Despite the presumed murder of more than 31 of the roughly 134 hostages remaining in Hamas captivity and the continued refusal of Hamas to free any more, the Biden administration nevertheless continues, embarrassingly, to thank the Islamist, terror-sponsoring Gulf state of Qatar for its "efforts" since October 7.
In December, US Vice President Kamala Harris thanked Qatar's Emir, Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani, "for his efforts in securing a deal between Israel and Hamas that provided an extended pause in the fighting which resulted in the release of more than 100 hostages, including Americans."
At the end of January, Secretary of State Antony Blinken also "expressed gratitude for Qatar's indispensable mediation efforts, especially since October 7... The leaders reaffirmed the strength and importance of the U.S.-Qatar bilateral relationship in promoting regional security and stability, founded on a history of over 50 years of close cooperation."
Why does the Biden administration continue to grovel to Qatar? For decades, Qatar has cultivated a close relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist movement whose motto is: "Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope." Qatar is the main financier of Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, to the tune of up to $360 million a year. Qatar is the home of Hamas' leadership and, with the blessing of the US, is literally funding the murder of Jews. Qatar is supportive of both al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
In the United States, Qatar has become a pernicious influence. It funds several dozen schools from New York to California and has spent more than $30 million on them. The funds are distributed through Qatar Foundation International -- founded in 2012 in Delaware. The Foundation is a US-based subsidiary of the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, a not-for-profit organization established in 1995 by the Emir of Qatar and led by Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, mother of the current emir of Qatar. Its purpose is "advancing the vision of Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser and the vision of Qatar Foundation of connecting cultures and advancing global citizenship through education."
"The Qatar Foundation gave $30.6 million over the past eight years to several dozen schools from New York to Oregon and supporting initiatives to create or encourage the growth of Arabic programs, including paying for teacher training, materials and salaries. The funding came through Qatar Foundation International, the foundation's U.S. arm," the Wall Street Journal wrote in 2017.
On its website, the Foundation claims that its goal is to fund the teaching of Arabic at K-12 levels and to have students become "more informed, productive, and compassionate citizens of a globalized world."
Qatar, however, which funds terrorism and forms of modern slavery, is anything but "compassionate."
Qatar's royal family "runs a sharia state, where homosexuality is punishable by death, women are severely restricted in their liberties and foreign workers are treated like indentured labourers, stripped of their rights and forced to work in highly dangerous conditions," the Guardian wrote in 2014.
According to Oren Litwin, writing in National Review in 2018, the school curriculum that Qatar sponsors in American schools, is rife with anti-American and anti-Israel propaganda:
"Al Masdar, for instance, is QFI's flagship curriculum project. It offers lesson plans and resources about countries all over the Middle East. Unsurprisingly, the most flattering collection is about Qatar. One resource offered is even titled: 'Express Your Loyalty to Qatar...'
"Other lesson plans contain anti-Semitic and anti-American material, particularly several lessons produced by the Zinn Education Project, which claims to promote a revisionist 'people's history.' These include 'Greed as a Weapon: Teaching the Other Iraq War,' which examines the 'greed' of the corporations ostensibly responsible for the Iraq war in order to 'feast on Iraq's economy and "Whose 'Terrorism'?" which questions the definition of terrorism, creating scenarios for students to discuss — for example, if 'Israeli soldiers taunting and shooting children in Palestinian refugee camps, with the assistance of U.S. military aid" should be considered an example of terrorism."
Qatar also funds the education of American K-12 teachers. According to the Lawfare Project:
"In June 2019, Duke University held an immersion program for teachers of grades 6-12 titled 'Dimensions of the Middle East.' This teacher training program aimed to train 40 teachers hand-selected by QFI, which provided more than $111,000 in funding...Candidates for this program – teachers from school districts ranging in location from North Carolina, Illinois and Virginia – first had to commit to QFI that they will create and submit a Middle East curriculum based on the content provided. Apparently, '[a]n internal copy of the training agenda suggests an extreme bias in favor of Islam and Sharia law, and against Israel.' In fact, the curriculum appears to minimize and downplay, if not outright ignore, the history and contributions of non-Muslim people (including Jews and Christians) in the Middle East."
