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On June 2, 2021, the Israeli Channel 13 aired a segment entitled Parties, lavish houses, and fancy cars: lifestyles of the children of Hamas leaders, in which the following claims were presented:

"Dollars" in this context presumably means USD.

Are these numbers accurate?

Zev Spitz
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    Can you please confirm the claim is about USD, not ILD or JOD? – Oddthinking Jun 07 '21 at 05:10
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    @Oddthinking The news presenter uses "dollars" exclusively, thus not Israeli Shekels (NIS) or Jordanian Dinar (JOD). While there are [more than 20 currencies with the name "dollar"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar), I think USD is a reasonable assumption. – Zev Spitz Jun 07 '21 at 05:18
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    Please note that we are not interested in your political opinions or promoting political propaganda. Comments should be limited to improving the questions or answers. – Oddthinking Jun 07 '21 at 19:40
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    I cannot check this on the list of the 250 richest people in the world ... it only goes down as far as 7.7 billion dollars. https://www.therichest.com/top-lists/top-250-richest-people-in-the-world/ – GEdgar Jun 07 '21 at 20:23
  • @GEdgar They're not to be found on the [Forbes billionaire list](https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/). But the Methodology section lists some reasons why they aren't, particularly: "When documentation isn’t supplied or available, we discount fortunes.". – Zev Spitz Jun 08 '21 at 05:16
  • What is your measure of confirming or denying this? Obviously they won't have submitted their tax forms anywhere public or shown where their incomes are coming from to some regulating body....so what level of "proof" will satisfy you? – Lio Elbammalf Jun 08 '21 at 17:42
  • @LioElbammalf I think a recent (preferably within 2-3 years) news piece from a media source commonly accepted as reputable (i.e. not someone who can be dismissed as "hasbara"); or something from an Arab-language source. (NB While the Channel 13 segment contains a recorded interview with a Palestinian from inside Gaza, he only represents the voice in the street.) Alternatively, a peer-reviewed academic paper. – Zev Spitz Jun 08 '21 at 20:59
  • Not all claims are worth investigating. Especially so for the one that sound very unlikely, like cats grown in a botte. More importantly, no media source can be considered proof - the only peer reviewed academic proof is that even the best journals get it wrong. – famargar Jun 08 '21 at 21:32
  • Let us [continue this discussion in chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/126261/discussion-between-zev-spitz-and-famargar). – Zev Spitz Jun 09 '21 at 10:15

2 Answers2

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As far as I can tell the only source named making claims such as these is Moshe Elad, who is identified only as a "lecturer at Western Galilee College and at Galil International Management School". I believe he is the same Moshe Elad who co-authored a "hasbara manual" in 2010. Hasbara is Israeli government public relations, so this indicates to me that Elad sees his own expertise as related to national PR.

In 2014, Elad made this claim in Tablet magazine, citing "my research," and for the New York Jewish newspaper Algemeiner, citing unnamed "Arab commentators" and "global estimates."

Here is a list of claims made by Elad and by Channel 13, respectively.

Hamas leader Algemeiner, 2014 Channel 13, 2021
Mousa Abu Marzook $2-3 billion $3 billion
Ismail Haniyeh $4 million $3-4 billion
Khaled Mashal $2.6 billion $5 billion

It should definitely be noted that Elad made these claims in the midst of the 2014 Gaza war in which Israel killed over 2,000 Gaza civilians, and the Channel 13 claim came out directly after the 2021 Gaza war which involved killing of civilians in Gaza and pogroms against Arabs within Israeli territory.

edit: In response to comments: the goal of this answer is to clarify who is making these claims and where the claims have arisen. I did not find other sources for the net worth of Hamas leaders, and I welcome such discoveries, but I believe this supplemental information by itself can help people draw a conclusion.

