Matthew Levitt
The War Hamas Always Wanted
Dr. Matthew Levitt - The War Hamas Always Wanted
- Good evening everyone and welcome back. I’m sorry about earlier this evening. The internet went down, and we will reschedule the earlier session. So tonight, we are very privileged and honoured to have Dr. Matthew Levitt with us, who will be discussing about “The War that Hamas Always Wanted.” We are very, very grateful to you. Thank you, Matt, for joining us. I know and I can only imagine how busy you are, and we so appreciate you taking time out of, I know is an extremely busy, busy schedule. I’m just going to give you a small introduction and then I’m going to hand over to you. Dr. Matthew Levitt is the Fromer-Wexler Fellow and director of the Eli and Jeanette Reinhard Programme on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Levitt teaches at Georgetown University and literally wrote the books on “Hamas” and “Hezbollah.” He started his career in counterterrorism at the FBI, where he led the analytical team for Flight UA 175, the second flight to strike the Twin Towers on 9/11. He later served as a counterterrorism advisor at the Department of State and as a deputy assistant secretary for intelligence and analysis at the Treasury Department. You can read his bio and see all his articles below. He recently testified about Hamas financing and what to do about it before both the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee on back to back days. So I’m going to hand over to you, Matt, and then to Carly, who will be moderating the session. Once again, million thanks, and we’re looking forward to hearing from you.
- Wendy, thank you so much for the kind introduction. Carly, also, thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to be here and an honour to be here. I wish it was under different circumstances. I was just telling a couple of you before we opened the Zoom up to everybody that the last time, the last time I felt that I needed to be as involved and possible and push myself to my kind of physical and mental health limits in that regard was 9/11. I remember people saying to me, you know, we were working six days a week only ‘cause we were forced to take off one day a week and we were working 15, 18 hour a days. And I remember a friend, a neighbour saying to me, “It must be so hard. I’m so sorry, and thank you and all.” And I remember saying, “You know, I’m grateful. I wish I didn’t have to be doing this, but I’m grateful to be able to do it, because I’m able to do something. I’m not left just watching those planes crash into the towers over and over again.” And I kind of feel that way again. And so I’ve been carving out time to do webinars like this for different parts of the Jewish community and beyond. Sometimes like today, I’m doing two of them a day. It’s hopefully helpful for all of us participating to be able to process this trauma, and I’ll admit that it’s healthy for me too. So thank you for the opportunity. I wrote this piece in Foreign Affairs right after the October 7th Hamas massacre and the title was “The War Hamas Always Wanted,” and I’m not trying to be pithy, but I think fundamentally so many people misunderstand Hamas. One of the reasons is because, we in the west, see time in one way and we’re used to instant gratification, and we lose the thread on the fact that in other cultures people see time differently.
So if Hamas says it wants to destroy Israel but doesn’t do anything that really gets it anywhere near that level of achievement, you know, the worst it could do, which was pretty bad, but the worst it could do was, you know, rocket wars with Israel every 18, 24, 36 months, you know, that was not going to achieve its goals. Then most people in the West just said, “You know, okay, you know, it’s tough talk.” Without recognising that this is fundamentally what Hamas is about. That Hamas isn’t fighting because of occupation, Hamas is not fighting because of a lack of a two-state solution, Hamas is raison d'être. Its purpose for being, its fundamental purpose in life is to undermine any chance of peace. Any chance of a two-state solution or any other type of peace or calm that doesn’t involve the destruction of the state of Israel and creation in its place of an Islamist state, not a secular state, which is why they are very much against the Palestinian authority in its place. And it’s why I think so many people today are shocked to see Razi Hamad, a Hamas official who’s widely seen as like the moderate mouthpiece. If a European government wanted to talk to Hamas, they’d reach out to Razi Hamad. When a newspaper wanted a quote that wasn’t fire and brimstone, they’d go to Razi Hamad. When Gershon Baskin, an Israeli academic who’s on the left, but is a fabulous human being, would look for someone to negotiate with, in particular, to achieve the release of Israeli captives. I’m talking pre-October seventh, right? Hamas has been holding several bodies and several other captives, including one Israeli with mental disabilities for quite some time.
The person Gershon Baskin would talk to was Razi Hamad. Razi Hamad, you might’ve seen the memory creep all over the internet today, saying, “We make no excuses, we apologise for nothing. We’ll do a thousand more October 7ths. We did nothing wrong. We’ll continue to do it. Everything we do is legitimate, so long as it’s trying to achieve our goal of destroying Israel and achieving a Palestinian state in its place.” I think the turning point when people started to really lose the thread was 2007. Now remember that in 2006 there was an election, it was a problematic election from the beginning within the Palestinian political system because elections don’t make democracy. Elections that take place on the foundation of civil society can be the making of democracy, but otherwise, it’s going to be, you know, even if it really is “one man, one vote” and it’s not stuffed ballots, it’s going to be one vote one time, as we saw. And Hamas did better than anybody else in that election by virtue of typically running one candidate and Fatah who run six or seven running against each other and Hamas won. It led to a short-lived national unity government between Fatah and Hamas, which was short-lived, because Hamas was trying to change everything from within and move all government bureaucracy towards its goal of destroying Israel. Ultimately, Hamas takes over the Gaza Strip in 2007 by force of arms. Force of arms targeting fellow Palestinians, not Israelis. The Israelis had withdrawn from Gaza, no Israelis in Gaza since 2005, throwing fellow Palestinians off of buildings, et cetera.
