Terror Sponsors

Qatar is one of Hamas’s main financial backers and will soon be the world’s second largest sponsor of global terrorism, second only to Iran, charged Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Ron Prosor.

“Hamas has been able to get away from its crimes thanks to support and sponsorship it receives from Qatar,” Prosor said on Monday as he spoke with reporters in New York outside a UN Security Council meeting on the Gaza conflict and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

To spread its influence Qatar has purchased the campuses of six US universities, the famous British department store Harrods and the Paris Saint-German football club, Prosor said.

“As the world’s richest country, Qatar has proven that it controls the three B’s; it can buy, bribe or bully its way to owning anything including the 2022 World Cup.

“Now Qatar is spending its way to becoming the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism, second only to Iran,” Prosor said.

He also charged that Doha had funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to Hamas, which the terrorist group used to dig tunnels and buy rockets, Prosor said.

Prosor urged the UN to condemn Hamas and its financial sponsors instead of disproportionally focusing its energy on attacking Israel for attacking its buildings, demolishing homes and killing civilians in Gaza.

“When will this institution find the time to condemn Hamas and designate it as a terrorist organization?” Prosor asked.

Hamas in Gaza uses civilians as human shields and has provided the UN with inaccurate information, particularly with regard to the number of innocent people that were killed as a result of the IDF attacks on Gaza during Operation Protective Edge this summer, Prosor said.

He handed out journalists pages from a Hamas combat manual on urban warfare found in Gaza that gave instructions for exploiting civilians.

“Have you wondered where the UN gets its casualty figures from? I will tell you where, from Hamas,” he said.

“Let’s be honest about what is going on. Hamas purposely put its people in harm’s way as part of a propaganda war and yet the UN is quoting numbers provided by the same terror group,” he said.

“The Hamas Ministry of the Interior publishes guidelines forbidding people from posting pictures, names or information about terrorist fighters. This allowed Hamas to claim that every terrorist killed was a civilian and the UN seemed happy to go along with the deception,” Prosor said.

He continued to outline other ways in which Hamas obscured its activities, such as using schools and hospitals as bases from which to attack Israel.

According to newly released figures from the IDF, 30 rockets were shot from UN facilities, 248 from schools and 331 were shot from mosques, Prosor said.

Hamas also prevented journalists from publishing information about how it launched rockets from civilian areas, Prosor said.

“How was it, he asked, that with so many journalists in Gaza none of them were able to capture a rocket launch on film?” Prosor asked.

“Have you ever seen on media, not after, but during Protective Edge, have you ever seen a launch of a missile from Gaza taken with so many TV cameras. Well you can miss 100, you can miss 500, you can miss 1,000 but missing 3,500 missiles that were launched from Gaza that were never taken once, from one camera, that is a surprise. Why? Because Hamas did not allow those pictures to be taken out?”

One French reporter waited until after leaving Gaza before showing film footage of how rockets were launched steps from a UN building, Prosor said.

UN Relief and Works Agency has even admitted that on three occasions during Operation Protective Edge it found weapons stashed in empty schools, Prosor said. He added that Israel had already warned that Hamas was using such institutions as a base.

Hamas also continued to attack Fatah members in Gaza during the conflict, Prosor said. He charged that they shot Fatah members in the legs to prevent them from fleeing the bombings.

“UN biased accusations against Israel will not help promote a lasting cease-fire. They will not promote a rehabilitation of the Gaza Strip and they will not weaken Hamas,” Prosor said.