By Henry Srebrnik, [Winnipeg] Jewish Post
Qatar…home
of Hamas leaders, Al-Jazeera, host of soccer’s 2022 World Cup, and wealth
beyond measure. And everyone’s favourite centre for “negotiations” to end the
war Hamas unleashed on Israel a year ago. It’s become everyone’s go-to country,
a veritable “light unto the nations.”
However, as
the 1946 song “Put the Blame
on Mame” has it, in a different context, of course, “That's the story that went around, but
here’s the real lowdown” …
about this duplicitous Persian Gulf emirate.
Even before
the Gaza war began, there was an upswing of commentary celebrating a
shift in the policies and behavior of Qatar: away from promoting and
subsidizing radical Islamist groups, and towards “deconfliction” and
moderation.
Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the country’s emir, has
been basking in the glow of international approval, depicting the country as a
global influencer and peacemaker. The Qataris want to make themselves
indispensable.
It plays into Doha’s ongoing attempts to create an illusion
of rebranding as a moderating actor in the Middle East and beyond, pushed by
various propagandists in the West on Qatar’s payroll, including more than a few
American university centres and departments awash in Qatari money.
The emir and other officials spent two days in Canada Sept.
17-19, meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and cabinet ministers. The
Gaza war was on the agenda, of course. Indeed, Jewish-Canadian leaders urged
Trudeau to criticize him over his patronage of Hamas. But being able to tap
into Qatar’s wealth via business and trade was more likely on Trudeau’s mind.
Qatar has one of the highest per capita incomes in the
world, at $110,000 a year. And while its total population is some 2.7 million,
most of these are guest workers, including European lawyers and consultants at
the top of the scale, and at the bottom South Asian labourers. Only some
313,000 are native Qataris, the ones who benefit from the riches it derives
from the sale of oil and gas.
The Peninsula, an English language daily newspaper published
in Doha, ran an article on the occasion of the emir’s visit by noting the expanding
trade and investment cooperation between Canada and Qatar, especially with the
signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in June between the Qatar
Financial Center and the Canada Arab Business Council, a non-profit
organization that aims to enhance trade and investment relations between Canada
and the Arab world.
The MoU “aims to establish an integrated framework for
cooperation and coordination in specific sectors through joint initiatives and
the exchange of information and expertise, with a focus on stimulating growth
and promoting innovation in areas such as financial services and professional
business services.” Ahmed Hussen, Minister of International Development
participated in a signing ceremony with Lolwah bint Rashid Al-Khater, Qatar’s
Minister of State for International Cooperation.
More than 9,000 Canadian expatriates live in Qatar, working
in Canadian and Qatari companies and institutions. From January to July, Canada
exported goods valued at $103.45 million to Qatar, while Qatar’s exports to
Canada amounted to $90.27 million.
There is also a partnership in academic programs, as the
University of Calgary has been in Doha since 2006, offering a Bachelor of
Nursing program, along with the College of the North Atlantic, which
transformed into the University of Doha for Science and Technology. Furthermore,
there are several Doha-based schools that offer Canadian curricula.
In their meeting, Sheikh Tamim expressed his aspiration to
work with Trudeau to advance their bilateral cooperation across multiple
sectors in order to “contribute to enhancing regional and global peace and
stability.” Bilateral relations between the two countries were discussed,
especially in the fields of investment, economy and international cooperation, “in
addition to developments and situations in the Gaza Strip and the occupied
Palestinian territories.”
Qatar has been very successful in its efforts to shape
public opinion in Canada, as well as in the far more important United States.
The amount of money that Qatar has poured into universities, schools,
educational organizations, think tanks, and media across America, and the
number of initiatives that Qatar uses to influence American opinion, is
overwhelming.
According to a 2022 study from the National Association of
Scholars, Qatar is the largest foreign donor to American universities. It found
that between 2001 and 2021, the petrostate donated a whopping $4.7 billion to
U.S. colleges. The largest recipients are some of America’s most prestigious
institutions of higher learning. They include Carnegie Mellon University, Ivy
League Cornell University, Georgetown University in Washington, Virginia
Commonwealth University, and Texas A & M. These schools have partnered with
the regime to build campuses in Doha’s “education city,” a special district of
the capital that hosts satellite colleges for American universities. (Texas
A&M decided earlier this year to shutter its branch campus in Qatar.)