Avery
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    The faculty page for Dr. Elad at Western Galilee College can be found [here](https://www.wgalil.ac.il/ba/multidisciplinary/multidisciplinary_faculty/moshe.aspx). – Zev Spitz Jun 07 '21 at 01:53
  • Is this really the same claim? The numbers are way off. Which doesn't mean both sets of numbers aren't accurate; it's been 7 years since the Elad numbers. – Zev Spitz Jun 07 '21 at 05:52
  • @ZevSpitz Off with respect to what? The numbers match the original claim for the first two lines; the third one fits the two numbers for different sets of assets given by the OP. (Oh, I see: The second line contains millions in the first column, not billions. ) – Peter - Reinstate Monica Jun 07 '21 at 08:07
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    @ZevSpitz Being a billionaire in general requires some good source of either wealth or income. The channel 13 numbers for these 3 people add up to somewhere close to the annual GDP of Palestine. They can probably funnel off some aid money or some percentage of some random economic activity in Palestine into their private pockets and I will gladly believe they are millionaires but to accumulate personal fortunes in the billions seems way to much for the size and economic heft of Palestine. So these numbers are not realistic unless you can provide a source where the money comes from. – quarague Jun 07 '21 at 10:16
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    It would be useful to explain the significance of the "hasbara manual" - I'd never heard of the term before, and am still hazy on its significance in establishing anything about the source. – IMSoP Jun 07 '21 at 10:40
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    This almost feels like supporting material for the claim in the question, rather than a strong source for an answer. Hopefully more corroborating evidence can be found? – fyrepenguin Jun 07 '21 at 10:43
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    Indeed, this is too vague. The implicit claim is obviously that 'this Gaza leadership is guilty, also, of corruption and large scale embezzlement' (or where else/how is the money coming from?). The A now seconds that 'Israeli PR certainly says so, especially when spin is needed for a Chewbacca defense'? Feels for me as if you answer 'what's the source of this' — 'the unreliable narrator of the opposing side'? Please make at least more clear what you really mean with or what should follow from "should be noted…'. – LangLаngС Jun 07 '21 at 14:16
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    Therefore, as it is, this post is only doing one thing: it is providing another source of reference for an unlikely true claim. Enough of these, and there is sufficient reference material for it to become a fact by repetition. Skeptics.SE should be better. – Ander Biguri Jun 07 '21 at 17:24
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    So, in conclusion, there is no reputable source for these numbers? Just some guy claiming "research" with no sources named? – Yakk Jun 07 '21 at 19:21
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    The way I read this is "the claim comes from a guy who won't reveal his sources and who works in public relations for a country opposed to Hamas". In other words "we're pretty sure it's made up propaganda". – Owen Reynolds Jun 07 '21 at 21:35
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    @quarague Not income, only wealth. You couldn't become a billionaire from a labor based paycheck - even if you worked for 60 years without taking a day off ever, working a 10 hour day each day, you would need an average hourly wage of $5,000. There are some jobs that can pay that much for *an hour* but those hours you get paid for require many hours of prep work, so the actual rate is much lower. You simply can not possibly become a billionaire through wages alone. – corsiKa Jun 07 '21 at 22:54
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    @quarague There's certainly [precedent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasser_Arafat#Financial_dealings) for this sort of thing: "in 2003, a team of American accountants—hired by Arafat's own finance ministry—began examining Arafat's finances. In its conclusions, the team claimed that part of the Palestinian leader's wealth was in a secret portfolio worth close to $1 billion." This, in spite of the fact that the Palestinian GDP was far lower at the time. – Zev Spitz Jun 08 '21 at 05:11
  • @corsiKa I'm not exactly sure what you mean by labor based paycheck. Some sports personalities seem to make enough in wages alone (without endorsements though I would still call those closer to wages than stocks/bonuses etc.) to be able to hit billionaire status. – DRF Jun 30 '21 at 14:19
  • @DRF Exactly 2 people have achieved billionaire status off of sports - Michael Jordan and Vince McMahon, and both of these people's wealth does not come from labor. And quite simply, labor produces something - a service or a good. An endorsement is not labor because no good or service is produced. – corsiKa Jun 30 '21 at 22:57
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An article from 2014 (predating the one in Tablet by Elad) https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4543634,00.html seems to be a valuable secondary source:

In 2010, Egyptian magazine Rose al-Yusuf reported that Haniyeh paid for $4 million for a 2,500msq parcel of land area in Rimal, a tony beachfront neighborhood of Gaza City. To avoid embarrassment, the land was registered in the name of the husband of Haniyeh's daughter. Since then, there have been reports that Haniyeh has purchased several homes in the Gaza Strip, registered in the names of his children - no hardship, as he has 13 of them.

The article also mentions Mashal

In 2012, a Jordanian website reported that Mashal had control of a massive $2.6 billion, in large part deposited in Qatari and Egyptian banks. This is likely Hamas' accumulated assets from years through donations, as well as its investments in various projects in the Arab and Muslim world.

So Mashal had control of 2.6B but whether you can call that his net worth is not something I am able to prove or disprove.

chx
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    thanks for finding this, however, "a Jordanian website" doesn't seem like a reliable conclusion to me – Avery Jun 07 '21 at 21:13
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    @Avery: I mostly agree, but I'm a bit surprised to see *you* be the one to make that statement, since your answer only cites a source that you don't seem to consider reliable, and indeed, the thrust of your answer seems to be that these claims originate with that source. So this answer seems like a good rebuttal of yours, even if your answer and this one are both bad answers from a Skeptics standpoint. – ruakh Jun 07 '21 at 21:51
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    Finding reliable information on the illicit gains of the leaders of any organization is not easy, doing the same with an organization billed as a terrorist organization by many double so. Be my guest, though. – chx Jun 07 '21 at 21:57
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    "Controls" money and "owns" money are two different things. Your article seems to point out that the 2.6B would be Hamas money, or even Gaza's Government full budget, and Mashal its treasurer. – Rekesoft Jun 09 '21 at 12:19