“Lord help the mister/Who comes between me and my sister”
The story is remarkable for what it tells us about Israel. Three sisters of the head of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, a man who has dedicated his life to murdering Israelis, have been living quietly in a Bedouin town in southern Israel. The Israelis, of course, knew they were living there, but they did not touch a hair on any of their heads. They didn’t do what Hamas would have done to any relative of an Israeli leader living in territory controlled by the terror group — that is, imprison them for life or, more likely, murder such a person. No, Haniyeh’s three sisters were left alone until just now, when the Shin Bet, possibly based on intelligence information about Hamas operatives that the IDF came across in Gaza, realized that one of the three was not just the sister of Ismail Haniyeh, but a Hamas operative carrying on its ghastly work inside Israel.
Now the Israelis have arrested her at Tel Sheva, a Bedouin town where she and her two sisters all lived. They discovered electronic equipment, weapons, and several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of shekels. No doubt she was involved in distributing such equipment, weapons, and money to Hamas operatives inside Israel. More on her arrest can be found here: “Hamas Chief Haniyeh’s Sister Arrested in Southern Israel,” by Troy O. Fritzhand, Algemeiner, April 1, 2024:
The sister of Hamas politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh, one of the Palestinian terror group’s most visible leaders, has been arrested in southern Israel.
The 57-year-old woman lives with her family in Tel Sheva, a Bedouin city near Beersheba in Israel. She was detained in a joint raid by Israel Police and the Shin Bet security agency, law enforcement and Israeli media reported on Monday.
While the woman was not initially named — only referred to as “a relative of a senior member of Hamas” — police later reportedly identified the suspect as Sabah Avad al-Salam Haniyeh, one of Haniyeh’s sisters.
According to police, officials found documents, electronic devices, and other evidence linking Haniyeh’s sister to “serious security offenses.” She was arrested at the scene on suspicion of having contact with Hamas operatives and supporting acts of terrorism.
Police also said they found hundreds of thousands of shekels in cash in the house….
The Hamas chief reportedly has an estimated net worth of $4 billion and lives a life of luxury abroad in exile in Qatar.
Haniyeh has stolen that sum from the funds that international donors had supplied to support Gazans. Two other Hamas leaders, Khaled Meshaal and Mousa Abu Marzouk, have also stolen large sums, $4 billion and $3 billion, respectively. Between the three, that is $11 billion. Yet no one mentions this, no one raises the issue of this grand theft as greatly contributing to the misery of ordinary Gazans, no one in the chanceries of the West, or at the U.N., suggests that these three thieves be arrested and their billions disgorged to help pay for the rebuilding of Gazan infrastructure. Apparently the Hamas leaders’ $11 billion take is a taboo subject; were it to become better known, it would reflect badly on Hamas, and no one wants to do that because it would help Israel in its propaganda war, and in the mainstream media we can’t have that. The PA can’t make an issue of Hamas crooks, either, because Mahmoud Abbas, no piker, has managed to amass a family fortune, with his sons Tarek and Yasser, of $400 million. That’s why neither he, nor any other official in the PA, will ever raise the matter of the $11 billion squirreled away by Meshaal, Marzouk, and Haniyeh.
One wonders why, with all that money, Ismail Haniyeh did not invite all three of his sisters, who have been living in southern Israel in the same Bedouin town of Tel Sheva, to join him to live luxuriously in Doha. Or more likely, he did make such an offer, but his three sisters were leading such good lives in Israel, where the authorities leave them alone, that they preferred to remain in the Jewish state that, we are incessantly told by angry demonstrators, is an “apartheid colonial-settler genocidal state.” When given the choice, Haniyeh’s sisters prefer to live in Israel as citizens of the most thoroughly decent state in the Middle East, choosing it even over a life of endless luxury in Doha.
Will the world’s media draw the proper conclusions from this episode? These are:
1. Israel is willing to leave alone even the closest relatives of that arch-terrorist, Ismail Haniyeh, who are allowed to lead their lives undisturbed, and enjoy the same rights as all other citizens — Jews and Arabs — of Israel enjoy.
2. The fact that Ismail Haniyeh’s three sisters choose to remain in Israel instead of moving to Doha and living in the lap of luxury supplied by their bother, is mute and convincing testimony to how good Israeli Arabs have it in the Jewish state.
3. At least one of Ismail Haniyeh’s three sisters, we now know, repaid Israel’s benevolence with treachery. She — Sabah Avad al-Salam Haniyeh — was found to have electronic equipment, weapons, incriminating documents, and hundreds of thousands of shekels in her house, all of it being kept for distribution to Hamas operatives inside Israel. She is charged with having contact with Hamas operatives and with “supporting acts of terrorism.”
4. Keep her in custody. Haniyeh’s sister may come in handy in one of those lopsided trades Hamas has made before with Israel, most egregiously in 2011, when it turned over one soldier, Gilad Shalit, in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, including many who were serving life sentences for murder. Perhaps the prospect of obtaining his sister’s freedom will soften Ismail Haniyeh’s negotiating stance.
Ben says
The Israeli’s are still far too soft. The sisters of the hamas leader should have been locked up since day 1 of this war. During the Lebanese civil war hezbollah abducted a bunch of Sovjet diplomats. Israel should take an example of how the KGB handled that situation.
somehistory says
It was reported today, that early Thursday, a cell of hamas members have been arrested for an assassination attempt on an Israeli Government Minister.
Psychewhisperer says
October 7th could easily have been carried out by terrorists living inside of Israel. But that would have jeopardized the status of the 1.8 million Muslims living there. Muslims who live better than any others on earth can vote, travel freely, and work anywhere they please, have much to lose.