for one example).[12b] We will examine such issues in more depth in future articles.
For now, consider what top CIA man Vincent Cannistraro says, and what it reveals of the love affair between the PLO and the CIA, as stated in a PBS Frontline interview: [13]
[Start Quote From PBS Frontline]
"Vincent Cannistraro: The Lebanese occupation by Israel caused the Palestinians to have to leave Lebanon eventually...They had been the protectors for the American diplomatic community in Beirut...There was liaison with the PLO, and the Americans were depending on them for their security."
[End Quote From PBS Frontline]
Again, the PLO, which was already a terrorist organization with genocidal goals, became even *more* radical (!) when it was taken over by Arafat's Fatah in the early 1970's.[12] And yet such people were so chummy with US intelligence that they were providing security for the American embassy in Lebanon in the early 1980's. Not so surprising, then, that when the Israeli military got ready to deliver a knockout blow to the PLO in Lebanon, in 1982, the US military stepped in to protect the PLO and evacuate the terrorists to safety.[13a] This is - take good note - *long* before the Oslo 'Peace' Process; that is, long before anybody bothered even to *pretend* that Arafat was something other than a brutal fascist and terrorist.
In fact, as reported in the New York Times as far back as 1981, the CIA *always* had a little-publicized and friendly back channel to the PLO terrorists, despite an agreement with Israel not to establish contact with them.[12a]
Hmm...
And this 'former' top CIA man, Vincent Cannistraro, is a real gem. His reach is so long that, according to the Pew International Journalism Program, where he gave a seminar, Cannistraro "organized an interview with Osama bin Laden for ABC News in 1998."[14]
Huh? There you have it!
A 'former' top CIA official arranged an interview with the man who, already in 1998, was supposed to be the CIA's main target. Regular readers of Emperor's Clothes will not be surprised, for they have seen the reams of documentation which Emperor's Clothes has posted and which establish a direct and friendly connection between the CIA and Bin Laden, which connection was never severed.[15]
And this 'former' CIA official, Vincent Cannistraro, now parades himself as "ABC News intelligence analyst Vincent Cannistraro."[16]
Who does that remind me of?
Oh yes, UPI 'source' Tony Cordesman, who accuses Israel of funding Hamas, who is a creature of CSIS, an organization saturated with the US-intelligence elite (among other prominent leaders of this Empire), and who is *also* an 'analyst' with ABC-News!
I'll say it again: It sure is hard to see where the Empire's stooges end and the American so-called 'free press' begins.
And we have come full circle, because there is one more similarity between Tony Cordesman from CSIS, and Vincent Cannistraro from the CIA. Cordesman, as you may recall, is one of only two named sources in the UPI wire that accuses Israel - with no evidence, but lots of fabrications - of supposedly funding Hamas. The other named source is Vincent Cannistraro, bin Laden's chum, and the man who explains the longstanding love-affair between the US and the PLO terrorists.
Hmm...
Best,
Francisco J. Gil-White
Deputy Editor
Emperor's Clothes
========================================================
Footnotes and Further Reading
========================================================
* Francisco J. Gil-White is Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and a Fellow at the Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict (SACSEC), at the University of Pennsylvania. He is an anthropologist and psychologist specializing in ethnicity and the psychology of ethnic conflict. He is Deputy Editor of Emperor's Clothes, and Editor of Emperor's Clothes Spanish Section. His email address is:
fjgil [at] psych.upenn.edu
[1] Emperor's Clothes' 9-11 page: An organized and annotated guide to all of our articles on 9-11
http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/911page.htm
[1a] http://www.csis.org/html/4cordesm.htm
[2] http://www.csis.org/about/index.htm
[3] http://www.csis.org/about/index.htm#4
[4] http://www.csis.org/html/4brzez.htm
[5] Brzezinski admits: Afghan Islamism Was Made in Washington
http://emperors-clothes.com/interviews/brz.htm
Brzezinski And Zalmay's Excellent Afghan Pro-Terrorist Propaganda
http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/zbi-zal.htm
To get a taste for just how enthusiastically the US sponsors Islamist terrorism, read about how the US has been - for years - writing, printing, and shipping violent Islamist textbooks for schoolchildren to Afghanistan!
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/jihad.htm
[6] http://www.csis.org/html/4cordesm.htm
[7] This footnote contains hyperlinked footnotes within it (in lowercase letters) for the documents that it refers to.
Here I document that Cordesman 1) slandered the Serbs, 2) defended the war on Yugoslavia, and 3) explicitly defended NATO's infliction of civilian casualties (as if the Geneva Convention were a nuisance).