And then in 2007, they’re controlling territory. And then the west has this really difficult, I’m wrapping its head around the fact. A, that as of 2006, you could possibly conceive of a group that won an election as terrorists as if these are somehow mutually exclusive. It is possible to elect really bad guys into power. And then again in 2007 when they controlled territory, many, many people, not me, but a lot of other people mistakenly thought that one of two things would happen. Either Hamas would moderate ideologically, or it would at least be co-opted by the responsibilities and the day-to-day of governance, you know, garbage collection, paying teacher’s salaries, all that type of stuff. Without appreciating the fact that what the Gaza Project was always going to be was some type of a springboard. Hamas was never going to be satisfied with the governing part of what it considers historic Palestine. Gaza was always going to be a springboard for how they could do more. So first, they were shipping in Iranian rockets into Gaza via tunnels from Sinai, tunnels that we were all told, by the way. Israelis, Egyptians all told us that those were completely sealed and clearly they weren’t. In the Israeli press, it’s come out. Senior officials saying, “Yeah, it turns out there were some tunnels still from Gaza that’s all those weapons from October 7th cut in.”
Later, the Iranians gave them the know-how to be able to have domestic rocket production capability and they could build their own rockets. And they dug tunnels, not west into Egypt for smuggling, but east and to Israel to carry out attacks. I’ve been inside five or six of those tunnels and if you want in the Q and A, I can tell you all about them. Each of these costs two to $3 million to build, money that was supposed to be going to the needs of Palestinians and instead was going to something else. And the tunnels now domestically within Gaza that the Israeli forces are dealing with now. The spider web of tunnels are much more sophisticated and cost much, much, much more money. Eventually, the Israelis built a fence below ground to stop the tunnels. Hamas started firing rockets, and eventually, about two years ago, 2021, there was a rocket war with Israel, the last one that Hamas led. And I think we’ll find out when the dust settles and we all look back, that it was then that Hamas said, “This is not working for us.” The governance project is not the end, it’s a means. And if governing means we’re not going to be able to quote, unquote, “resist Israel.” What they call resistance, I would call terrorism, then we have to break out of this box. And so that’s when this plot came together. Now you can go online and you can just Google the term, it’s not my term, “It’s the Hamas, Hezbollah Iran term,” they’ve all used it. They have been running what they call a joint operations centre in Beirut, since about right after that 2021 war. And ultimately, Iran bears tremendous responsibility for all this, because they’ve funded and armed and trained and provide intelligence for Hamas since the group was created in 1987.
The debate, “Did the Iranians actually help them formulate this plan or not,” misses the point. But there’s no question, no question that Hezbollah did help them plan this. I’ve been going to the northern border on the Israeli side of the border, I don’t know, 12, 15 years straight now. I was supposed to be there just days after the October 7th attack. And I have met with Israeli Defence Forces in Northern Command. The number one plot, they have been training and training and training to defend against in the north is exactly the plot Hamas carried out in the south. Rockets flying over the border, operatives from Hezbollah, in this case, storming the border underground, above ground, killing as many people as possible, taking as many people as possible hostage, hold territory for as long as you can, take some propaganda videos, run back to Lebanon, dare the Israelis to come into a ground warp on your territory. So there’s no question that Hamas got significant, at least strategic support from Hezbollah for this plot. I think a lot of people, and I’ll start with myself. I’ve been working on Hamas in and out of government and Hezbollah in and out of government since the 1990s.
Many, many people including myself, saw that in August, just months ago, Saleh al-Arouri, the Deputy Secretary General of Hamas, who once was in the West Bank, then he was in Jordan, then in Qatar, then in Turkey, now believed to be mostly in Lebanon but travelling a lot to Iran. He gave an interview to a Hezbollah affiliated television station in Lebanon. This is in August. At the time, tensions in the West Bank were really getting hot and the Israelis intimated in a pretty blunt kind of way that they were thinking about resuming targeted killings of Hamas leaders and that he would be at the top of the list. So he gets on TV and he says, “I’m not scared of anything, and the Israelis should know, for some time now, we have been planning for a regional war.” I heard it, plenty of other people heard it. It’s not that I was one of those people who felt that Hamas had moderated or was co-opted, but I did feel that they were deterred in the moment and that when you don’t have a big kind of ops game, you don’t have a big operational capability, you talk trash. You can’t tell, 'cause I’m on Zoom, but I’m five foot six, I’m an intellectual giant, but I’m five foot six. When I played basketball in high school, big part of my game was trash talk, 'cause it’s what I had. That’s how most of us saw Hamas, the Israeli government. The U.S. government saw Hamas as largely deterred and so long as there was sufficient economic activity in Gaza, things would remain as they were.
The week before the October 7th attack, the Netanyahu government, this is not a centrist or left-wing government, approved an additional number of Gazans to be allowed to come into Israel to work. We now know that over the past several years, some of those people who were working in these Gazan communities, these kibbutzim and others within the Gaza envelope were providing intelligence to Hamas, which is why they knew so closely where to go and what to do. So it’s clear now, that this is the war Hamas always wanted. I’m not a big fan of the Hamas’ ISIS campaign ‘cause there’s actually big differences between Hamas and ISIS, and they hate each other. But of course, what is spot on is that the October 7th massacre, the pogrom, the slaughter was absolutely ISIS style barbarism. And it puts Hamas beyond the pale. This is a group that needs to be seen worldwide, not as freedom fighters, but as baby killers. Some of the Hamas documents found on Hamas fighters, the dead ones and the captured ones, specify specifically, I have seen them and I have written about it already, specifically say, “Look for the schools, look for the youth groups, kill as many people as possible.” It is beyond imagination. And I think the world is going to be a different place. I think one of the things that’s happening is that the West is realising, “Wait a minute, we did drop the ball on Iran in its proxies.” I want to end on a, not a high note, but a silver lining if I may, and then leave as much time as possible for Q and A. And the silver lining is this, this is not going to be a six-day war, it’s a six-month campaign. But eventually the dust will settle and it may get worse before it gets better. Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah is giving a talk on Friday, and, well, we can talk about that in the Q and A if you want. It’s a whole another issue.