The bias mentioned above is unsurprising: Until his death, the Qatari royal family housed the late Sheikh Al-Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, who was banned from entering the US. He called for the destruction of America and for the annihilation of the Jews. In its Education City in Qatar, the Qatar Foundation opened the Al-Qaradawi Centre for Islamic Moderation and Renewal, the aim of which, according to Al-Qaradawi, was to "serve as a bridge between the Islamic world and the West and East, by means of cultural and ideological activity... the Centre will help teach non-Muslims the truth about Islam, in addition to disseminating a proper understanding of Islam and its values."
The Al-Qaradawi Centre, according to MEMRI, is "part of the long-established relationship between Al-Qaradawi and the Qatari royal family".
Qatar's influence, however, is most profound in US university education. According to a recent report, "Networks of Hate: Qatari Paymasters, Soft Power and the Manipulation of Democracy":
"[T]he State of Qatar contributes more funds to universities in the United States than any other country in the world, and raw donation totals omit critical, concerning details about the nature of Qatar s academic funding. For instance, Qatar concentrates its donations within a contained number of elite U.S. universities to maximize its influence. This targeted approach suggests that strategic motivations for instance, to advance Qatari state interests influence the Qatari strategy, rather than pure philanthropy."
Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, who is the chairwoman of the Qatar Foundation and therefore instrumental in spreading Qatari soft power, appears to deny the Hamas October 7 massacre. In November, she appeared to be saying that Israel had fabricated the footage of October 7, saying:
"We have seen, during the Gaza war, how artificial intelligence is used to make up stories and fabricate incidents, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, to block, images, and video excerpts that show the atrocities perpetrated by the Israeli occupation forces, against the people of Gaza and the West Bank."
Earlier in November, she implied that Israel has been making up its own history:
"For decades, we have witnessed Israel spreading fabricated historical narratives, which were refuted by many historians, including Israeli ones. These narratives have taken over the world's collective mind, and if someone dares to debate any Israeli narrative, he is cast aside, having been accused of antisemitism, which in itself, is another problematic narrative. By 'Semitism,' they mean Jews, having taken a monopoly on the Semitic race, which they attribute to themselves, while denying [its application] to other nations, which speak semitic languages, like the Arabs, the Assyrians, and the Chaldeans."
Qatar actively exports its ideology to the rest of the world through Al Jazeera, Qatar's television network founded in 1996 by Qatar's Emir, Sheikh Hamad ibn Khalifa Al Thani. The Lawfare Project characterized the network in a memo in 2020 as "one of the most influential Islamist extremist propaganda outlets in the world... essentially an arm of the Qatari government." Sheikh Al-Qaradawi would broadcast his sermons and his weekly show, 'The Guidance of Islam," on the channel, which he used, among other things, to advocate suicide bombings. Al-Qaradawi praised Qatar for its role in spreading his teachings.
Most recently, in October, the Biden administration had to ask Al Jazeera to moderate its coverage of the Hamas-Israel's war because of the way that the channel is inflaming public opinion against Israel.
"Turn down the volume on Al Jazeera's coverage because it is full of anti-Israel incitement," US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly told the Qataris. According to Axios, "Blinken didn't give any examples of the heightened rhetoric he asked to be dialed back," but his appeal appears to have had little effect as Al Jazeera continues to air inflaming anti-Israeli rhetoric. On January 9, for instance, Al Jazeera aired an interview with Palestinian Ambassador to Nigeria Abdullah Abu Shawesh in which he denied the events of October 7:
"All the lies spread by Israel, like the rape of women... the killing of civilians, the beheading of 40 babies... All these lies were spread, first and foremost, by Benjamin Netanyahu, during his conversation with the U.S. president... We have a feeling that this criminal country might behead the [corpses] of children that it stole from the graves, and then present them as evidence, or that it will burn children and Palestinian corpses to present them as evidence in the coming days."
Al Jazeera also does not bother to tone down its anti-American rhetoric. On January 24, for instance, Al Jazeera aired an interview with, ironically, a professor at Columbia University, Joseph Massad, who told the network in Arabic:
"[T]he U.S. was -- and still is – a settler colony, that sanctifies white supremacy over the rest of the people. Therefore, there is a kind of fusion between the U.S. and Israel. Israel reminds it of how things were in the United States in the past."