About the Serbs, Cordesman said the following on ABC: "We know that the Serbs are in the midst of ethnic cleansing." (a)
In fact, all of the so-called evidence that the Serbs engaged in ethnic cleansing has been a series of hoaxes. Given the propaganda against the Serbs, this may sound astonishing, but it's true: NATO has not produced even *one* body of an Albanian massacred by Milosevic's forces. (b)
About civilian casualties, notice first what NATO's bombing policy became:
"Now that NATO's air campaign in Yugoslavia is taking aim at bridges, roads and rail lines used by civilians, it will be harder to bomb Serb forces without also killing ethnic Albanians fleeing Kosovo, U.S. defense officials and military analysts say." (c)
That's *NATO* talking, mind you.
Tony Cordesman showed himself quite understanding of the need to kill civilians. After the US bombed a civilian train in Serbia (one of many incidents of deliberately choosing civilian targets), NATO - as it sometimes did when caught red-handed - made an 'apology.' But Cordesman didn't think there was anything to apologize for: (d)
[Quote From ABC-News Starts Here]
GEORGE ROBERTSON, British Defense Secretary: I want to make a personal expression of regret for the injuries and fatalities which were caused by the bridge attack in Serbia on Monday...
JOHN DONVAN: (voice-over) And yet Cordesman says if NATO is serious about fighting this war, civilians will be killed.
ANTHONY CORDESMAN: If you do go ahead and fire when you see the targets, then civilian casualties are unfortunately the price of being effective in protecting the people as a whole.
JOHN DONVAN: It's just a fact of war?
ANTHONY CORDESMAN: Yes...
[Quote From ABC-News Ends Here]
It's "just a fact of war" that civilians will be killed. And you have to be "serious" - no pussyfooting. According to Cordesman, there was nothing to apologize for.
And soon enough, as NATO predicted, its bombs killed quite a few "ethnic Albanians fleeing Kosovo" - the same ones that NATO said it was protecting with its bombs. NATO tried to prevaricate at first, but in the end it had to admit this massacre.(e)
As usual, Cordesman was more reluctant, and once again he outdid even the official NATO spokespeople for sheer hawkishness and tactlessness, by alleging that the NATO bombing of Albanian civilians (who were fleeing on open tractors!), and to which NATO admitted, had supposedly been staged by the Serbs.(f)
But if any doubts remain about where Cordesman stands in relation to NATO's killing of civilians, they are laid to rest by the following quote:
"Tony Cordesman, a foreign policy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, argues that to win the air war NATO must inflict even more damage on Serb forces, with less concern for civilians.
Noting the restrictive rules of engagement, Cordesman said, 'We're either going to lose or have to send in ground troops.' " (c)
(a) ABC News, World News Tonight With Peter Jennings (6:30 Pm Et), April 15, 1999, Transcript # 99041505-J04, News, 854 Words, A Closer Look, Tony Cordesman, Ned Potter, Peter Jennings.
(b) See: "The Freezer Truck Hoax", by Francisco Gil-White.
http://emperors-clothes.com/milo/freezer1.htm
(c) The Associated Press, April 17, 1999, Saturday, AM cycle, Washington Dateline, 697 words, Civilian risks heightened as Kosovo targets shift, By LAURA MYERS, Associated Press Writer, WASHINGTON.
(d) ABC News, ABC Nightline (11:35 Pm Et), April 14, 1999, Transcript # 99041401-J07, News, 3578 Words, The Fog Of War -- Whom To Believe, Gen. Charles Wald, John Donvan, Jeremy Bowen, Ted Koppel.
(e) http://emperors-clothes.com/milo/freezer1app.htm
(f) ABC News, World News Tonight With Peter Jennings (6:30 Pm Et), April 16, 1999, Transcript # 99041602-J04, News, 490 Words, Questions Linger On Civilian Bombing, John Mcwethy, Peter Jennings.
[8] "The Cat is Out of the Bag"
by Jared Israel
http://emperors-clothes.com/news/ciaaided.htm
"The KLA: gangsters, terrorists and the CIA"
by Michel Chossudovsky, Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/chuss/kla.html
"The War NATO Wanted"
by Diana Johnstone
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/Johnstone/warNATO.html
"Which Terrorists Are Worse? Al Qaeda? Or the KLA?"
by Jared Israel
http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/kla-aq.htm
"The Freezer Truck Hoax"
by Francisco Gil-White
http://emperors-clothes.com/milo/freezer1.htm
[9] Middle East Times, 9 November, 2001; "Policy Blunders That Spawn Terror"
by Dilip Hiro, London
http://www.metimes.com/2K1/issue2001-45/reg/policy_blunders_that.htm
[10] The New York Times, March 28, 1981, Saturday, Late City Final Edition, Section 1; Page 2, Column 3; Foreign Desk, 1355 words, UNDER GAZA'S CALM SURFACE: DEATH, DRUGS, INTRIGUE, By DAVID K. SHIPLER, Special to the New York Times, GAZA
[11] "The Hamas movement was legally registered in Israel in 1978 by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the movement's spiritual leader, as an Islamic Association by the name Al-Mujamma Al Islami, which widened its base of supporters and sympathizers by religious propaganda and social work...
