How Did Donald Trump Contribute to Hamas’ Attack?

Let’s talk about American National Security for just a moment.

And like it, or not, national security is inextricably intertwined with politics — on BOTH sides.

So yes, it WILL involve some DIRECT discussion of politics.

Hamas is a terrorist organization, pure and simple, and MUST be destroyed — there’s NO question about it.

But there’s an even greater question which has arisen from Hamas’ brutal savagery and recent massacre:

How did Hamas manage to escape detection by Israel’s “Iron Dome” air defense system?

Read on.

On Wednesday, October 12, 2023, at an annual meeting of Club 47 USA, a group of Trump re-election supporters, who met at the Palm Beach County Convention Center, in West Palm Beach, FL, Donald Trump aired a list of seemingly disparate grievances, which all apparently point to Trump’s meeting with Russians in the White House, and said in part:

“But I’ll never forget… I’ll never forget that Bibi Netanyahu let us down. That was a very terrible thing. I will say that. And ah, so I see, sometimes, the intelligence — you talk about the intelligence, and you talk about some of the things that went wrong over the last week — eh, they gotta’ straighten it out, because they’re fighting — potentially a very big force, they’re fighting potentially Iran — and when they have people saying the wrong things, everything they say is being digested by these people, because they’re vicious and they’re smart — and boy are they vicious, because nobody’s ever seen the kind of sight that we’ve seen, nobody’s ever seen it — but they cannot play games. So we were disappointed by that, very disappointed, but we did the job ourself [sic] and it was absolute precision, magnificent, [a] beautiful job, then Bibi tried to take credit for it, so THAT didn’t make me feel too good, but that’s alright, but they gotta’ straighten themselves out.”

“You know, Hezbollah is very smart. They’re all very smart.”

Judging from how Hamas’ attack occurred, apparently, Hamas knew how to get around Israel’s Iron Dome defenses — because they did so successfully, by using motorcycles, civilian automobiles, and most notably, motorized paragliders — which typically fly slow and low enough to avoid radar detection, unlike missiles. It wasn’t the first time paragliders have been used to infiltrate Israel. On 25 November 1987, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command launched 2 paragliders from southern Lebanon, 1 of which landed in Israel, as reported by the Washington Post, while another terrorist then attacked an Israeli military base near Kiryat Shmona, killed 6 Israeli soldiers and wounded another 7 before being shot and killed.

Video screenshot of a Hamas terrorist infiltrating Israel using a powered paraglider October 7, 2023 during their attack.

However, it wasn’t as if Israel and the world — especially and particularly the intelligence community — didn’t have any idea, for they did.

In addition, on May 6, 2015, 9:40 PM (GMT+3), the Israel National News – Arutz Sheva media group, reported in a story headlined:

Report: Hamas Set to Conduct Paragliding Attacks

“Hamas is recruiting Palestinian students in Malaysia to carry out attacks on Israel using paragliding equipment, a report said.“

They wrote in part:

“Hamas is developing an air attack capability – by recruiting Palestinian students in Malaysia to carry out attacks on Israel using paragliding equipment, [stated] a report by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center. The report reveals two incidents in which Hamas was found to be conducting training of Palestinian students for such attacks in that country.”

Futher, it’s not beyond the scope of the pale to imagine that Hamas “probably“ learned how to avoid detection by Israel’s air defense system courtesy of  Iran. And how did Iran get that information? Why, they almost certainly got that information came from Russia. And from where or who, pray tell, did Russia get it? Sadly, for all the world, it very much looks like it was none other than Donald Trump, and at the request or suggestion of Putin.

Of course, it is knowledge of some not-widely-known fact, and simply obtaining, or having details of plans, that such highly sensitive information on terrorist activities would be something only a “deep insider,” or close personal friend of, would possibly know, so one would imagine that its sharing wouldn’t be so brazen.

Or, could it?

It was 6 years ago, on May 10, 2017, that then-President Donald Trump met at the White House with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. During that meeting, he divulged national security secrets.

That is NOT conjecture. It is NOT speculation.

It is an indisputable, hard, cold fact, corroborated by numerous intelligence sources from allied nations friendly with the United States, and by U.S. government officials, as well. And, it is in keeping with his equally-well-known penchant for mishandling such materials, which was also evidenced by his purloining of records subject to Federal law — including ones clearly marked as CLASSIFIED — all of which were found at his Mar-a-Lago estate, and for which he was indicted for possessing, and further lied about having surrendered them, all at once — which later were found after execution of a court-approved search warrant by the FBI — to the National Archives, as required by law.