But I really do believe that at the end of the day when the dust settles, if you are sitting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where I am going next week, if you are sitting in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, or if you’re sitting in Jerusalem, Israel, at the end of all of this, you sit back and you realise the runt of the Iran threat network. The least capable of Iran’s proxies. Little Hamas stuck in the corner of Gaza, not only carried out the spectacular terrorist attack, one of the worst acts of international terrorism in history, about the same number of people killed, leave aside those wounded and kidnapped, about the same number of people killed in this attack as the number of people died in the 9/11 flight that I covered, UA 175. That if they can do this, imagine what Lebanese Hezbollah or the Iraqi Shia militia’s the Hashd al-Sha'bi or the Houthis could do. Imagine what Iran and the rest of its much more capable network could do. At the end of the day, in other words, the desire to get together and have some type of shared defence is going to be very strong. I have no doubt that while this was planned for at least the past two years, the precipitant event for why right now was fears over Israeli Saudi normalisation. And the potential cascade effect of additional Arab states and Muslim states, saying, “You know what, maybe the Palestinians shouldn’t have a veto over everything we do and it’s in our interest to get together and share defence against Iran.
Not to fight Iran offensively, but to defend ourselves.” I think the Iranians were shocked that the Abraham Accords went as fast as they did and that the Israelis provided to the Emiratis not only cyber capabilities and cooperation, but, you know, not all four of the Israeli anti-missile levels, but let’s say two and a half. The Emiratis today are much better prepared to shoot down drones and rockets than they were before the Abraham Accords. Iran and its proxy saw this, and saw an opportunity where their adversaries were not going to be, would be not as affected by Iran’s drones and rockets. And they couldn’t have that. Hamas saw a situation where the Saudis were going to demand things of Israel. Those were the types of things that would potentially lead towards a better situation for Palestinians. Hamas doesn’t want that. Hamas leaders have come out and said in the past few days, “We need the blood of Gazans to get people’s public opinion.” That’s what we’re dealing with. So I’m glad we have this opportunity to talk. There’s a lot that needs to be processed for Jews anywhere. It’s a very, very uncomfortable time. I’m grateful to all of you and to Lockdown University to have the opportunity to have this conversation with you. And I’ll stop here, and let Carly grill me as best she can.
Thank you, Matt. So there’s an awful lot we could cover, but I actually want to take from where you just left off. And when you named countries and parts of the world that are concerned, and that could be part of, you know, an alliance you obviously didn’t name Qatar. And, you know, the last few weeks, Qatar has done a positioning of, you know, being the ones to broker with Hamas, you know, whilst also liaising with the West. Over the last 15 years, Hamas is positioning, Qatar has grown. You know, there’s always the joke about how many are living in the four seasons. The four seasons is quick to point out on Twitter two weeks ago that none of them were, but . Where do you see Qatar’s role in this and what I want to follow-up with is particularly around the finances of Hamas?
Okay. So look, I’m one of those strange kind of very modern, modern Orthodox Jews that kind of… I haven’t gone to Gaza in a long time, but I’ve been to Gaza. I spend time in the West Bank and I go to places like MOI Qatar. And I can tell you, it’s uncomfortable taking the elevator down. 'Cause it used to be that they were in the Ritz, the Hamas leaders. It’s uncomfortable taking the elevator down to breakfast in the morning and thinking, “Am I going to be in the elevator with Khaled Mashal today?” I haven’t been, but you’re worried.
I’ve stayed in the W there. I haven’t found him in the elevator there either, but one of those things.
No, I’m not looking for him, I’m looking to avoid 'em. But, look, Qatar has positioned itself as a country that wants to punch above its weight. And one of the ways it does that is by saying, “Look, Islamism isn’t bad, religion isn’t bad. There’s nothing wrong with people wanting to be strictly religious and being very, very close to all male elements the Muslim Brotherhood.” Hamas is the most militant, but of the Muslim Brotherhood branches, but it is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. And Qatar will say the reason they have Hamas there, the reason they’ve had the Taliban there is because, if you ask the Western countries privately, they kind of like having someplace where they can go and meet with these people. And frankly, it’s not entirely wrong. There are a couple of things that we need to break out here. I think that it’s a little bit facetious for the West to come and bash Qatar today for the fact that Qatar was providing millions of dollars to Hamas to cover salaries when, whether you like it or not, that was being done through and with the cooperation and acquiescence of the Israeli government, the American government, and EU governments, plus the UK, I should say now. That was everybody’s plan, like Qatar was stepping up and helping further what has now been proven to be completely failed. But was the idea at the time of buying this Calm. By the way, it’s not that people were stupid or naive, but the alternative to buying the Calm was to do what the Israelis are doing now, having to go in on the ground. And everybody understood exactly how costly that would be. And so short of that, this was the plan.
However, there are other things. The fact that Hamas leaders have been able to live in literally the lap of luxury, safe haven par excellence in Doha, in Qatar, even as they’ve carried out acts of terrorism, I’m talking long before October 7th. That’s problematic. The fact that on October 7th, Hamas leaders are in Qatar issuing bloodcurdling statements that end with, this ends only one of two ways, victory or martyrdom. And I wish them 50% of that. That they’re doing this in Doha and the Doha is okay with this. Khaled Mashal issues a statement from Doha that effectively ends up shutting down Jewish schools around the world a couple of Fridays ago. This is unconscionable. This is a terrorist group that just carried out an act of terrorism where 40 something countries were victimised, right? Every one of those countries should be issuing indictments, not only for the operatives who ran across the border, but for their leaders who planned and approved this. Every one of them, in Qatar, in Turkey, in Lebanon and elsewhere. And that’s the issue. Now, you know, I also want to be, you know, let’s be realistic here, right? The fact is that Qatar is uniquely situated and that Qatar has been playing a mediator role in terms of the hostages. And that has to be priority in the moment. I am very, very, very worried about the hostages is, you know, there’s a war going on in Gaza right now. If you don’t think Hamas is keeping those hostages close to their people, the people that the Israelis want to eliminate, you’re not being realistic. I’m very, very worried.
