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Seth Frantzman

@sfrantzman

May 1

One of the greatest disasters for the Middle East has been the international community's decision to cement in power extremist militia groups and turn them into "states" basically in the region. This happened with Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and other groups.

It's important to note that this is not how the international community dalt with similar groups in other countries such as Boko Haram or Al Shabab or the FARC, it's basically only in the Middle East where the UN and international groups and also major powers, swoop in to make sure that Hamas controls Gaza, and keep Hezbollah strengthened in Lebanon and create deals for the Houthis to keep them in power.

It's clear that this suits the agenda of Iran usually, in destroying countries and hollowing them out and bankrupting them and then using them for its agenda. When Hezbollah illegally launched a war on Israel in 2006, instead of ending its impunity, the UN and others made sure to cement it in power to make it exponentially more powerful.

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Seth Frantzman

@sfrantzman

May 1

The coded methods used to downplay Hezbollah attacks on Israel. An example.

The BBC did a report on southern Lebanon which has suffered due to Hezbollah's almost seven months of attacks on Israel. Note, the first part of the article doesn't even mention Hezbollah.

This: let's not mention the illegal terrorist group that controls this area and fires rockets from civilian areas...is a common theme when reporting in Gaza as well. Over the years many NGOs would often not even mention Hamas in reports. This is done to in order to make it seem that Israel is "attacking" and to hide the authoritarian extremist groups that control Gaza and southern Lebanon.

We know that western media would never do this if they were talking about "right wing militias" in the West...they wouldn't report about "violence" in the US South in 1965 and simply not mention the KKK...as if the "violence" against African-Americans was just "happening" but no group was behind it.

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Seth Frantzman

@sfrantzman

Apr 30

International organizations that worked to empower Hamas for almost two decades in Gaza are worried that its control of Rafah will end, meaning their partnership with Hamas gunmen who steal the aid will end. They partnered with Hamas and profited immensely. Hamas could not have become what it is, a terror empire, without the collaboration of all the international organizations who work with it and who want its gunmen controlling aid. Hamas is a vast criminal enterprise like Escobar’s cartel was. It’s hard to dismantle a group like this. But it must be done.

Millions, probably hundreds of millions are at risk by these groups who partner with the Hamas gunmen. They preyed on the people of Gaza via Hamas. Hamas was a partner and they outsourced control to Hamas. They hit the jackpot in Gaza when it expelled Fatah in 2007. It’s rare these organizations get control via an authoritarian partner like Hamas. They don’t like working with democracies because it means transparency and critique by those on the ground. In Gaza if someone critiqued how Hamas controls aid…the aid orgs would turn over a name to Hamas and it would remove them. In return Hamas members got jobs at the organizations. Rarely in history have so many NGOs got this windfall of partnership on suffering which they use to get more profit

Gazans were captive to this. They were in a prison controlled by Hamas and by the internationals who wanted Hamas holding the key to the cells. It’s like those private prisons where the corporations profit in the west. Their interest is in having more prisoners, more profit. They wanted Hamas to control this disaster so they could profit. The corporate NGOs partnered with Hamas. When you follow the money, like in The Wire, you’ll find out how it worked.

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Seth Frantzman

@sfrantzman

Apr 30

One of the largest lessons from October 7 for policymakers, strategists, military brass and politicians is to consider the wider ramifications of unlikely scenarios.

What I mean is it's essential to always consider "what if we are all wrong" and to look at unlikely threats and weigh them against their potential to do large, but often discounted, harm.

Think of the chances of the Hamas attack being quiet small, much like the chances of a pandemic breaking out in early 2020, or of 9/11...the chances are small, but the implications are world changing. And each one is not like the chances of aliens landing...these are real world threats that exist but whose probability is low.

Now when we look at Hamas, the chances of a mass cross border human wave style attack may have seemed remote, but it was clearly larger than the chances of 9/11 or a pandemic, because Hamas was training openly for this exact type of attack. The plans existed. Therefore it had a decent chance of happening in some form.

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Seth Frantzman

@sfrantzman

Apr 29

One thing that I’ve never been able to get out of my thoughts since Oct. 7 is that Hamas, which massacred 1,000 people and took 250 hostages, killing some of them over the last six months, is hosted by the closest U.S. ally in the Middle East…and it took American hostages on October 7…and yet it faces no repercussions for doing so. No war crimes charges, no expulsion from the U.S. allies that back and host it.

Do you think if a U.S. ally hosted another terror grouping that targeted a different country and kidnapped Americans that this would be the case?

What gets me is that Hamas isn’t like Hezbollah, it’s not just a terror grouping backed by U.S. adversaries, it’s literally ensconced within a close western ally and openly backed by another western ally. It not only has impunity and cover through this, but the western backing here hasn’t led it to become less dangerous as a terror grouping, rather it became MORE dangerous

Basically Hamas was a relatively small murderous group decades ago. Then it emerged in the Oslo years opposing the western-backed Oslo peace process. Then it took over Gaza from the western-backed Palestinian Authority.

Then something off happened

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Seth Frantzman

@sfrantzman

Apr 29

The most telling discussions about the protests on US campuses are the ones where the older crowd of obsessive anti-Israel grifters who profited for decades off bashing Israel and slouching toward one state extremism…are trying to police the language of the protesters who they have a condescending view of…trying to urge them to use more inclusive language rather than “alienate” people by openly supporting Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis and genocide.

The one I saw yesterday was urging them not to say “Palestine will be free from the River…” but “Palestinians will be free…”

It’s fascinating to see the mask come off, these folk always knew they were flirting with genociders and they always excused Hamas “resistance” and “right to resist” and then tried to qualify it with “but all civilians shouldn’t be harmed”…when they quietly backed a movement that systematically massacres civilians

And so today as their movement is taken from them and younger people want to be at the center and not give over to the grifters who profited off this for years…they want to grasp onto the movement and cling to it…and try to make it “relevant” by not being fully pro-Hamas and against two states and against peace

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