Playing the Game, Asking the Questions–On Israel, Hamas, & Syria
I can read the room. I understand that my questions today will be balked at by some because of the topic. I mean no disrespect or “hate” and I absolutely believe these questions can be asked alongside other things that have been written by colleagues.
We’re all learning together.
Today’s work is just one viewpoint from an American Christian with an increasing number of questions concerning US foreign policy in relation to my faith. There are other views, perhaps more substantive ones, online. I’ll even link some possibilities here and here. Some of them contradict what I’m asking today; some of them don’t.
That said, it is universally known that politics is a game of strategy, but some strategies don’t just backfire—they explode.
And when it is finally becoming mainstream understanding that Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were controlled by Israel’s Mossad—its version of the CIA—the next natural question must be this: What else are Israel and the US conspiring on behind the American people’s back?
RELATED: SCOTT MCKAY
In response to this article on Ukraine, one “GhostofBasedPatrickHenry wrote the following:
As the late investigative author Gordon Thomas explains in his book, Robert Maxwell: Israel’s Super Spy, when the demise of the Soviet Union became undeniable in the 1980’s, the crime boss of the Ukrainian Mafia (Semion Mogilevich) briefly moved to Israel, along with his operation. As longtime business partners with Maxwell, Mogilevich learned how to launder money from the man who had pioneered the craft in the modern monetary system– and Israel offered the most favorable and low-risk opportunity, given the nature of its banking system.
Mogilevich was finally placed on the FBI Wanted List in 2009, though he was removed in 2016 due to the suspicion that “he is believed to be living in a country where the United States doesn’t have an extradition treaty.”
Regardless of whether Mogilevich is in any way connected to this Ukrainian organ smuggling ring, Gordon Thomas explained in his book that not only did the Ukrainian and Russian Mafias launder billions of dollars through Israel, but that it was Ghislaine Maxwell’s father that taught them all how to do it.
If we care about the Epstein disclosure then by extension we care about the uncomfortable parts about our greatest ally. Doing so, of course, may spotlight you as a dreaded “antisemite.”
We need to treat this as we treated the “racist” thing, which it seems is slowly but finally on its way out. It holds no weight anymore.
It’s all a trick.
I keep saying it and have said it for years now: this is so much more complicated than Team A vs Team B. And the only way this binary paradigm is true is when it comes to God and not-God.
And involuntarily, reflexively assuming we are putting ourselves on his side just because we root for one particular political entity is the most eternally dangerous thing we could do.
Because the Great Deceiver from the Garden knows this about us. He knows we are tribal beings. He knows we like to keep to our lines of scrimmage (h/t Andy Hogue).
Roll Tide.
War Eagle.
Geaux Tigers.
Today’s Story
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has always positioned himself as the ultimate defender of Israel. The strongman. The chess master. The one who outmaneuvers his enemies before they even know they’re playing.
He received a record number of applauses from our own Legislature for it last year.
But emerging information (that in truth has been available to the public all along) suggests a leader who needed Hamas alive. Not to destroy them, but to manage them. To use them.
This isn’t speculation. Netanyahu has said it himself. He once told his Likud party that keeping Hamas in power was strategic—a way to keep Gaza and the Palestinian Authority divided. A fractured enemy is easier to control, right?
Except, of course, that strategy blew up in Israel’s face. Quite literally.
In 2018, Netanyahu made a move that, in hindsight, is as baffling as it is damning. A developing story reveals that he personally requested Qatar to send tens of millions of dollars to Hamas. Let’s be clear: Not some vague humanitarian fund. Not a quiet, indirect deal through diplomatic back channels. This was a direct request for cold, hard cash to be sent to a terror group involved in the October 7th attack just five years later:
In a wide-ranging interview with Channel 12, [former Shin Bet chief Nadav] Argaman detailed some of the disagreements he had with Netanyahu during his tenure as Shin Bet chief from 2016 to 2021, particularly surrounding the matter of Qatari aid being allowed into the Gaza Strip….
During the Channel 12 interview, Argaman said Netanyahu tried to “buy peace [in Gaza] with Qatari money,” even though it was clear that the strategy would eventually backfire.
Netanyahu decided in 2018 to allow Qatari money into the Gaza Strip after the Palestinian Authority cut off funding to Hamas, leaving Israel fearful of unrest in the coastal enclave, Argaman recalled.
“The State of Israel wanted peace in the Gaza Strip and was looking for ways to bring in the money. They chose Qatar because Qatar agreed to do it,” Argaman said, adding that he believed the idea to be a “very serious mistake” from the get-go.
He said that Netanyahu nevertheless went ahead with the plan, despite the security service’s warning, as “the strategy of his government was to have quiet in the Gaza Strip.”
