Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal published a bombshell report, identifying an arms-trafficking scheme in which “Iran and its allies” have been smuggling heavy weapons and small arms to the jihadi terrorists occupying certain areas of Israel; see the lede below:
Long before Hamas militants burst out of their Gaza stronghold to massacre scores of civilians with handguns and assault rifles, Iran and its allies had accelerated efforts to smuggle weapons into a different part of the Palestinian territories, the West Bank.
What was most explosive though, given current circumstances, is that the arms flowing from the terrorist regimes to the smaller terrorist groups, often comes disguised as aid packages. The authors of the Journal item recount that after the February 2023 earthquake in Turkey and Syria, Iran “began hauling large quantities of weapons to Syria” in shipments disguised as aid; as we see, a “humanitarian crisis” or an “emergency” is a great cover for arming terrorists.
On a separate and totally unrelated note… From a Politico report last week:
The U.S. will send $100 million in aid for humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza and the West Bank, President Joe Biden said on Wednesday.
‘This money will support more than 1 million displaced in conflict affected Palestinians, including emergency needs in Gaza,’ Biden said Wednesday during a speech in Tel Aviv.
Now, we don’t even need to make speculations and draw logical but unprovable conclusions—Biden actually has a history of being involved in arming terrorist regimes, and most relevantly, Iran itself. Remember those pallets of euros and francs sent by Barack Obama? Who was vice-president? I wonder how much of that money was used to manufacture or procure weapons which somehow found their way to jihadis in Israel?
From another report yesterday, this one from NBC News:
The unemployment rate in Gaza is 47% and more than 80% of its population lives in poverty, according to the United Nations. Hamas, however, has funded an armed force of thousands equipped with rockets and drones and built a vast web of tunnels under Gaza. Estimates of its annual military budget range from $100 million to $350 million, according to Israeli and Palestinian sources.
As the U.S. House and Senate will be asking in separate hearings Wednesday and Thursday, where does all that cash come from?
Since coming to power in the Gaza Strip 17 years ago, Hamas has filled its coffers with hundreds of millions in international aid, overt and covert injections of cash from Iran and other ideological partners, as well as cryptocurrency, taxes, extortion and smuggling, according to current and former U.S. officials and regional experts.
“International aid...” “Injections of cash from Iran…” “Where does all that cash come from...” Gee I wonder.
Do you sport the Gadsden flag, and believe in dangerously “patriotic” things like unalienable rights from God? Think you have a “right” to peaceably assemble, to petition your government for a redress of grievances? You’re obviously a terrorist.
A federal government actually supporting legitimate terrorist regimes with astronomical amounts of money (and maybe even arms) that in turn outfits smaller terrorist factions who sadistically slaughter civilians? Democracy and progress, but definitely not terrorism.
Image: Israel Defense Forces from Israel, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons, unaltered.
