Hamas Leader Admits Border ’Protests’ Staged, Nobody Cares

Hamas senior leader, Yahya Sinwar, openly admitted that the “Great March of Return”, launched on March 30, was staged. The so called “border protests”, that have continued for months since, he explained before a Hamas gathering, were a deliberate provocation intended “to divert pressure onto Israel and prevent an ‘internal explosion’”, after reconciliation efforts with Fatah were “sabotaged”.

“After the reconciliation efforts (between Hamas and Fatah) reached an impasse, a number of factions planned to cause an internal explosion in the Gaza Strip, but the ‘Marches of Return’ thwarted the plan,” Sinwar said in early September during a Hamas conference in Gaza, according to a Ynet news website report.

In other words, Hamas employed its terrorists to stage weekly “protests” just to satisfy Hamas’s need to create a diversion to avoid a crisis for itself in the Gaza strip. These protests led to an environmental disaster, as burning kites and other incendiary devices were sent over the border into Israel, where hundreds of acres of land have gone up in smoke, killing wildlife and causing massive, irreparable agricultural and ecological damage.

The Hamas were not concerned in the slightest about international opinion, knowing very well that no matter what they do to Israelis or even their own citizens, the world community and international media will support them.

It therefore came as no surprise that the UN held a moment of silence for the terrorists killed by the IDF as they attempted to penetrate into Israel. The very terrorists who vowed to storm the border so they could “tear out the Jews hearts from their bodies”; or that in a sickening display of self righteousness, several Jewish groups – in complete contravention of Jewish religion – said ‘kaddish’ for those same dead terrorists; and that media pundits across the board wrote furious op-eds denouncing the Israeli response to the terrorist onslaught. Human Rights Watch went as far as to publish an op-ed in Foreign Policy titled, “Don’t Blame Hamas for the Gaza Bloodshed”.

Sinwar’s open admission has hardly made the news anywhere outside of Israel. It has not caused anyone to reconsider and apologize for condemning Israel and eulogizing terrorists. It has not occasioned Human Rights Watch to retract its op-ed which was so clearly and absolutely wrong. The clichéd truth that facts do not matter applies in this case, as in practically all instances where Israel is concerned.

In the large scheme of things, though, it is hardly relevant that Hamas’ admission did not make the international headlines. Sinwar could have been standing on the podium in the UN or in the EU, admitting at the top of his lungs that Hamas is a horrific terrorist organization guilty of the vilest war crimes, and the world community would merely shrug its shoulders and insist that he did not really mean what he said. After all, this is the kind of response it gives ISIS terrorists, when it responds to their war cry of “Allahu Akhbar” with the mantra that the terrorism they commit in the name of Islam is not Islamic.

Admitting that Hamas is wrong means acknowledging that Israel has been right all these years, and an entire industry of ‘peace making’, not to mention the fodder that the current ‘narrative’ provides academia, journalists and a host of diplomats and NGOs would collapse and leave thousands of people looking embarrassingly stupid and with nothing left to say. One should not underestimate that the ‘conflict’ feeds many mouths, among them several Jewish ones, who have only risen to fame because there is a Jewish state to defame.

Hamas’ admission shows another pertinent fact that the international community deliberately overlooks: Hamas needs conflict not only to thrive – terrorists generally become jobless if they cannot engage in terrorism – but in order to exist. If peace with Israel were to break out, Hamas’ entire raison d’etre would collapse and it would simply go out of business. Too many, including Iran, have absolutely no desire for Hamas to go out of business.

The international community evidently also wants to keep Hamas in business. Instead of questioning the veracity of Hamas’ statements and condemning its blatant terrorism on the Israeli civilian population, the international community not only ate it all up raw, but acted like Hamas’ very own cheerleading team, which in turn emboldened and encouraged the terrorists.

Once again, Hamas shows its true colors and the world community pretends to be colorblind.

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Judith Bergman is a columnist and political analyst and a fellow with the Haym Salomon Center

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