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As Qatar Emir Visits Canada, Just What is Doha Up To?
By HENRY SREBRNIK (Sept. 19/24) 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.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.
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The Yeshiva issue that won’t go away
A backroom deal to gut oversight of private schools – specifically to bail out yeshivas that fail to teach basic subjects, condemning tens of thousands of Hasidic students to illiteracy and choking off the chance to participate in broader society – is coming back to haunt its architects. New York’s Governor and the Legislature likely assumed they secured a political win that would quickly fade from public attention.
They were wrong.
The state was forced to justify its actions before a judge in a pair of hearings in April as part of a lawsuit challenging the rollback that was filed last September. As a longtime attorney, I can tell you that the language of small-minded politics translates poorly to the courtroom. The state’s lawyers were forced to advance arguments that legitimize educational denial and forced insularity. And in doing so, they mar our state’s tradition of protecting individual rights.
Renowned education attorney Michael Rebell was leading the suit on behalf of Hasidic and Haredi students who have been harmed by the dismantling of standards. The plaintiffs argue that the state abandoned its obligation to ensure all children receive a “sound basic education,” a constitutional floor for schooling recognized by the Court of Appeals.
To justify the evisceration of standards, the state claims our guarantee of a sound basic education does not apply to students of nonpublic schools. It strikes at the foundation of New York’s educational system, which was codified in the State Constitution’s Education Article through a Constitutional Convention more than 130 years ago.
The Article’s framers made their intention clear: to ensure all children are prepared for engagement in civic life, whether they attended a public or nonpublic school. As one delegate of the Convention avowed, “there can be found no man in this Convention who will say that there are children of the State that ought not to be educated.”
The principle is simple: While parents may choose religious or private education, the state still bears responsibility for ensuring all children receive the basic tools necessary to function as citizens. But to defend last year’s rollback, state lawyers argued that parents are “free to opt out” of public schools, even if the alternative schools deny students the tools to understand the world around them. The state’s position, taken to its logical conclusion, permits nonpublic schools to teach children anything, or nothing at all.
This becomes even more troubling as New York expands support for nonpublic education. Through its recent opt-in to the nonprofit scholarship tax credit program, New York will see billions more dollars in donations toward private school tuition. Establishing baseline standards for curriculum is essential for producing an informed citizenry — that becomes significantly more difficult when our tax system props up institutions without meaningful oversight.
The state’s arguments also undermine New York’s reputation as a national leader in protecting individual rights.
State officials have aggressively defended voting rights protections, reproductive freedom, and anti-discrimination laws against legal attack. As a rogue White House tramples upon our rights, our Governor, Legislature, and Attorney General have gone to great lengths to fortify our protections.
Yet in this case, the state was effectively arguing that tens of thousands of children can be carved out both from the guarantee of a right and the opportunity to participate in society. State lawyers even contended that students denied a basic education possess no actionable deprivation of liberty or property rights.
This is a glaring departure from the contentions our state makes for the preservation of individual liberties against violation from the government. How could we credibly argue, for example, that immigrants should be able to sue ICE agents over due process rights if students can’t sue the state over their constitutional guarantee to an education? It’s a slippery slope: Deny one group legal protection against harm from the state, and you imperil the sanctity of all those protections.
The lawsuit over last year’s budget deal is still ongoing. A decision may come down any time now, but certainly is likely before the end of the year. An appeal by the losing party is all but certain. That means New York’s lawyers may continue to be forced into defending arguments that sanction students’ educational deprivation and societal isolation, and, in the process, irreparably damage our status as a bulwark for individual liberty.
The political architects of this deal may have hoped the issue would quietly disappear. Instead, the consequences are only becoming harder to defend.
The post The Yeshiva issue that won’t go away appeared first on The Forward.
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The Netherlands will return to Eurovision after boycott over Israel
(JTA) — The Netherlands will return to the Eurovision Song Contest, overriding a broadcaster that withdrew over Israel’s actions in Gaza.
The Dutch organization that oversees public broadcasting, the Nederlandse Publieke Omroep, said on Wednesday that it will take over the country’s entry to Eurovision after Avrotros, the broadcaster that usually takes part in Eurovision for the Netherlands, pulled out of the 2027 event in Burgas, Bulgaria.
Avrotros said last month that it withdrew because the event “can no longer be considered neutral,” citing Israel’s inclusion amid “the severe humanitarian suffering in Gaza and the ongoing restrictions on press freedom.”
