Israeli security officials scored a major intelligence coup in 2018: secret documents that laid out, in intricate detail, what amounted to a private equity fund that Hamas used to finance its operations.
The ledgers, pilfered from the computer of a senior Hamas official, listed assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Hamas controlled mining, chicken farming and road building companies in Sudan, twin skyscrapers in the United Arab Emirates, a property developer in Algeria, and a real estate firm listed on the Turkish stock exchange.
The documents, which The New York Times reviewed, were a potential road map for choking off Hamas’s money and thwarting its plans. The agents who obtained the records shared them inside their own government and in Washington.
Nothing happened.
For years, none of the companies named in the ledgers faced sanctions from the United States or Israel. Nobody publicly called out the companies or pressured Turkey, the hub of the financial network, to shut it down.
A Times investigation found that both senior Israeli and American officials failed to prioritize financial intelligence — which they had in hand — showing that tens of millions of dollars flowed from the companies to Hamas at the exact moment that it was buying new weapons and preparing an attack.
That money, American and Israeli officials now say, helped Hamas build up its military infrastructure and helped lay the groundwork for the Oct. 7 attacks.
Comments on above article in NYT worth reading;
Bill Tiesen
Manitoba, Canada30m ago
Fascinating story and a valuable inside look into recent history. Those who claim Israel had no option but to bomb Gaza into oblivion should read this. There are always options and choices. Netanyahu and his cronies made many terrible decisions over the years, and ignoring this huge red flag looks to be one of the worst ones.
Tommy D
Pennsylvania30m ago
Failure to stop the money, failure to predict the attack, attack gets cements support for Netanyahu when he was politically vulnerable. Were I of a suspicious nature, I would suspect Bibi wanted Hamas to attack.
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Clint
Pittsburgh30m ago
There are many dots creating a picture that the right wing Israeli government has wanted a pretext for a war like this for a long time.
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Posted by F. Sheikh