So every hostage we can get out is dear, and if the countries are willing in the moment to play a role in that, fine. They’ve already come out and said, “Look, we recognise we’re going to have to reassess.” After all this Calm, fine. And then finally, the other piece of this is I think we all need to recognise the largest, most sophisticated U.S air base in the region is Al Udeid based in Qatar. The Qataris paid for it. It is a huge asset. It is not something you can pick up and just move someplace else that gives the Qatari some leverage. And we are absolutely going to have to rebalance that relationship. It should have happened a long time ago. But I think that what happened just now on October 7th is so monumental, and the war that Hamas started that is falling out from it. And the extremely aggressive attempted horizontal escalation, meaning not only targeting Israel more, which would be vertical, but targeting Israel’s allies, the United States in particular, our assets in Saudi, in Syria, excuse me, and Iraq. The bringing the region to the brink and hopefully, will only be to the brink of regional war. I think this is going to be the opportunity to reassess a whole lot of things. As for the money, Hamas money, I can talk about this all day long, but basically it comes down to four buckets, and I’ll do this briefly. Certain things have been constants like money from Iran. Iran is funded Hamas since it was founded in 1987 and escalated over time. There was a period right after Hamas refused to support the Assad regime and Iran got very angry.
They cut back the funding for the political activity, but they didn’t cut back the funding for the militant activity, which probably also shifted the balance of power within Hamas. I’m not saying that there are like good guys in Hamas, but there are people who are more militant and there are people who are less militant. But it continued as a constant. The change was 2007, as we saw with the Islamic state. And when a militant group controls territory, it’s able to make a tremendous amount of money by virtue of taxing and extorting and racketeering, and the customs at borders and customs at tunnels, and taxing funds that come in from the UN and funds that come in from Qatar. We believe that Iran has been providing Hezbollah recently, fluctuating somewhere between 70 and $120 million a year. And what Hamas has been making domestically in Gaza is probably three to four or more times that. Now with what’s happening on the ground in Gaza, Hamas is almost certainly going to lose that income, but they’re also going to lose their largest expenses. And it’s doesn’t cost as much money if you’re not running territory to just continue operations. Governance, Iran and the two other baskets are abusive charity, which used to be huge and then wasn’t for a while. And that was a very big issue. Again, senior treasury officials have been talking about this in their recent trips to the Gulf and to Europe. And finally, treasury department, my former office, has been designating Hamas finance committee members and Hamas investment committee members who are located in countries across the Middle East and North Africa, sitting on Hamas investment portfolios, including companies they own, valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. This is not liquid cash, but it’s big investments. And so you should watch for a concerted U.S. led probably, but a concerted effort by more than just the U.S to tackle these various streams of Hamas financing.
Does drug smuggling or crypto play a role in Hamas’ financing in the way you’ve talked about with Hezbollah?
Not drugs. And Hezbollah is not really in production except in the Beqaa Valley, but they make a tremendous amount of money providing protection, and especially laundering the proceeds of drugs on behalf of cartels that brings in millions for Hezbollah. That is not the case with Hamas. Both Hezbollah and Hamas dipped their toes in crypto. There was a Wall Street Journal article that said Hamas was making 130 something million from crypto, not true. Poor reporting, and even the crypto blockchain company that the Journal had relied upon came out and said, “No, the Journal misunderstood. It’s nowhere near that.” U.S. Department of Justice has literally seized wallets done on, you know, have taken judicial action. Treasury has taken designation action. Last week’s designation of finance committee folks also included a crypto company in Gaza, through which people could cash out their crypto. But it is small change. I expect that we will see an uptick as we typically do after Hamas crises, which in the past have been rocket wars, and in particular we’ll see it in crowdfunding. The Financial Action Task Force, which is kind of the multinational counter illicit finance watchdog, just released report. I have it on my desk on crowdfunding for terrorist financing. And one of the examples they give is Hamas. And we could see that as a means, not only of kind of raising funds, but even more so kind of making a pitch generally and this is how you transfer the funds. So it’s an issue, not a very big one yet.
So I’m not sure, I’m sure you did see the Russia Today tour through the tunnels in the last 48 hours that came out. We’ve known for the last several years how robust the tunnel infrastructure is. There is still something totally terrifying about seeing the tours of them. Obviously, that took significant funds, but it also took workforce, you know, the assurances we had from Egypt and elsewhere about the tunnels being closed, very clearly were not true. Can you talk a little bit more about the tunnel infrastructure, how long Hamas has been building that, and help our audience sort of break down some of the Russia Today coverage that they may have seen?
Okay. So first of all, what’s most interesting about the Russia Today coverage is that they were not with Hamas guys. They were with Palestinian Islamic Jihad. And those are different groups. Palestinian Islam Jihad is like the little brother, but they’re cooperating in this regard. Now, there are three sets of tunnels and we need to break them out. One set, the first original set smuggling tunnels on the west, from Sinai into Gaza. Those are the ones we were told were shut. They were flooded with sewage and other things, and it’s clear that not all of them were shut. I don’t think that’s because anybody was slacking off. The Egyptians have no lost love for Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood. Remember this government under CC overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood government there, and the Israelis obviously have an interest in knowing about this. Hamas carried out an intelligence success by virtue of being able to dig and run and maintain these tunnels without the Israelis or Egyptians knowing about them. The second set of tunnels is the attack tunnels dug on the other side of the Gaza Strip east into Israel under the border fence. This is before the Israelis built a below ground fence barrier with extremely sophisticated sensors to be able to sense when digging is happening before you bump into the fence. I’ve toured that very closely. It’s very impressive. And I’ve also been, as I said, in five or six of the tunnels that the Israelis did uncover from the Israeli side once they were shut. This for example, is how Hamas captured Gilad Shalit several years ago, the Israeli soldier.
