On Monday, Fox News reported the following headline:
Hamas terror chief exposed as living in London public housing project, funded by UK taxpayers
The article reports:
A Hamas leader was discovered living in a government-subsidized London home, despite previously running the terrorist group’s operations in the West Bank, U.K. media is reporting.
Muhammad Qassem Sawalha, 62, is a designated Hamas member, according to Israel’s Ministry of Defense, who has been living in the U.K. for decades, a report from The Sunday Times detailed. Sawalha managed to flee to England in the 1990s and secure a British passport in the early 2000s, but continued working for Hamas, according to the report.
Sawalha is a wanted man in Israel and would be arrested if he returns to the nation due to his designation as a member of Hamas.
The report details that he and his wife, identified as Sawsan, 56, were granted a roughly $136,500 discount on a nearly $390,000 two-story state-funded home in London.
On October 17th, The Boston Globe reported:
Following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush issued a blunt demand to Afghanistan’s Islamist dictators, who had long sheltered Al Qaeda’s top officials.
“Turn [Osama bin Laden] over,” the president said. “Turn him over, turn his cohorts over, turn any hostages they hold over, destroy all the terrorist camps. … This is nonnegotiable.”
In the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre in southern Israel, President Biden should be issuing a similar message to Qatar. The rich Persian Gulf sheikhdom has for years underwritten Hamas’s control of Gaza, funded its killing operations, and shielded its senior leadership. That makes it a key collaborator in what Biden called the “pure, unadulterated evil” of the barbaric Oct. 7 slaughter of at least 1,300 Israelis and the abduction of at least 199 hostages.
Israel was the foremost target of the bloody Hamas rampage, but those killed by the terrorists included 30 US citizens too. As many as 13 Americans may be among the captives held in Gaza. Which means, as Biden said, that the campaign to destroy Hamas is necessary not just for Israel’s welfare but for “the security of the United States.”
The article also notes:
To begin with, Hamas’s main headquarters and top leaders are located in Doha, the Qatari capital. Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas, resides in Qatar. So does Izzat Al-Risheq, who oversees Hamas’s media operations. Neither the regime in Doha nor Hamas makes any secret of the fact that Qatar harbors some of the worst terrorists on earth. “Footage last week showed Haniyeh, 61, smiling and praying from the comfort of his air-conditioned Doha office to celebrate the slaughter of Israelis,” The Telegraph reported this week. “In the video, Haniyeh and 12 of his henchmen are seen dressed in freshly pressed suits as they watch the horror unfold on a widescreen TV.”
It’s time to reassert American energy independence and let the countries in the Middle East go bankrupt. That is one way to exert pressure without bloodshed.