In a recent New York Times piece, the author goes into great detail about Hamas’ financial maneuvers in the past decade. He argues that Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli government knew of the hundreds of millions that were funneled to Hamas and allowed them to continue in the hopes that Gaza’s financial success would maintain peace.
Jo Becker wrote the article, which uses a variety of sources, including former Mossad personnel. Becker, an investigative journalist for the Times who has won Pulitzer Prizes, is known for her exposés of Dick Cheney’s hidden power, in 2008; a series in 2017 on Vladimir Putin’s efforts to undercut the 2016 election; and stories in 2018 regarding Russian influence in the Trump administration. In 2014, she also published a book about “marriage equality”, detailing the legal fight to bring same-sex marriages before the Supreme Court. David Mixner, an LGBT activist, praised the book for “capturing perfectly our struggle for liberty”.
It does not matter if the article in The New York Times is accurate or not. It is not important. It doesn’t matter if the information is accurate or not: we must still respond to it. For now, we must ignore the information she provides in her article.
You may ask Rabbi, “How can we ignore this?” Is it possible that their funding contributed to Hamas’s attack in a major way? We must hold those responsible and conduct investigations.
There will come a day when we can investigate Becker’s conclusions. This is not the time to do so.
What happened in the past is irrelevant now. Israel is in a war with a truly evil enemy. A foe that must be not only defeated but also destroyed. Hamas’ commitment to destroy Israel is present as long as it exists. Like Amalek, Hamas needs “their memory wiped off the Earth” (Deut. 25:19). Remember that Israel is only the frontline in the war they wage against the rest of the world to establish a global Islamic Theocracy.
Right now, we are fighting for our very survival. We can’t allow anything to distract us from our goal.
George Tenet, director of the CIA during the al Qaeda attack on Sept. 11, publicly acknowledged that U.S. officials were aware that “something very, extremely big” was going to happen and that “the systems was blinking red.” Hessian Colonel Johann Rall knew that Washington would launch a surprise assault on Trenton, in 1776. Many documents prove that American officials and perhaps even President Roosevelt knew that Japan would attack Pearl Harbor.
In those days and other similar ones, people understood that the first step was to win the war, and that only then could mistakes be evaluated.
Hamas must be destroyed and this is the primary objective. After the victory, there will be enough time to examine mistakes made which led to the horrific events of October 7. Israel will investigate all mistakes and make sure they don’t happen again. There will undoubtedly be Israeli officials that will be removed. Beyond financial funding, there are other questions: what happened to the intel? Why weren’t the soldiers where they should/could have been? Why was Israel not prepared?
These questions are not relevant now. Now, we have to focus on the immediate task: winning this war, destroying Hamas, and hopefully bringing any remaining hostages back to their families and homes with God’s assistance.
Any action that diverts us from this goal is harmful. We must be in the present moment. It is a war moment for Israel and the world of freedom.
In the Bible, God asks people “Ayecha?” This is a question that God asks throughout the Bible: “Ayecha?” The characters of the Bible answer “Hineni!” This means, “I’m present!” Each of us must be present at this moment, a time when we are fighting evil. We can’t let ourselves get distracted from what is right in front of us.
I respect Ms. Becker’s investigative skills and pray that this article and she are ignored until the war has ended and Hamas has been destroyed. It will only serve to harm the war effort, a cost we can’t afford.
We should all be able to have the wisdom and perseverance to achieve our goals, then and only then, investigate what Ms. Becker investigated.