Avrotros dropped out of the most recent contest in May 2026, and the Netherlands did not participate after the NPO ruled out identifying another broadcaster. Spain, Ireland, Iceland and Slovenia also boycotted this year’s Eurovision. Israel’s participation in the world’s largest music contest has become a source of intense controversy, sparking mass protests. The contest drew 35 million fewer viewers this year.
For the next Eurovision, NPO is assigning the broadcaster NOS to provide coverage of the event and an “independent team of experts” to select the Dutch act.
“We understand that participation in the Eurovision Song Contest evokes mixed feelings in the Netherlands,” said Jet de Ranitz, the chairman of the NPO’s executive board. “We have explicitly asked the [European Broadcasting Union] to once again make the unifying character of the festival an important part of the event, in recognition of a time of geopolitical unrest, war, and polarization.”
The NPO added that the EBU, which owns the contest, has “taken significant steps regarding the rules of the Eurovision Song Contest.” The EBU introduced changes in August that included barring countries involved in armed conflict from hosting the competition. It also made adjustments to the voting process after accusations of politically motivated voting.
Avrotros said the new rules were not sufficient to ensure that Eurovision remains “independent and neutral.”
Martin Green, the director of Eurovision, said in a statement that the contest was “delighted to welcome the Netherlands back” in 2027.
Ireland is set to boycott Eurovision again in 2027 after RTÉ, the national broadcaster, said last week that its position “remains unchanged.”
RTÉ cited “the appalling and ongoing loss of lives in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis there which continues to put the lives of so many civilians at risk,” adding that it was “deeply concerned by the continued denial of independent access to international journalists to the territory.”
Spain could also stay out of Eurovision next year. José Pablo López, the president of Spanish broadcaster RTVE, announced at a Senate hearing on Tuesday that he supported a continued boycott, saying it was “painful that Israel continues to participate.”
Meanwhile, Belgium confirmed its participation despite calls for a boycott by its public media unions.
“Participation is in no way an endorsement or normalization of what is happening in Gaza and the rest of the world,” said Frederik Delaplace, the CEO of the Flemish broadcaster VRT. “We do note, however, that the EBU is no longer shying away from these difficult societal and geopolitical issues.”
The post The Netherlands will return to Eurovision after boycott over Israel appeared first on The Forward.
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Police label shooting in Belleville, Ontario, a hate-motivated attack against the Jewish community
(JTA) — TORONTO – The shooter who opened fire on a Belleville, Ontario, synagogue Sunday evening committed an anti-Jewish hate-motivated offense, according to the city’s police chief.
“This was a deliberate attack directed at members of the Jewish community during one of the holiest observances of the year,” Belleville police chief Murray Rodd said at a press conference on Thursday, adding that the shooter had combustible materials, including gasoline, in his truck.
He said the threat posed to Jewish communities required increased alertness on the part of Canadian law enforcement. Police stationed outside the Sons of Jacob synagogue had engaged in a shootout with the assailant, Sean Ward, that prevented him from entering the building as members of the congregation were about to begin Yom Kippur services.
Rodd noted that the force had a long-time relationship with the Jewish community that involved “our proactive pre-positioning of on-duty staff” to ensure the safety of Jewish worshippers. “One of the messages to my colleagues around the province and the country is: It is clearly time that we all be proactive.”
Rodd said the efforts of Constables Jeff Smith and Michael McCurdy prevented the attacker from using the explosive materials he had with him, as well as a “significant” amount of ammunition.
Smith, who was stationed outside of Sons of Jacob to provide security, remains in critical condition but is making progress, according to Rodd. Ward later died of his wounds from the exchange with police.
“[The shooter] had the means, the mechanism, and the motive to perpetrate a greater act. The only thing that stopped entry into the synagogue to execute the intent were the two officers,” said Rodd. “He was equipped with other weapons and the means to carry on a gun battle for a long period of time.”
The CBC reported that police obtained a video of the attack in Belleville, a town over 100 miles east of Toronto on the north shore of Lake Ontario. On the video, Ward is heard shouting. Police report he is saying, “You are going to die for the Jews.”
Rodd confirmed that before Ward targeted the Sons of Jacob, he scoped out the synagogue grounds. “We know that there was a reconnaissance in the presence of our officer, but nothing that would have alarmed him or would have triggered him to be on the defensive,” Rodd said.
Ward was a former member of the Canadian Armed Forces. Rodd noted.
“He was shot multiple times in multiple places,” Rodd said. “He has everything extending from fractures to wounds, and is still bearing shrapnel.”
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