Note: Since this article was published, the death toll in the massacre has risen from 900 to 1,200.
On a Shabbat morning and a religious holiday, on October 7, Hamas operatives invaded Israel and carried out a Hamas Einsatzgruppen attack.[1] This war should not to be compared to the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when Israel was surprised by invading armies of Arab states. Hamas's operatives cannot also not be compared to Islamic State terrorists.
The mission of Hamas was to carry out a typical Hamas Einsatzgruppen attack: They hunted down Jewish women, men, children, Holocaust survivors, and the elderly, and murdered them with unspeakable cruelty.
Videos of the horrific crimes carried out by Hamas were published for public consumption. MEMRI is creating a quasi-Yad Vashem repository of the atrocities, so that no one forgets and no one is allowed to forget.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is Jewish, has a policy of not allowing these atrocities to be posted on his platforms. With this policy, Meta is not allowing the victims of the Hamas Einsatzgruppen in Israel to be commemorated.
MEMRI will take over this role of commemoration, in a new quasi-Yad Vashem documentation center. The number of Israeli dead – at last count, over 900 – is the equivalent of 34,000 American deaths. In addition, over 2,600 are injured and Hamas is holding well over 100 Israelis hostage in Gaza. On 9/11, Al-Qaeda murdered nearly 3,000 Americans.
How was it possible for Hamas to develop such an execution force that could roam freely inside Israeli territory?
I personally warned about the likelihood of war in my August 31, 2023 essay on MEMRI.org, titled Signs Of Possible War In September-October. While Iran's Islamist terrorist regime provides Hamas with military and strategic support, and training, the real power that enabled this operation was the Aal Thani family that rules Qatar.
The Aal Thani family is Hamas's enabler. In fact, its support of Hamas constitutes a direct attack on the state of Israel. Qatar funded the building of Hamas's military empire in Gaza: a huge underground city with military headquarters and connecting tunnels; a massive missile arsenal; and 30,000 killers and the munitions required for a long war – in short, everything that was needed for the October 7 attack.
The tragic answer is: It was a policy for over a decade under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that gave Qatar a free hand to send $1.5 billion to Hamas, which enabled Hamas to build its military empire.
The explanation for this anti-Israel policy was the presumption that the Israeli government is so wise that it is buying Hamas, and quiet from Hamas, with other parties' money. But this never happened. Instead, Netanyahu sold out our lives and our security for a reckless illusion. And the deal with Qatar may have served Netanyahu in other areas.
Hamas is not the only Islamist organizations that Qatar has supported over the years. The Aal Thani family supported the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. As Richard Clarke, counterterrorism advisor to Presidents Clinton and H.W. Bush, wrote, "Had the Qataris handed [KSM] over to us as requested in 1996, the world might have been a very different place." As of this writing, Qatar finances terrorists who live in Doha, according to David Cohen, former U.S. Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, and according to the records of the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT).
Qatar also supports the Taliban, ISIS, and the Al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front. Currently, lawsuits are underway against Qatar's financing of terrorism across Europe and in the U.S.
Qatar is a state sponsor of terrorism, and should be proscribed as a terrorist state on all international sanctions lists. The Aal Thani family has managed to conceal its crime of supporting Islamist terrorist organizations thanks to its tremendous wealth, which they have used as a tool for many years – even though its crimes included responsibility for 9/11.
Qatar's latest support for the Hamas Einsatzgruppen attack in Israel was also evident on its television channel Al-Jazeera, which is placed at the service of Hamas's leaders – commander Muhammad Deif and "military spokesman" Abu Ubaida – whose statements they have aired numerous times, just as they did with Osama bin Laden's speeches both before and after 9/11. To the shame of the Israeli government, Al-Jazeera has not been stopped by either administrative or legal means. With the Hamas Einsatzgruppen attack and with the killing of Holocaust survivors, they have gone one step too far. The game is now over.
This is something that neither U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is the stepson of the late American Polish-born Holocaust survivor Dr. Samuel Pisar, UNESCO Honorary Ambassador and Special Envoy for Holocaust Education, nor President Biden will never forgive, unless they have lost all moral consideration
*Yigal Carmon is President and Founder of MEMRI.
[1] The Einsatzgruppen was a Nazi organization designed to locate Jews and exterminate them, as Hitler's war machine conquered territory across Europe. Yadvashem.org/untoldstories/documents/GenBack/Einsatzgruppen.pdf.