Netanyahu’s critics have long accused him of trying to bolster Hamas at the PA’s expense, keeping Palestinian factions divided to further undermine efforts to advance a two-state solution. The premier has argued that the Qatari money was necessary to prevent a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
“We bought peace with Qatari money — it was clear to everyone that this would backfire on us one day,” Argaman said. “The prime minister knew, the cabinet knew. The issues were presented more than once or twice.”
He acknowledged, however, that the Shin Bet, as well as the IDF, “should have done everything in their power to stop the Qatari funds” from flowing into Gaza….
Argaman didn’t hide his distaste for the Qatari government during the interview, telling Channel 12 that he believes forging ties with Doha is akin to “dancing with the devil.”
“Qatar is part of the Shiite axis,” he said of the majority Sunni nation. “They’re the ones who allowed Hamas to build its terrorist army in the Gaza Strip. If, god forbid, it managed to gain control of the Prime Minister’s Office, it would mean that it influences the prime minister, the Prime Minister’s Office, the State of Israel’s policy toward Hamas in general and the hostage deal in particular.”
For clarity’s sake, the Shin Bet is Israel’s FBI and of course related to Mossad.
And for the record, the current Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar feels the same way:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar of “blackmail” on Thursday, as the feud between the pair reached an unprecedented level.
The allegation was part of a statement issued by Netanyahu in response to an interview given by Bar’s predecessor Nadav Argaman, who claimed to be sitting on a trove of information that would compromise the prime minister and threatened to make it public if Netanyahu breaks the law.
And how does this impact us here in America?
Because this isn’t a part of the story we’re told by the establishment government or its legacy media propaganda arm. We’re told only parts of the story that will keep us in bed—even at the expense of our own Christian values—with the State of Israel.
Notice I said “State of Israel.” I am not attacking the Israeli people who know nothing of potential corruption inside their own government, just as there are Americans who live blissfully unaware of the infiltrators in our own.
Until 2018, Qatari funds were not given to Gaza on a regular basis and delivered only occasionally with approval from Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Dr. Udi Levi, who was the Mossad official charged with fighting the funding of terror until 2016, said this:
“The [Palestinian Authority] said it would no longer agree to fund Hamas and rather than let the terror group collapse, Israel decided on an alternative route for its funding. That was part of Israel’s policy to buy quiet. Hamas demanded that the $30 million per month would be delivered directly to the ruling faction. It was naïve to believe Hamas would provide the money to the population in Gaza.”
And now, both the former and current heads of the Shin Bet are saying that had Netanyahu not stepped in, Hamas would have collapsed financially in 2018.
Think about that for a second. Hamas was likely on the brink. The terror organization that controls Gaza, that launches rockets into Israeli cities, that apparently orchestrated the October 7th attacks, was apparently financially dead in the water.
Until Netanyahu helped keep them afloat.
“It’s quite clear that I have a great deal of knowledge, which I can put to use… but I’m currently keeping everything that happened between myself and the prime minister” out of the public sphere, Argaman said.
However, “If the State of Israel or if I conclude that the prime minister has decided that he is going to act in contradiction to the law, then I will not have a choice and I will say everything I know and have refrained from saying until today,” he warned.
Hamas didn’t just use that Qatari cash to stay afloat. They used it to strengthen their hold on Gaza, to build their military infrastructure, to prepare for October 7th. Netanyahu’s short-term political calculus—keeping Hamas as a foil—may have directly enabled it.
Does all of this not at least prompt a question American Christians should be asking? I’m sure there’s a good answer for it since the State of Israel is our greatest ally, but are we getting it? Or are we just being told to shut up and dribble?
The Syria Connection
If that’s not bad enough, let’s talk about Syria, as I delved in to back in December and as I did in an extensive piece earlier this week:
You’d think, if Israel were concerned about protecting Christians in the region, they’d avoid policies that actively destroy Christian communities. But instead, Israel has played a key role in Syria’s civil war—specifically by backing radical factions against Assad’s government.
That matters because, under Assad, Christians weren’t being wiped out. He’s no saint, but Syrian Christians had legal protections. Now? Thanks to the power vacuum caused by Western-backed and Israeli-supported rebels, jihadist militias have had a field day slaughtering and exiling Christian populations.
So let’s calculate:
- Israel funds Hamas.
- Israel backs jihadist factions in Syria.
- Israel takes billions from the US in military aid while doing both.
And somehow, Americans—especially American Christians—are supposed to see this as normal?
Trump and Bibi: A Chilly Relationship
Here’s another interesting angle: Netanyahu has always played up his close ties with the US, but his relationship with Donald Trump is complicated, if not outright sour hiding behind the mask of political niceties.