Georgetown University in Qatar, for instance, was hosting the
“Reimagining Palestine” conference Sept. 20-22. The event engages scholars,
experts, and the public “in timely and relevant dialogues on globally
significant issues,” according to a description of the gathering. One of the
speakers, Wadah Khanfar, “was active in the Hamas movement and was one of its
most prominent leaders in the movement’s office in Sudan,” the Raya Media
Network, a Palestinian outlet, tells us. In the months following Oct. 7, the
campus has hosted a variety of seemingly anti-Israel events.
Since 2008, Qatar has donated nearly $602 million to
Northwestern University, whose journalism school is ranked as one of the best
in the world, to establish a school of journalism in Qatar. The Northwestern
University campus in Qatar and Qatari broadcaster Al-Jazeera in 2013 signed a
Memorandum of Understanding to “further facilitate collaboration and knowledge
transfer between two of Qatar’s foremost media organizations.” Are
Northwestern’s interests really aligned with Qatar?
Qatari state-financed entities also often fund individual
scholars or programs in the United States without official disclosure or being
directly traceable to a government source, thus avoiding public scrutiny. For
example, Ivy League Yale University disclosed only $284,668 in funding from
Qatar between 2010 and 2022. Researchers at the Institute for the Study of
Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) in a report released in June, though,
found that this amount reflected only a small fraction of the money and
services the university and its scholars had in fact received over that period.
The most common channel for hard-to-track Qatari support for Yale came from
individual research grants originating from the Qatar National Research Fund,
and their report found 11 Yale-linked QNRF grants which came to at least
$15,925,711.
Recent research from the Network Contagion Research
Institute indicated that at least 200 American universities illegally withheld
information about approximately $13 billion in Qatari contributions. Also,
according to the report, from 2015 to 2020 institutions that accepted money
from Middle Eastern donors had on average, 300 percent more antisemitic
incidents than those institutions that did not.
Overall, the report found that “a massive influx of foreign,
concealed donations to American institutions of higher learning, much of it
from authoritarian regimes with notable support from Middle Eastern sources,
reflects or supports heightened levels of intolerance towards Jews, open
inquiry and free expression.”
Much of Doha’s engagement with the world is run out of the
Qatar Meeting, Incentive, Conference and Exhibition (MICE) Development
Institute (QMDI), which promotes Qatar as a good place for business. The annual
Doha Forum gathers major policymakers from around the world.
Qatar’s influence-buying strategies are a textbook example
of how to transform cash into “soft” power. The relationship between one of
Washington, D.C.’s top think tanks and Qatar, for example, began in 2002, when
the emirate underwrote a Doha conference featuring then Qatari Foreign Minister
Hamad bin Jassem Al Thani and former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk, at
the time the director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings.
(Hamad oversaw Qatar's $230 billion sovereign wealth fund until 2013.) In 2007,
Brookings followed up by opening a centre on Doha. It didn’t end well. In 2021 the institute
ended its relationship with Qatar amidst an ongoing FBI investigation.
Still, Washington treads carefully when it comes to
criticizing Qatar. It’s not just about money. After all, the Al-Udaid Air Base
is home to the U.S. military’s Central Command (CENTCOM), and the country is
just across the Persian Gulf from Iran. In fact, Washington’s relationship with
Qatar is so close that in 2022 the White House officially designated the
emirate a “major non-NATO ally.” The Qataris, realizing that their very
existence would be threatened were the U.S. to relocate its CENTCOM operations to
the UAE or Saudi Arabia, in January hastened to nail down the agreement for
another decade.
Yoni Ben-Menachem, a senior researcher at the Jerusalem
Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, told the Jewish News Service (JNS)
that the Gulf country is more dangerous than Hamas or Hezbollah since it is
extraordinarily wealthy and thus in a position to influence U.S.
administrations.
Qatar has for many years been involved in financing the
campaigns of the Democratic Party, he claimed, “especially Hillary Clinton’s
campaign” in 2016. He added that former U.S. President Bill Clinton is known to
have flown to Qatar to bring back suitcases full of cash.
According to Jonathan Ruhe, director of foreign policy at
the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), Qatar has portrayed
itself as “indispensable to U.S. interests in the Middle East, including
negotiations with the Taliban, reconstruction aid for past Gaza conflicts, and
building the massive Al-Udeid base for U.S. forces.”