Qatar reportedly also targets American lawmakers who disagree with its agenda. Fox News recently reported that Qatar hired an American company, Global Risk Advisors, founded by Kevin Chalker, an ex-CIA employee, to "discredit Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., and other lawmakers who oppose Hamas and its parent organization, the Muslim Brotherhood" because of their efforts to ban the Muslim Brotherhood.
According to a secret document, produced in 2017 by Global Risk Advisors, titled "Project ENDGAME":
"An attack on Hamas is an attack on Qatar. An attack on the Muslim Brotherhood is an attack on Qatar... Qatar's Enemies Must Be Identified."
According to Fox News:
"The 'Project ENDGAME' proposal also laid out a media strategy for Qatar to advance its agenda. 'Many news organizations won't publish ENDGAME content, so Qatar's media's assets play a critical role.' Some of the alleged Qatari media assets listed in the document are The New York Times, Middle East Eye and The Intercept."
Senator Ted Cruz told Fox News in January:
"The Qatari government spends uncountable billions of dollars promoting and even funding the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and other terrorist groups. They have either bought or intimidated huge parts of Washington, D.C., into silence. It's not at all surprising they would consider the few remaining outspoken opponents of the Muslim Brotherhood in Congress to be Qatar's enemies. It is long past time for the U.S. to reevaluate the U.S.-Qatari relationship,"
While the US continues to encourage Qatar to boost its international profile through its double-dealing hostage mediation, Hamas continues to hold the hostages captive in Gaza, where they are subjected to deprivation, hunger, torture and sexual abuse. The US could end this hostage crisis tomorrow by putting actual pressure on Qatar, especially by threatening to cease using Al Udeid Air Base and by designating Qatar a state sponsor of terrorism. Y
Yigal Carmon, the founder president and co-founder of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), wrote on November 6, 2023:
"In the so-called negotiations to free the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, Qatar is serving Hamas. In fact, Qatar is Hamas and is not an honest broker. The hostages guarantee Hamas members' lives; thus, they aren't interested in releasing Israeli hostages, just Americans ....
"How can these American hostages be freed? Certainly not by pleasing the Qataris, who are demanding, and receiving, constant praise from the Americans.
"The release of the American hostages will be achieved in precisely the opposite way: through pressuring Qatar....
"Qatar has been playing a deadly double game with the U.S. for many years. It supports all Islamist terrorist organizations (ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Taliban, Hamas, and Hezbollah). Worst of all, in 1996, it hid future 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) in Doha, and when the FBI came to arrest him, informing only the Qatari Emir, KSM disappeared within hours. Richard Clarke, adviser to two U.S. Presidents, attested to this in his book and in the media.
"Many Americans believe that they owe Qatar for its hosting of the U.S. CENTCOM base. The truth is precisely the opposite: It is Qatar that owes the U.S., for locating this base there. Without this base's presence in the country, Qatar would disappear within less than a week – its neighbors would eat it up.
"A single statement by a U.S. Department of Defense official, about relocating – or even considering relocating – this base from Qatar to another country that is not a state sponsor of terrorism is all it would take to get the American hostages released. Even indicating that the U.S. has other options besides Qatar would do it....
"Qatar is extremely and incredibly sensitive to being exposed in any way as a terror-sponsoring state.
"Qatar knows what it would mean for it to be defined as what it is: It means being wiped off the map. Qatar supports Hamas, but it will not commit suicide for it. Show Qatar where this support is taking it, and it will bring about the release of the hostages – because Qatar is Hamas's lifeline and Hamas will do Qatar's will.
"Just one demonstration in front of the Qatari Embassy, with posters stating that Qatar is a state sponsor of terrorism, will prompt Qatar to get the American hostages released."
Instead, in 2022, Biden officially designated Qatar as a major non-NATO ally, and in January 2024, "quietly" entered into an agreement with Qatar that extends the US military presence in the terror-supporting Gulf state for another 10 years. This agreement needs to be immediately rescinded.
Meanwhile, Qatar has shown its true face -- the one that is visible to all that bother to look: At the 2024 Munich Security Conference, Qatar called for an immediate ceasefire, "without preconditions," thereby showing that the hostage negotiations that it was supposed to broker were mainly about saving its client, the terrorist group Hamas.
It might just succeed: The US has reportedly proposed a UN Security Council resolution that calls for a temporary ceasefire to stop Israel from going into Rafah. Qatar, doubtless, could not be happier.
Robert Williams is a researcher based in the United States.
Jo Bowkett