Every Mention of Ismail Haniyeh, as of Mousa Abu Marzouk and Khaled Meshaal, Should Emphasize Their Thievery

The Washington Post ignores Ismail Haniyeh’s Grand Theft of $4 billion, money stolen from the aid given by foreign donors for the benefit of the people of Gaza. “Death of Hamas chief draws mixed reactions in war-battered Gaza,” by Miriam Berger and Hajar Harb, Washington Post, August 3, 2024:

He became a protégé of the group’s founder and spiritual leader, Ahmed Yassin, who Israel later assassinated, and assumed the role of Hamas leader in Gaza. Haniyeh was “one of the moderate figures in Hamas compared to the other hawkish leaders or personalities,” said Mkhaimar Abusada, a political scientist who fled Gaza for Egypt late last year.

But his legacy “is not easy to describe,” Abusada said….

Oh, I disagree. Haniyeh’s “legacy” is very easy to describe: a negative legacy, consisting of four billion dollars that he stole from the people of Gaza.

That four billion dollars that Haniyeh stole could, of course, have paid for water treatment plants in Gaza, as well as for enormous warehouses of foodstuffs, including canned goods, and for medicines, too, including polio vaccines. Instead, that money went to the care and feeding of one man, and now that he is dead, it may take years to locate and unlock the bank accounts, stock holdings, and real estate he left behind. Much of it may never be found, especially if he entrusted his money to the Swiss, who have a way of keeping money deposited by clients who then die. Remember the billions of dollars that Jewish depositors put into the UBS and several other Swiss banks just before and during World War II. After they were murdered by those Nazis, those Swiss banks made no effort to find their heirs, instead keeping the money for themselves.

Israeli strikes since October have killed a number of Haniyeh’s close relatives, including his sister, three of his sons and four grandchildren. Hamas leaders like Haniyeh “may have been in Doha rather than Rafah,” said Mouin Rabbani, a nonresident fellow at the Qatar-based Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies. “But they are also prepared to pay with their lives, and in Haniyeh’s case, the life of his children and the lives of his grandchildren.”…

Haniyeh was not “prepared to pay” with his life for “the resistance” (that seeks the destruction of the Jewish state and its replacement by a 23rd Arab state); he had assumed he would be safe with all the security that surrounded him in Doha, and in Tehran, too, whenever he went to visit the ayatollahs. Those of his children and grandchildren who died in Gaza would also, he assumed, be safe, because he knew perfectly well that the IDF tries to minimize civilian casualties. The IDF had no desire or intention to strike his relatives, but they were in the wrong places at the wrong times.

Mohammed Deif, Hamas’ head of the Qassam Brigades, was killed by the IDF on July 13, but his death was only confirmed at the beginning of August. Hamas “survives” in Gaza but in a much reduced state, with over half of its combatants killed, and the remainder so far unable to regroup successfully. It is being systematically taken apart by the relentless attacks of the IDF, that have at times required the Israeli soldiers to re-enter cities — Khan Younis, Gaza City, Rafah — that they had previously controlled and then left, only to discover that some Hamas fighters had infiltrated back in. But the IDF will return as many times as it takes to prevent Hamas from reconstituting even a single battalion anywhere in Gaza.

All three of the main leaders of Hamas have for a long time been living far from Gaza and the people they pretend to care about. They have never given any signs of being “prepared to forfeit their lives for the cause.” If they cared about “the cause,” they would not have stolen eleven billion dollars from the Gazans.

There are people who will minimize or even dismiss charges of “atrocities” committed by Hamas who, nonetheless, cannot forgive or forget the crimes of property, once they are made aware of them, committed by the terror group’s main leaders. That is why every mention of Ismail Haniyeh, as of Mousa Abu Marzouk and Khaled Meshaal, should emphasize this thievery. It remains in the memory. It sticks in the craw. It’s easy to understand. It’s impossible to forgive.