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Hamas wants to destroy Israel, right? But as Mehdi Hasan shows in a new video on blowback, Israeli officials admit they helped start the group.

Blowback: How Israel Went From Helping Create Hamas to Bombing It Search for: Politics Justice National Security World Technology Environment Special Investigations Voices Podcasts Videos Documents Become A Member Opens in a new tab About Policies And Reports Become a Source Join Newsletter Opens in a new tab Opens in a new tab Opens in a new tab Opens in a new tab Opens in a new tab Opens in a new tab Opens in a new tab Opens in a new tab © THE INTERCEPT ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Terms of Use Privacy Video DonateOpens in a new tab Become a memberOpens in a new tab Blowback: How Israel Went From Helping Create Hamas to Bombing It Hamas wants to destroy Israel, right? But as Mehdi Hasan shows in a new video on blowback, Israeli officials admit they helped start the group. Mehdi Hasan, Dina Sayedahmed February 19 2018, 7:00 a.m. DonateOpens in a new tab What do you know about Hamas? That it’s swornOpens in a new tab to destroy Israel? That it’s a terrorist group, proscribed both by the United StatesOpens in a new tab and the European UnionOpens in a new tab? That it rules Gaza with an iron fistOpens in a new tab? That it’s killed hundreds of innocent Israelis with rocketOpens in a new tab, mortarOpens in a new tab, and suicideOpens in a new tab attacks? But did you also know that Hamas — which is an Arabic acronymOpens in a new tab for “Islamic Resistance Movement” — would probably not exist today were it not for the Jewish state? That the Israelis helped turn a bunch of fringe Palestinian Islamists in the late 1970s into one of the world’s most notorious militant groups? That Hamas is blowback? This isn’t a conspiracy theory. Listen to former Israeli officials such as Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s. Segev later toldOpens in a new tab a New York Times reporter that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat (who himself referredOpens in a new tab to Hamas as “a creature of Israel.”) “The Israeli government gave me a budget,” the retired brigadier general confessed, “and the military government gives to the mosques.” “Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades, toldOpens in a new tab the Wall Street Journal in 2009. Back in the mid-1980s, Cohen even wrote an official report to his superiors warning them not to play divide-and-rule in the Occupied Territories, by backing Palestinian Islamists against Palestinian secularists. “I … suggest focusing our efforts on finding ways to break up this monster before this reality jumps in our face,” he wrote. They didn’t listen to him. And Hamas, as I explain in the fifth installment of my short film series for The Intercept on blowback, was the result. To be clear: First, the Israelis helped build upOpens in a new tab a militant strain of Palestinian political Islam, in the form of Hamas and its Muslim Brotherhood precursors; then, the Israelis switched tack and tried to bombOpens in a new tab, besiege, and blockadeOpens in a new tab it out of existence. Read our complete coverage Israel’s War on Gaza In the past decade alone, Israel has gone to war with Hamas three times — in 2009, 2012, and 2014 — killing around 2,500 Palestinian civiliansOpens in a new tab in Gaza in the process. Meanwhile, Hamas has killed far more Israeli civilians than any secular Palestinian militant group. This is the human cost of blowback. “When I look back at the chain of events, I think we made a mistake,” David Hacham, a former Arab affairs expert in the Israeli military who was based in Gaza in the 1980s, later remarkedOpens in a new tab. “But at the time, nobody thought about the possible results.” They never do, do they? Contact the author: Mehdi Hasan mehdi.hasan@theintercept.com @mehdirhasan Opens in a new tab on X Dina Sayedahmed dina.sayedahmed@theintercept.com @bintabuahmed_ Opens in a new tab on X Related Blowback: How the Bombing of Libya in 2011 Led to Terror in Britain Blowback: How Torture Fuels Terrorism Rather Than Reduces It Blowback: How a CIA-Backed Coup Led to the Rise of Iran’s Ayatollahs Blowback: How ISIS Was Created by the U.S. Invasion of Iraq Blowback: How U.S. Drones, Coups, and Invasions Just Create More Violence Latest Stories Live Event: Trump’s Iowa Landslide and What’s Next for the GOP in 2024 The Intercept - 2:28 pm Join Intercept D.C. Bureau Chief Ryan Grim and politics reporters Ken Klippenstein and Prem Thakker for a virtual roundtable on the Iowa caucuses and the year ahead in GOP politics. Don’t Normalize Donald Trump James Risen - 12:56 pm Will voters view Joe Biden’s advanced age as negatively as they do Trump’s greed and dishonesty? 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