While at the time, U.S. National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster denied that any divulging of national security occurred — Always REMEMBER: “Plausible deniability” is the only true friend of criminals and their cohorts. — there were many more ethically reliable security sources, which for obvious reasons could not identify themselves (which would thereby endanger their lives), that flatly independently contradicted the administration’s claims. His use of the terms “sources or methods” is a strong, oblique if not open acknowledgement, that such information was discussed. The words “sources or methods” are not the information itself, and therefore separate and distinct from “sources or methods.” You see, “Dancing with Words” is a well-known game in legal circles inside the D.C. Beltway, just as much now as when then-POTUS Clinton testified under oath during his deposition in the Monica Lewinsky matter when he said, “it depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”

As for himself, then-POTUS Trump obliquely admitted that he did reveal the subject matter of classified national security secrets when he issued an official communique via Twitter on May 16, 2017 and wrote:

“As President I wanted to share with Russia
(at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting)
which I have the absolute right to do,
facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety.
Humanitarian reasons,
plus
I want Russia to greatly step up their fight
against ISIS & terrorism.”

During that meeting, discussions of Israel arose, and Trump “went off-script” and described specific details of a terrorist threat by ISIS/Islamic State that involved the use of laptop computers on commercial aircraft, which practice was briefly temporarily banned on flights from 10 majority-Muslim nations. National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster confirmed as much by stating that the President discussed, “common threats to our two countries, including threats to civil aviation. At no time — at no time — were intelligence sources or methods discussed, and the president did not disclose any military operations that were not already publicly known.”

Trump also discussed various aspects of the threat — which news agencies learned were obtained exclusively from a key U.S. partner’s espionage capabilities. Trump did not reveal the specific intelligence-gathering method, but he DID describe how ISIS/Islamic State was pursuing elements of a specific plot, and how extensive severe harm through such an attack could cause under varying circumstances. Most concerning, he revealed the city in the Islamic State’s territory where the U.S. intelligence partner detected the threat.

It was later learned and confirmed that Israel was the source of that intelligence, though Israeli officials neither confirmed nor denied the report, yet issued a report which stated that they had full confidence in their intelligence sharing relationships with the United States. Ynetnews, an Israeli news website written in Hebrew & English, had reported on January 12 that year on a meeting held in early January (during Trump’s presidential transition), that U.S. intelligence officials advised the Israeli Mossad (Israeli intelligence) and other intelligence officials to “be careful” when transferring intelligence information to the Trump White House and administration.

John McLaughlin, then-Acting Director of the Central Intelligence Agency during the George W. Bush administration, stated that, McMaster “hasn’t said anything that really contradicts the story [which was widely reported]. He just says sources and methods weren’t revealed. You can leave out sources and methods, and depending on how you pass information, you can tip another intelligence service to the source or method by virtue of revealing that you know something that could only be known by a limited circle of people.”

In the court case “Department of the Navy v. Egan,” which wound its way before the U.S. Supreme Court, the high court wrote that “[the President’s] authority to classify and control access to information bearing on national security … flows primarily from this Constitutional investment of power in the President and exists quite apart from any explicit congressional grant.” Lawfare blog similarly noted as much and wrote that “because of his broad constitutional authority in this realm, the president can, at any time, either declassify information or decide whom to share it with.”

But that does NOT mean that it’s wise to do so, and there are assuredly consequences far beyond mere legal ramifications which threaten our own national security, if not directly. In fact, Trump’s divulging of such sensitive code-word secret information endangered the life of a spy placed by Israel in ISIL-held territory in Syria.

A former senior U.S. counter-terrorism official who also worked closely with members of the Trump national security team said that, “Everyone knows this stream is very sensitive, and the idea of sharing it at this level of granularity with the Russians is troubling. If that partner learned we’d given this to Russia without their knowledge or asking first, that is a blow to that relationship.”

Following those events, Israeli officials said that Trump’s divulging of the matter — specific knowledge of terrorist plans, and details of actions toward accomplishing them — was proven to have been their “worst fears confirmed” about him.