And then finally, there’s what sometimes people refer to as the Gaza metro, which is this spider web of tunnels, crisscrossing Gaza, used by Hamas to be able to move personnel and weapons underground out of the prying eyes of ISR, Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance. They expanded these then for huge store rooms underground where they could build their rockets, store them near holes, which they could pop out of. You’ve probably seen some of these videos and pop out, shoot something, pop back in. They did this in highly urban residential areas. So the images you’ve seen from the other day of an entire neighbourhood basically collapsing in. This is what happens when you’re not sending in the, you know, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to determine if this is structurally stable. And you’re building huge tunnels and underground caverns under high-rise buildings. And then a targeted munition goes in to kill a senior Hamas official who helped oversee the October 7th attack and suddenly the whole neighbourhood falls in. From a combat perspective, you know, this is the biggest issue the Israelis are dealing with right now. ‘Cause the ability for Hamas to have spent years setting up ambushes, especially as you get into the cities, is pretty scary. You can expect explosive form projectiles of the type that tear through armour like we saw in a rock. You can expect IEDs, homemade bombs. You could expect people popping up out of a spider hole, shooting an anti-tank guided missile, and popping back down. You could anticipate Hamas trying to use these to grab soldiers, grab wounded soldiers or dead soldiers to have more persons or corpses to negotiate over. It’s difficult stuff, which is why you’re not seeing the Israelis just take their 400,000 reservists and just go in, because the casualties would be high.
They have been working on this for years and years and spending millions upon millions. And you now have Palestinians who are not Hamas, and Arabs elsewhere in the world, saying, “You couldn’t have spent a little bit of the money on some shelters?” But again, the Hamas statements that have come out since October 7th are clear, “We need the blood of Palestinians.” The whole strategy here was really simple. Kill as many Israeli civilians as possible in such a way that you will, by definition, engender or Israeli response that will kill as many Palestinians as possible. We will not protect them. One has Hezbollah official asked about this, said, “Our job was to protect our operatives. The UN should be protecting our people,” right? Their goal was to see as many Palestinians die. And so one of the senior advisors to Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the PA, with whom I have issues, and as corrupt and there are problems, but he stood up and said, I mean, I couldn’t have written it better myself. “What the hell is wrong with you, Hamas? You’re not fighting for the Palestinians, you’re not fighting for Palestinian state. You are just sacrificing Palestinian children.”
So over the last few years, the Israelis have talked about technological advantages they’ve made. Where do you see the Israeli response in engaging in these tunnels? The assumption, of course, is that’s where the hostages are. We also saw the real challenge in the last 24 hours in the quote, unquote, “refugee camp” in striking the tunnels and what the risks are to civilians. You know, I’m not asking you to be a military strategist, but in terms of the time you’ve spent engaging around the tunnels and with the Israelis, is there a way to engage in this?
So without meaning to be sound pithy. Yes, with difficulty. You know, the IDF is reported, it’s already engaged in tunnel warfare. They have units that are specialised in this. There are ways to try and flush people out. It’s difficult. And when you have tunnels that are this long, kilometres and kilometres long, some of the very few hostages who’ve been released talked about being put into the tunnel straight away, walking kilometres at a time. You can’t just like gas people out or flood them out. It’s like trying to pour gas or flood into, you know, a highway. This goes for so long and in so many ways it disperses. And so that’s why you’re seeing such a robust air campaign to try and destroy as much of the tunnel system as possible. And this is complicated, and it’s leading to a lot of destruction in Gaza.
I believe very strongly that even in our moment of trauma, let’s call it what it is, trauma and anger and grief. You know, in 1973 there weren’t the connections between Israel and the diaspora there are now. There’s instant communication. We’re seeing what’s happening not in our TVs, in our living rooms, but in the phones in our pockets. And we all have either relatives or close friends or college roommates or whatever. We all know people in Israel and we all know people who are affected. I feel lucky that I don’t personally know anybody who was killed or wounded or taken captive, but very one teeny, tiny step removed and I do know people, several who were killed, and several who’ve been taken hostage. And I’m sure I’m not the only one on this call. And that even in our moment of anger and fear and grief and trauma, I think we all need to allow ourselves to be human. And while I blame Hamas for what’s happening, you know, and Palestinian families are dying in Gaza, that’s got to hurt. I have to make sure that I, I’m talking just for me, that registers for me. Hamas is perfectly okay with that. More than that, that’s their goal. That’s the underlying problem with them. And you can see that in so many ways, not least of which is that they prioritised as they then have themselves have said, building tunnels to protect their fighters without one care in the world. For average Palestinians to the contrary, the goal is to get the Palestinians targeted, Palestinians civilians targeted by virtue of shooting from, having headquarters in, manufacturing plants in, all over residential communities.
So one of the ways we need to think to be human is through the aid agencies and the discussions around humanitarian pause the role of UNRA and the UN. You know, in the early days after October 7th, UNRRA notified through Twitter, but then quickly pulled down that their stores had been raided by Hamas and they no longer had some of the aid that they had brought in. The State department said yesterday, they feel confident, if one can say that, that the aid going in so far has not been diverted to Hamas. There is obviously headline after headline about the civilian need for fuel versus, you know, acknowledgement from the State Department about how much stockpile Hamas itself has. How possible is it for aid agencies to be engaging in Gaza with Hamas on the ground besides them?