At some points, Trump seems like the greatest ally of all things Israel; at others he seems more nuanced, not exactly remaining subtle. On the one hand, he feeds the binary trap beast; on the other, he is inviting the American people to think, to let go of their unquestioned tribal loyalties. This clash of approaches is one reason why it is hard to get a handle sometimes on where Trump’s wargame tactics fall regarding the State of Israel. It is something I am constantly monitoring, studying.
Specifically to Netanyahu, he felt betrayed after the 2020 “election”. In an interview, Trump said, “F** him.” Yes, that’s a direct quote.
Why the anger? Mostly because Netanyahu was quick to congratulate Joe Biden on his win, which I and so many others have frequently asserted, simply was not a win. It is a good guess that all elections are rigged, which brings up the totally too far afield question of whether anything or anyone is actually legitimate in our government, but for now it is good to simply be reminded of the following about a man who supposedly garnered a record 81 million votes (by a lot, despite winning a very small number of counties, outpacing even the great Obama!):
But it wasn’t just the post-election snub. Trump had always been more skeptical of Netanyahu than people realized. He saw him as transactional, someone who used American support while doing whatever served his personal political interests. All of my links have a purpose, but perhaps this one is most important for contextualizing the Trump/Netanyahu relationship:
The obvious question is this: Did Trump—the man who appears to know everything weeks and months and years before they happen–know Netanyahu was propping up Hamas in 2018? Did that factor into his growing mistrust?
How has it affected Trump’s foreign policy? How did it affect the 2020 election, and all elections for that matter?
And remember that February story about removing the Palestinians? Here’s the latest:
The October 7th Intelligence Failure, or Something Else?
The questions don’t stop there. They don’t stop because we’ve had evidence, basically since the event took place, that on October 7th—the day Hamas launched its brutal attack—the Israel Defense Forces stood down for hours.
We’re talking about one of the most sophisticated militaries in the world. A nation that has surveillance, intelligence, and counterterrorism capabilities second to none–and funded by us. And yet, Hamas fighters simply paraglided through the border, executed civilians, and took hostages without immediate resistance?
Said Vivek Ramaswamy after the attack:
“There’s one element of this that no one is talking about. What the hell went wrong with U.S. and Israeli intelligence and Israeli defense that allowed this to happen? Everybody seems to be punting that as a question for later. I think it’s a question for now. Get to the bottom of what allowed this gaping hole in intelligence and defense that even allowed this to happen before feeding that beast. If a doctor told you his job was to keep you from getting cancer and you got cancer, don’t trust that same doctor to remove your tumor. Those answers have to come now. That’s not a question for later.”
He must not read RVIVR, because I was raising that question immediately.
More than circumstantial evidence suggests that 10-7 wasn’t just an intelligence failure—it was an operational decision:
Reportedly, Netanyahu’s government had been warned that Hamas was planning something big. Egyptian intelligence reportedly told them weeks before. Israeli sources say their own security forces flagged unusual activity. And yet, when the attack came, the IDF was astonishingly slow to respond.
Could it be that Netanyahu—so convinced that Hamas needed to exist as a counterweight—let his guard down? Or worse, chose to ignore the warning signs?
And if so, what would that tell us about the subsequent war on Palestine, or the latest chapter of it?
Shouldn’t these questions at least be asked by the American Christian seeking the truth, who lives by the mantle of man who once said he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life? (Jn 14:6)
Can we do that without others thinking we are jihadist terrorist sympathizers?!
Final Word
For decades, American Christians have been told they have a moral obligation to support Israel, assuming it is the same Israel central to the Old Testament, no questions asked. That lesson must be for another day, but the blind obedience to such a creed while the exact opposite of Christ’s truth continues on the geopolitical stage must make all of us question it. The cognitive dissonance will be great, yes, but difficult truths after a lifetime of learning something else entirely have such an effect. The alternative is to potentially continue living in a lie, and more dangerously, lead ourselves down a path that can only lead to perdition on Earth.
In short, when the leader of that State is funneling money to terrorists and destabilizing Christian communities, as they are in Syria, as they have been in Palestine, all things not talked about much even in conservative circles, when we claim to be Christians ourselves, maybe it’s time to start asking the questions.
Maybe it’s time to ask why billions of our own tax dollars are funding a government that seems to play both sides.
Maybe it’s time to ask what, exactly, American Christians are getting out of this arrangement.
Because it sure looks like we’re getting played.
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May everyone named directly or referenced indirectly ask forgiveness and do penance for their sins against America and God. I fight this information war in the spirit of justice and love for the innocent, but I have been reminded of the need for mercy and prayers for our enemies. I am a sinner in need of redemption as well after all, for my sins are many. In the words of Jesus Christ himself, Lord forgive us all, for we know not what we do.