"...The significant change in the Muslim Brotherhood movement was the transition from passivity towards the Israeli rule to militancy and large-scale violent activity...
"...In August 1988 Hamas published the Islamic Covenant - its ideological credo, which presented its policy on all levels of the struggle..."
http://www.ict.org.il/inter_ter/orgdet.cfm?orgid=13
[11a] The New York Times article which quoted Segev (see ftn #10) also reported that, just two years earlier, "in March 1979. . .Sheik Hashim Huzandar, known as the Imam of Gaza, was killed near his home after leading a delegation to Cairo to endorse President el- Sadat's program of peace."
Given such strong support for peace from such high-profile religious figures in Gaza, Israeli support for the mosques actually looks like a political strategy to promote political moderation. Interpreting it as support for radical Islamic fundamentalism is simply bizarre.
[12] “Palestine Is Our Land And The Jews Are Our Dogs”, Anti- Semitism, Misinformation, And The Whitewashing Of The Palestinian Leadership, By Francisco J. Gil-White
http://emperors-clothes.com/gilwhite/Israel.htm
[12a] "The American Government has an agreement with Israel, dating back to 1975, not to have any contact with the P.L.O. In fact, however, the Central Intelligence Agency has for several years maintained and occasionally used a little publicized, so-called ''back- channel'' line of communications with P.L.O. headquarters in Beirut." -- The New York Times, May 17, 1981, Sunday, Late City Final Edition, Section 6; Page 77, Column 3; Magazine Desk, 11464 words, "Putting The Hostages' Lives First"
[12b] "U.S. & Iran: Enemies in Public, but Secret Allies in Terror"
by Jared Israel, Francisco Gil-White,
Petar Makara, and Nico Varkevisser
http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/deja.htm
[13] Who is Vincent Cannistraro? "Director of NSC Intelligence from 1984 to 1987, [Vincent] Cannistraro went on to serve as chief of operations for the CIA's Counterterrorism Center and to lead the CIA's investigation into the bombing of Pan Am 103..."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/target/interviews/
To see the Frontline Interview go to:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/target/interviews/cannistraro.html
[13a] "From Amman, the PLO troops left unheralded, in ridicule. From Beirut, they left in a compromise negotiated by the United States, waving their Kalashnikov rifles. Arafat left not in the middle of the night but with an emotional dockside sendoff from the Lebanese prime minister, a French Navy escort and U.S. air cover." - - The Washington Post, December 26, 1982, Sunday, Final Edition, First Section; A1, 2354 words, Arafat's PLO Once Again Rides Crest of Defeat, By Loren Jenkins, Washington Post Foreign Service, BEIRUT
[14] The Pew Fellowship source is here:
http://www.pewfellowships.org/seminars/fall2002/vincent_cannistraro.html
It appears that ABC-News used only two statements from their exclusive interview with Osama bin Laden. Here they are:
[Start Quote From ABC-News transcript]
[Sheila Macvicar]: (voice-over) May 14 -- the Islamic front, led by bin Laden, meets again. May 28 -- bin Laden gives John Miller of ABC News this exclusive interview.
[Osama Bin Laden]: (through translator) A great meeting took place a few days ago in Pakistan. There is now a higher council to coordinate rousing the Muslim nation to carry out Jihad against the Jews and the crusaders.
[Sheila Macvicar]: (voice-over) In very strong language, bin Laden repeats the threat of the fatwa against Americans.
[Osama Bin Laden]: (through translator) We do not differentiate between those dressed in military uniforms and civilians. They are all targets in this fatwa.
[End Quote From ABC-News transcript]
ABC News, World News Tonight With Peter Jennings (6:30 Pm Et), August 12, 1998, Transcript # 98081201-J04, News, 1025 Words, The Embassy Bombings -- Were Warnings Ignored?, Sheila Macvicar, Charles Gibson
How nice of Osama bin Laden to suspend the fatwa (which includes *all* Americans) long enough to spare American John Miller from certain death so that he could conduct the interview. The same goes for bin Laden's gracious sparing of Vincent Cannistraro, or else whomever Vincent Cannistraro sent to make the arrangements. And how gracious of bin Laden to cooperate so smoothly with the American CIA which, supposedly, he hates.
And how wonderful that the CIA did not use this opportunity to double cross bin Laden and capture him or assassinate him. Beautiful! Everybody is so kind...
emperors-clothes.com/letters/cia.htm
See also http://www.hirhome.com
For more information:
http://web.archive.org/web/20050210093812/...
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