So I think we should ask this question in general terms, pre and post-October 7th. Pre-October 7th, outside of an active war zone with Hamas able to walk up and down the streets and control everything, Hamas controlled everything, and they taxed everything. Now I believe that we can’t pretend that we’re operating in a world that actually is governed by zero sum games. I’ve been working in counter-terrorism financing for decades. And I’ll be the first to tell you, we can’t have rules that say, “We will not fund anything if even a penny will go to terrorism.” And we can’t also say to humanitarian, allow humanitarian organisations to say, “We have to pump money in no matter what, even if significant money goes to terrorism.” We have to find ways to balance that. The U.S. and Ireland, just a few months ago, pushed through a resolution that the UN, trying to dictate rules under which, how, and under what rules, can you allow humanitarian aid to go into places where it’s desperately needed when it’s run by militant groups, whether that’s, you know, Syria post an earthquake, whether that’s Somalia, whether it’s the Gaza Strip. Post-October 7th, Hamas is pretty busy right now. They’re not walking up and down the streets taxing everything. I actually think that in the moment it’s actually a lot easier for aid that’s going in to be able to run through aid agencies without Hamas being able to do a whole lot 'cause they’re distracted right now, trying to survive or fight and get it in.
And by the way, if some of it ends up going to Hamas in the moment, I don’t care. This is not going to make it or break it for Hamas. The world needs to see that when there is so much devastation going on in a place, we, the West or Europe, United States, Israel, are doing what can be done in the circumstance to try and get aid in. Hamas isn’t, that’s for damn sure, but we are. If Hamas is able to make some benefit from this, it’s going to be benefits at the margin and I’m willing to tolerate that if doing this is going to save lives, which it will. And then the real question is, when the dust settles, which will take some time, what does, a, the day after look like, who’s going to come in in whatever kind of transition there is to, you know, provide law enforcement and direct traffic and make sure that people aren’t stealing from stores and stealing from aid agencies. And then that transitions to what, right? There’s no great answers for that right now. I know lots of people thinking about it. I know lots of people in Israel are not yet thinking about it and that’s a very big problem. Not everybody in the Israeli government is working the military issue right now, and they should be planning for this better, if they did. And if they could articulate that better, I think they’d get a lot more support. But I think right now, to the extent that we can get decent amounts of actual aid, let there be inspectors on the Egyptian side of the border to make sure that no one is sneaking in stuff that shouldn’t get in. But if what we’re sending in is basic food stuffs and medical supplies, then, you know, if some of that gets pilfered by the bad guys at the margins, to me that’s the cost of saving civilian lives, ending humanitarian catastrophe.
The much spoken about sort of cause célèbre person of Mohammed Deif, you know, who is always talked about as the planner or part of the planner of each one of these operations, you know, operates in the shadows, supposedly injured by previous assassination attempts. What’s your theory on, you know, still alive, still planning and still leading from the shadows?
The media love a good Mohammed Deif, you know? An evil, you know, mastermind fit for a good James Bond villain. I don’t know if he’s still alive. He reportedly was alive at least as of October 7th. I’m sure he is, it was true that he was sitting atop the quote, unquote, “military wing.” I say quote, unquote, 'cause it’s not like there are distinct wings at all. I don’t think that he’s the actual day-to-day planner anymore. There are plenty of other people. I don’t think it’s necessarily. He’s just so well-hidden that the Israelis haven’t hit him yet. I think if you look at the list of senior Hamas operators that the Israelis have taken out, I think that’s 'cause there are people who are higher up on the list in the moment. Doesn’t mean that they outrank him, but in the moment you want to take out the people who are actually firing things at you and overseeing that, rather than the big name who’s probably pretty significantly injured from years ago. But we just don’t know. And honestly, at a certain level, I don’t care. There’s no single point of success or failure here. Israel is not at war with Mohammed Deif. They’re with war with Hamas. And if he dies, they’ll still be capable. And if he survives, they’re still going to face some significant, you know, pain from the Israeli response to the massacre October 7th. So I get the media’s interest in him. I’ve gotten so many phone calls about him and, you know, people can look back and pull each string and nugget of what we’ve heard about him. It makes for good TV and radio and print. He’s not the guy I’m paying attention to right now.
So zooming out on a global stage, you know, obviously, the Hamas massacre on October 7th was incredibly devastating to Israelis and diaspora as a whole. But, you know, in the U.S. the disruption on college campuses in the last few weeks in the UK, a hundred thousand marching through the streets, the playbook that you can basically download from SJP’S website or Hamas’ playbook is a reasonably well-organized and admirable piece of PR campaigning. How much stock are you putting in local organisations versus, you know, this being an Iranian funded effort? How do you see the kind of narrative wars playing out around the world?
So in the real world, it’s not either or, right? There’s lots of things that are happening. The UK government reports that they have information that Iran is trying to exacerbate violent protests there. If it’s happening there, it’s probably happening elsewhere too. There are lots of people who don’t think Hamas is so bad and will never be convinced. And when Hamas gets up there and says, boldface lying, “We never meant to target civilians. We didn’t target civilians.” Even if they then say, “We didn’t target civilians,” you know, people who want to believe will believe the clip that they want to believe. The biggest issue out there are the useful idiots. And I don’t mean this in an unkind way. I don’t take issue actually with someone. I’m happy to discuss and debate, but I don’t take issue with a person who says, “Palestinians should be protected and there needs to be, you know, Palestinian state.” I understand those positions. The people who protest in support of October 7th are supporting something else even if they don’t realise it. And there’s lots of people have gone out there and gone up to people and said, “Hey, river to the sea, what river is it? What sea is it?” If someone did this, that, and the other thing to your family, what would you do? Oh, you do the same thing the Israelis.
