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

Ukraine is on border of Russia and a buffer between Russia and many NATO countries. If Ukraine falls, there is no doubt that Russia will not stop there and will extend its aggression to other NATO countries-and that is a threat to our national security. Unfortunately, the support for this crucial country is being held hostage to partisan politics.

While our national interests are obvious in Ukraine, but what are our national interests in Israel? So far, the only national interest stated by Government, politicians, and all columnists (including Thomas Friedman) is that Israel is the only Democracy in the Middle East, which is also in doubt considering religious extremists taking hold in Israeli political parties and Judicial mess. Well, what do we expect? We always supported dictatorships and authoritarianism in other Middle East countries and did our best to keep them in power. What is so special about Israel being a Democracy that we abandon all our moral values and give unconditional support to Israel despite violent oppression of Palestinians for decades-and which is contradictory to all Democratic values. We can get more bang for our buck for supporting many other Democracies in the world than continue to support an apartheid regime.   

It only took 28 years. When Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber banged his gavel on the resolution text of COP28 in Dubai on Wednesday, it marked what has been widely called a historic achievement: the first time nearly every country on Earth agreed that oil and gas play a role in driving global warming, and the first time they nodded toward the need for a fossil fuel drawdown.

For a historic text, the language was quite mealy-mouthed, since the resolution only “calls on” nations to “contribute” to “transitioning away” from fossil fuels — and only in the energy sector. Harder-line climate advocates had been pushing for a language of “phase out,” which might have helped tug the world a little bit more quickly to a postcarbon future. Instead, what they got was much more like an endorsement of the status quo, reflecting the ongoing state of play rather than accelerating it, because such a transition is already well underway.

Global sales of internal-combustion engine vehicles peaked in 2017. Investment in renewable energy has exceeded investment in fossil fuel infrastructure for several years running now. In 2022, 83 percent of new global energy capacity was green. The question isn’t about whether there will be a transition, but how fast, global and thorough it will be.

The answer is: not fast or global or thorough enough yet, at least on the current trajectories, which COP28 effectively affirmed. To limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius now requires entirely eliminating emissions not long after 2040, according to the Global Carbon Project, whose “carbon budget” for 1.5 degrees Celsius will be exhausted in about five years of current levels of emissions. For 1.7 degrees Celsius, it’s just after 2050, and for 2 degrees Celsius, 2080. And despite Al Jaber’s claim that COP28 has kept the 1.5 degree goal alive, hardly anyone believes it’s still plausible.

Instead, most analysts predict a global peak in fossil fuel emissions at some point over the next decade, followed not by a decline but a long plateau — meaning that, every year for the foreseeable future, we would be doing roughly as much damage to the future of the planet’s climate as was done in recent years. The expected result: end-of-century warming between 2 and 3 degrees Celsius.

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posted by f.sheikh

Excerpts;

“ The past two months have brought a high-profile series of misjudgments that are blotting out positive memories of Biden’s foreign policies — perhaps permanently. First of all, the United States is making clear that it won’t stand up for international rules and norms if one of its closest allies is violating them. U.S. officials forcefully condemned Russia for bombing schools and residential buildings in Ukraine but aren’t nearly as critical of Israel for doing the same in Gaza. Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, Human Rights Watch and numerous other organizations each day release reports and statements detailing how Israel’s military actions are violating international law and leading to the killing of children, mass hunger, the destruction of major institutions of Palestinian culture and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people.”

“Third, Biden is damaging his personal reputation for compassion and straightforwardness. The president wrongly stated that Israeli children had been beheaded during the Oct. 7 attacks. He questioned estimates of Palestinian casualties, wrongly hinting that they were overstated. Asked whether Israel was violating the laws of war, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, one of Biden’s closest advisers, callously said he would not be a “judge or jury” on that question, essentially admitting that the United States was indifferent to whether an ally was inhumane.”

“Agnes Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that the United States is showing “a complete lack of global leadership.” Just days before he was killed by an Israeli airstrike, Palestinian poet and academic Refaat Alareer wrote on X, “The Democratic Party and Biden are responsible for the Gaza genocide perpetrated by Israel.”

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Posted by F. Sheikh