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Philip Giraldi: Well, there are a number of things that don’t pass the sniff test here. You’re quite right in stating that there are intelligence failures. I’ve certainly witnessed enough of them when I was working for the US government. This is always a possibility. People make mistakes, they misinterpret. In this case, we have a whole series of separate confirmations that the intelligence, or the information, that Hamas was planning something at or around the day when we’re speaking of, is basically too strong to say that this was a failure. The Egyptians, for example, who control the southern border of Gaza, gave intelligence to the Israeli government saying that something was about to occur. And this was days before the attack actually took place.

The United States government more recently, after the attack, a congressman who’s head of the House Intelligence Committee confirmed that US intelligence had information suggesting that something was about to occur, and this was also passed on to Israeli intelligence at the highest levels. So, that was confirmed.

And the third thing I would point out, is that the Israelis, of course, have all of Gaza, or two or three sides of Gaza, completely surrounded and enclosed by electronic fences and listening and photographic devices and also have the airspace over it controlled by photographic and recognizance drones. In addition to that, the Israelis had informants of their own inside Gaza. And we have also subsequently learned that the Hamas people were actually out in the open training to do this exercise to go into the Israeli territory. So, this was quite visible, quite known to a lot of people.

So, that means, to me, that the Israeli government, for reasons of its own, decided it wanted this to go forward. And they were probably quite surprised at how effective it was. But they wanted it to go forward for various political reasons.

GR: Mm-hmm. You just mentioned a US intelligence informant. I know that Israeli and US intelligence tend to work together to a great extent and the reaction would have involved a US and possibly other members of NATO to respond in support. Assuming this was a – you know, something that was already known. A false flag, if you will. Would the US likely have been on board?

PG: Well, that’s, of course, a very good question. I would suspect this is a case where Israel would be hiding cards, would be very careful about telling the US too much. I suspect that the Israelis wanted this to kind of remain a false flag, so nobody would be accusing them of killing their own citizens, which is what occurred in this case. So, they probably wanted to be careful about who was an insider on knowing this information.

I would think that they did not share this kind of information with anyone. And they were hoping that this would spark a willingness on the part of NATO and the United States to support a massive Israeli counter-attack on Gaza which could effectively destroy the entire Gaza Strip.

GR: Does the Israeli government offer any kind of an answer to why Mossad – plus the tip from the Egyptians and from the Americans – why this would – how this would elicit a drop – a drop – in the security concerns?

PG: Yeah, no. They’ve been – that’s the one subject they’re not talking about. They’re accepting that their security people – meaning their intelligence and their military – dropped the ball on this because that’s part of the story they want to promote. But at the same time, they’re not saying, ‘Well, why were you asleep when this information was coming in from Egypt, from the United States our closest ally? And also from visual and physical observation, what was going on inside Gaza and around it and you didn’t respond to it.’

GR: Hm. The enemy in 9/11 was Al-Qaeda, okay? In this case, in the case of this recent attack on Israel, it’s Hamas. But a number of people have stated that Hamas is financially supported by Israel. Just like Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin-Laden were supported by the US as – you know, the website and, you know, other people have been putting forward, like Michel Chossudovsky. Not that people in these groups are necessarily aware of that support. Could you run down for us how Hamas’ existence, with their intense hatred and military means can actually play into Israel’s hands?

PG: Yeah, well you have to go back to about 2006 when there were elections in what we would refer to at that time as Palestine, the Palestinian Territories which consisted then of Gaza and the West Bank. There was a fiercely contested election pitting Hamas against Arafat’s group Fatah. And this was seen as an opportunity by Israel, and to a certain extent the United States, to split the Palestine political movement. In other words, cut them politically and physically in half. So, Israel basically created or was involved in the creation of Hamas, and indeed did fund it in the beginning and for quite some time thereafter to keep it as a force to oppose Fatah and keep the Palestinians from becoming unified, which the Israelis saw as a bigger threat than having them divided in two, even if the one half, Hamas, is technically – or was technically, and is technically – hostile, very hostile, to the Israeli state.

GR: Hm. So, well since we have the analogy with 9/11, or maybe it’s more like Pearl Harbor in the sense that it was foreknowledge. Do you see this strategy working the same way that the Pearl Harbor attack did or the September 11^th attack did, basically giving Israel clearance to wage a genocidal attack against the Palestinians in Gaza? Since it seemed to be – it seemed to work on world leaders, so far. Or will it be derailed at some point? What do you think?

PG: Well, that depends on how it plays out. But I think your analogy is correct. I mean, what happened at Pearl Harbor? Well, there was an attack against a United States military installation, which the US government knew about in advance, but Franklin D. Roosevelt allowed it to happen because he wanted the United States to get involved in the Second World War for various reasons. And the same thing with 9/11.

The Israelis clearly, clearly knew about what – that something was going to happen, that we call 9/11. Now whether it was involving airplanes or explosives or, you know, people still argue about that. But the fact is, that they knew about it in advance. They were set up and celebrating in advance knowing that this was going to take place.

So, they also got a benefit out of it in the same way: the United States suddenly turned from being somewhat neutral on Middle Eastern politics in a lot of ways, and became firmly an opponent to the War on Terror. The War on Terror was a war on a number of Middle Eastern states and Central Asian states, all of which were Muslim. So, this was pleasing to the Israelis. So, there are very strong similarities. This would have been a similar (inaudible) bringing the support of the Europeans and the United States and into Israel for going into Gaza and cleaning it out was probably the objective of doing what they did.

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