There’s lots of useful idiots out there, and that’s largely what’s happening on campus. People who have no idea that what Hamas wants actually is nothing about peace and nothing about a two-state solution. I do worry, I’ve written a lot about this and I’ve been briefing law enforcement about this. I do worry about Iran and its proxies trying to replicate the Sunni extremist playbook of Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, which had as one of its most capable strategies, not recruiting and training dispatching highly trained operatives, but putting up propaganda, riling people up, radicalising people, providing open source material on how to do and what to do. Remember the Al-Qaeda piece, “How to make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom?” And trying to get people to just go out and do things on their own inspired plots. I’ve written a lot about this. I see Iran and its proxies pushing this more with a colleague from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. I co-authored a piece awhile back asking, “Is Iran trying to inspire plots?” We tracked, just for example, two online networks here in the United States, one in the south in Georgia, and one in Michigan. One run by a woman. Each of these going straight up to the line of like, you know, fermenting violence, basically saying that, Qasem Soleimani’s death has to be avenged. Basically saying that when someone like Salman Rushdie speaks ill of the Prophet Muhammad, something has to be done about him.
Basically saying, “You should listen to Hassan Nasrallah where and after Qasem Soleimani was killed, he went and he did this on TV. You know, horizontal and vertical lines with his hands, saying, "You know, Westerners, you will come to the region this way,” meaning, standing up, “and you will leave this way,” meaning, in body bags. And all of those symbols are kind of being created and pushed out to these networks and they’re being encouraged to use them and disseminate them, which they are. And there’s reason for concern. We just had an arrest of someone of ethnic Palestinian here in the United States who was training with weapons and making threats to Jews. A lot of his activity predated October 7th, but he was arrested right after. And there are a lot of other concerns and when the things get as heated and violent and angry and out of control, in particular on college campuses, I worry. If you look what happened at Cornell University and this kid’s been arrested and he was not an Arab or a Palestinian or a Muslim, he was just an angry guy, for whatever reason, we’ll eventually find out. But the nature of those threats, just so beyond the pale. And that environment, obviously, people are riled up to the point of threatening and I fear ultimately maybe even acting upon violence.
And his father is a professor at Rochester, so. I’m sure there will be more news to come on that. I want to turn to the West Bank in the last few minutes that we have. Over the last three and a half weeks, we have also seen IDF and Israeli security activity in the West Bank, a significant number of arrests, but also raids, and in the last 24 hours, you know, more targeted incursions. What role or grip does Hamas have on the West Bank and how is the Palestinian authority navigating that? I saw an article in Israel Hayom on Tuesday which actually talked about the Palestinian authority putting Palestinian security forces to protect certain Jewish archaeological sites. So there’s been a lot of kind of mixed information out there.
Look, the reality is that just about every Arab and Muslim country and actor is going to feel very, very uncomfortable doing things publicly that are going to be seen as partnering with or defending Israel at a time when Israeli actions are leading to the deaths of so many Palestinians and Gaza. That’s just the reality. But lots of countries in the Arab and Muslim world, including Palestinian authority, understand that they don’t want to be next and that they need to do things that can be done without kind of creating a situation where there’s going to be bottom up angry protests at them. Hamas has been on the ropes in the West Bank for a long time because both Israel and the PA, yay ups and downs, but still within the realm of doing things has been cracking down on Hamas. That’s why you’ve seen other groups pop up, the Janine Battalions, lions den, other things. And Hamas’ strategy here has not been the trying to fully co-opt them, but anybody who wants to fight these Israelis, we’ll get you guns. So already pre-October 7th, West Bank was getting very, very hot, and there was a lot of smuggling of weapons and I did a huge study of smuggling across Israel’s borders, mostly drugs from Egypt and guns from Jordan. And post-October 7th, and Israelis went in and Palestinian authority did some things too.
Try and make sure that that wouldn’t be another front that would get out of control to arrest as many Hamas operatives as possible and other operatives who might want to carry out tax because you will have people who will see what’s happening in Gaza and feel they need to do something. There’s another piece to this and we need to put this out there. There’s been a spike in Jewish extremist activity in the West Bank too, and that has the potential to spark things in another way and could also backfire in a very, very big way. And so you won’t get as much attention, but you will see the Shin Bet and others trying to crack down on some of that activity. That’s politically uncomfortable, especially for this government, which includes members of the coalition who are let’s say, right of centre. And that’s too bad for them. This has to happen. I’m a counter-terrorism person. I don’t give a who, what your religion is, and what your cause is. Acts of violence targeting civilians is where I draw the line. If a fellow Jew does it, I want them put behind bars. I won’t stand for acts of violence targeting civilians, period. And I will have a problem with anybody who can’t say the same, because if we can’t say this when it’s our own, then we can’t expect others to say it when it’s their own targeting us. This has to be a principled position.
Thank you, and I know that the U.S. State Department has been sending similar messages over the last 48 hours to the Israeli coalition. So, you know, hopefully those messages are being heeded. The Hamas sort of global figures have been popping up elsewhere since October 7th. In Russia, you know, there’s been concerns around Turkey’s response. Where do you see Russia and Turkey in this kind of Hamas support network, or is this really just mine enemy’s enemy?
That might be a distinction without a difference. At the end of the day, if you’re on the wrong side of history, you’re on the wrong side of history. You are very diplomatic right now and I get it and respect it. But let’s be blunt. When Erdogan says post-October 7th, that that act of international terrorism was an act of resistance and that Hamas is not a terrorist group, you’re beyond the pale.
Especially when he’s not even running for election. He’s active.
