In the very first page of the first chapter of my book Obstacle to Peace: The US Role in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, the chapter being titled "The Rise of Hamas in Gaza", I noted how when Hamas was first founded in the late 1980s, it was initially supported by Israel as a counterforce to Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

The reason for this Israeli policy was that the PLO had made a "peace offensive" by renouncing terrorism and accepting the two-state solution, which Israel has always rejected because of the Zionists' aim to acquire as much of the land of former Palestine as possible but without the Palestinians.

This week, The Libertarian Institute, where I am now a Research Fellow, published my article "How Israel Supported Hamas Against the PLO", which expands on what I wrote about it in Obstacle to Peace, which I published in 2016.

Since I wrote that article, I've come across an article and accompanying video by The Intercept from 2018 titled "Blowback: How Israel Helped Create Hamas".

It makes the same point but with a few additional useful references -- like Congressman Ron Paul educating the House of Representatives about how "Hamas was encouraged and really started by Israel because they wanted Hamas to counteract Yasser Arafat."

(The host in the video, Mehdi Hasan, then gratuitously insults Dr. Paul as "mad", which is an ignorant remark about the most sane politician we've ever seen in government at least in our lifetime. Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate I've ever voted for, twice.)

Watch The Intercept video here:

Cut out the middle man and purchase a hardcover or paperback copy of Obstacle to Peace directly from me.

I'll also be talking about this topic later today with Libertarian Institute director Scott Horton, who has described my book as "the definitive scholarly account of the American role in the entire disaster", so stay tuned for the publication of that episode of his show.