Yet although it hosts the Pentagon’s regional command, Qatar
has long supported terrorism. For decades, it has opened its doors to Islamist
terrorists, Taliban warlords and African insurgents. Doha housed the Taliban’s
political office before that group returned to power in Afghanistan in 2021.
Beginning in 2012, the Israeli government allowed Qatar to
deliver cash to Gaza. Over the next nine years, Qatar provided $1.5 billion.
Prior to the outbreak of the present conflict, Doha subsidized Hamas to the
tune of $360 million to $480 million a year. With one third of that money,
Qatar bought Egyptian fuel that Cairo then shipped into Gaza, where Hamas sold
it and pocketed its revenue. Another third went to impoverished Gazan families,
while the last third paid the salaries of the Hamas bureaucracy.
The leaders of Hamas, including Khaled Mashaal and the late
Ismail Haniyeh, who was chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau until
assassinated by Israel in July, have been regular guests in Doha, living in
luxury. (The emir sat in the front row with mourners during Haniyeh’s funeral
in Doha.) Qatar has defended Hamas’s presence in the country.
“This was started to be used as a way of communicating and
bringing peace and calm into the region, not to instigate any war,” Prime
Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani told U.S. Secretary of State Antony
Blinken last October. “And this is the purpose of that office.” Blinken seemed
to buy this. At a press conference in Doha in February, he asserted that “we’re
very fortunate to have Qatar as a partner.”
As far back as 2007, when Hamas seized control of Gaza,
Qatar recognized that “adopting” the group would be a worthwhile opportunity:
connections with Hamas in Gaza grants Qatar influence and status in the Middle
East and beyond. In addition, they bolster the popular Arab perception of Doha
as working for the Palestinian cause. In 2012, the emir became the first head
of state to visit Gaza, pledging $400 million to Hamas. At the same time, the
Qataris became the exclusive mediators between Israel and Hamas.
The U.S. has accused the Qataris of harboring members of
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC). But at the same time the
Qataris are an important intermediary between America and Iran. Doha has
enjoyed good relations with the Biden administration, which it helped in the
American hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan three years ago.
While organized as a private company, the Al-Jazeera
television network is the voice of Qatar’s regime. Founded in 1996 and financed
by the then-emir of Qatar, it has described terrorist attacks that killed
Israeli non-combatants as martyrdom operations and even posted articles
describing Israel as “the Zionist entity.” For years, Al-Jazeera aired all of
Osama bin Laden’s speeches. The late Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yusuf
Al-Qaradawi was based in Doha and for years hosted a prime-time program on the
network. The war on Israel was declared on Al-Jazeera by Hamas military
commander Muhammad Deif last October 7. Its operations in Israel were finally
terminated by Jerusalem in May.
Qatar has been using the immense wealth it has accumulated
to turn Al-Jazeera into an international media conglomerate, spreading Muslim
Brotherhood propaganda, Hamas’ original sponsor, on a global scale. The Muslim
Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 by the cleric Hassan al-Banna as a
reaction to his perception that the Muslim world had become week in relation to
the West. The royal family of Qatar has since been using the Muslim Brotherhood
to minimize political opposition against them. In exchange for allowing the
Brotherhood to use the country as a base for its international operations, the
Brotherhood makes sure that there is no political threat based on organized
religion against the Qatari monarchy.
A major shock to Qatar’s economy occurred when some Gulf
Cooperation Council members -- Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab
Emirates -- imposed an embargo on Qatar from 2017 to 2021. The reason for the
embargo was Qatar’s support for the Brotherhood.
Qatar owns other news media that are equally awful. The
London-based daily newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi in June published an article
entitled “War Criminal Blinken Wages Diplomatic Campaign to Eliminate
Palestinian Resistance and Buy Time for Israeli War in Gaza.”
Qatar is not a neutral agent, despite its attempts to
portray itself as such. Time and again, it has supported the region’s most
radical nations and paramilitaries, all to the detriment of American and
Western interests. Its malign influence activities the United States reflect
the broader issue of foreign manipulation in America’s political landscape.
“Qatar has been playing a dual role since the beginning of
the Gaza war. On the one hand, it is a well-known supporter of Hamas, and even
finances it with a lot of money, and on the other hand, it is trying to help in
the deal for the release of the Israeli hostages,” remarked Dr. Udi Levy, a
former senior official of Israel’s Mossad spy agency in April. But the U.S.
relationship with Qatar will continue as long as the American government finds
it useful in the on-again off-again negotiations to have Hamas release the
remaining Israeli hostages.