I had some choice and loud words on the sidelines or a conference I was speaking at last Friday with the senior Turkish diplomat on this issue. And I’m sure that Turkey is going to hear about it from people a lot more important than me. I do think that Russia is getting a lot more comfortable, partnering with the worst of the worst. And you can tell a lot about a guy or a country by who their friends are. Because of the international consensus against their unilateral invasion of Ukraine and because of sanctions against them, they will partner with others who are being sanctioned. And so Russia’s relationship with Iran has become an alliance, getting drones and potentially rockets that don’t think that’s happened yet from Iran, getting all kinds of things from North Korea, becoming very close to the Assad regime, because it’s convenient for them. It’s a point of leverage. I think we are seeing the development of an actual alliance of sorts. I don’t think it’s ‘cause they love each other. It’s certainly not ideological. If it’s only “My enemy’s enemy’s my friend,” it’s dangerous enough between, the alliance between Russia and Hezbollah, and I wrote piece about that several weeks before October 7th. I’m concerned about Russia being willing to play a role in illicit finance for Iran’s group force, Lebanese, Hezbollah, or Hamas, all of which has happened in the past. I’m very concerned when in the wake of something as extreme as October 7th, Russia lays out the red carpet for Hamas leaders even if it’s only to secure the release of their own citizens. And by the way, it seems the Russians are the only ones trying to negotiate only for the release of their citizens. It’s a huge problem. It shouldn’t surprise. Russia is out for Russia. Now China’s also a problem. They’re not partnering with those who are engaged in these types of activities directly, but they’re trying to play every which way of this, and they’re not going to be part of the solution. At the end of the day, one of the things they’re going to see coming out of this is a somewhat bipartisan desire to ratchet up sanctions in Iran, which given what they just did, I think is very appropriate. And that’s going to be difficult to implement because Russia’s number one, two, three, four and five purchaser of illicit oil is China, and there’s no sanction we can do that will end that.
Matt, thank you very much. I feel we’re going to need to do part two to discuss Hezbollah, who we didn’t even get to. But thank you, that was really, really fantastic. I’m going to hand back over to Wendy.
Thank you, Carly.
Oh. Matt, thank you for the really brilliant and, you know, real brilliant analysis, rather chilling analysis of Hezbollah. It’s a clash of civilizations, you know, the death wish in martyrdom and, yeah, it’s actually quite terrifying. So I want to ask you, what are your views on South Africa and the position, and how serious is it?
I will be the last person here in DC who will really tell you where his expertise ends and it ends at South Africa. I’m not a South Africa expert. I’ve had the pleasure of visiting several times. But South Africa, South Africa, you know, has been tolerant of Hamas and Hezbollah. They have not been part of the solution. There is fundraising activities at a minimum that happened for both organisations. Several years ago, you know, in the context of Hezbollah picking up its pace of international plots. One of the surveillance plots that got very, very little attention was the surveillance of Israeli tourists at the airport in Johannesburg. And I don’t, you know, I don’t mean to insult South Africa, but I don’t think South Africa is quite so critical a nation that we need it to make a difference here. But South Africa’s in a position to take a different approach and one that isn’t part of the problem. And that would be welcomed. I just really don’t know. If you can’t get behind the idea that October 7th was beyond the pale for anybody who has any respect for humankind, I don’t care how legitimate the quote, unquote, “cause” though I don’t think people understand that Hamas’ cause is not the cause of Palestinians. And I even understand if people are angry and concerned and themselves traumatised over the images they’re seeing of Palestinian death and suffering. And guys, I get that. Honestly, I share that, but that does not mitigate what happened. I’d like someone to come up with an alternative policy. Hamas has come out since then, as I said and said, they want to do this over and over. This is not going to end. Israel cannot live with this type of a threat. I don’t think most people understand. The communities that were targeted were the far left of Israeli society. The most pro-peace, the most secular, right? This has shattered, shattered the idea that you can live alongside a militant group committed to your destruction and thinking that they’ve just been co-opted or moderated. And at the end of the day, I think when things calm down, whatever tomorrow looks like, you will find Israel and the West, hopefully together, not just Israel alone, having to ask, “What now with Hezbollah?” Hamas’ capabilities are nothing compared to Hezbollah’s. Hezbollah has 150,000 to 200,000 different types of rockets. It’s a different world. And can Israel tolerate sitting right next to that for an undetermined period of time until Hezbollah decides to do something? I just don’t know.
You dunno, and what do you think, do you think America’s going to stick by, well, stick with Israel?
Without any question. Polling in the United States is quite clear in support of Israel, even as people are concerned about what’s happening in Gaza. You’ll hear a lot about partisan debate. You’ll hear a lot about Muslim Arab communities, Muslim and Arab communities feeling uncomfortable. Biden may be deciding not to vote in the next election, but I think it’s quite clear. And at a minimum, this administration has made clear that they will not tolerate a situation where Israel actually faces any type of truly existential threat. We have not sent two aircraft carrier groups to the region for funsies, that’s not there for the photo op. And in the last U.S. response to Iranian proxy rockets and drones at our interests in Syria and Iraq, the response didn’t come from a naval ship in the Gulf. It came from U.S. Fighter jets, launched off those aircraft carriers. People are seeing that we’re willing to use them if they have to. We’re not looking to get into a fight. Israel’s not looking to get into a fight with Hezbollah right now. We’ll see what happens with Hezbollah, and Hezbollah is going to give a statement on Friday. But the United States has made clear. I can’t put it more clearly than President Biden did. If you’re thinking about expanding this war, I just want you to understand, don’t.
Well, on that note, which is optimistic, all things considered.
What passes for optimism nowadays.
I want thank you very, very much. Thank you for joining us. And, yeah. Just to peace in the region.
All right, be well, be safe.
Thank you, be well.
Take care of one another. Check on your friends.
Same to you, take care.
Bye.
Thank.