By MEMRI –
A few days ago, Qatari Ambassador to Washington Meshal Aal Thani, the brother of Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Aal Thani, published an article in the Wall Street Journal claiming that Qatar is an honest broker that is a victim of a campaign of disinformation. Is that so?
What any vegetable seller in the Arab world knows, most Westerners, including their governments at the highest levels, have no clue about. One example is the role that Qatar is playing in the Arab and Muslim world.
Any Arab who hears American officials say that Qatar is America’s ally would burst into laughter – those clueless Americans, who don’t even know that Qatar is spitting in their face with wild anti-U.S. incitement 24/7 against the colonialist America of President Biden because they only watch the deceptive Al-Jazeera TV in English.
Ask Egypt, not just the rulers, but the people and journalists. Ask the Emirates, the government and people. Ask Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan. They all know that for decades Qatar has been promoting Islamist and terrorist organizations. There are lawsuits against Qatar in the U.S. and Europe in connection with its support for terrorism.
Ask David Cohen, former U.S. Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, who said that Qatar finances terrorists who live in Doha.
Hamas is not the only Islamist organization that Qatar has supported over the years.
The Aal Thani family, which rules Qatar, supported the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM).
Ask Richard Clarke, counterterrorism advisor to Presidents Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush, who revealed Qatar’s role with regard to 9/11 through its hiding of KSM, the future mastermind of those attacks, in Doha.
When the FBI came to arrest KSM, informing only the emir, within hours KSM disappeared. Clarke concludes as follows: “Had the Qataris handed [KSM] over to us as requested in 1996, the world might have been a very different place.”
Ask the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT), whose records show that Qatar finances terrorists.
The story of Afghanistan is the most telling. For years, Qatar had funded the Taliban, all the way up to their takeover of Kabul in August 2021, which involved the killing of 13 U.S. military personnel – only to be praised by the U.S. administration for its help in transferring Americans from Afghanistan to Qatar, after Qatar was responsible for the entire tragedy and the blood is on their hands.
For over a decade, Qatar funded Hamas in Gaza. For over a decade, and throughout the wars – culminating in the current one – Qatar supported Hamas’s buildup of its military force.
The U.S.’s pleading with Qatar to obtain the release of the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, instead of pressuring it to do so, shows that the U.S. government does not realize that only massive pressure on Qatar could most quickly bring the American and other hostages home.
Just one comment by the U.S. administration that it is consideirng relocating Al Udeid Air Base from Qatar (without which Qatar will cease to exist within a week) to the UAE will set the Qataris running to bring all the American hostages back home. Since when do experienced American officials conduct negotiations without power pressure on the side? It is childish and naïve beyond belief. They are unfit to handle tough challenges of state.
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Qatar is Hamas and Hamas is Qatar. Every missile, every one of the 30,000-40,000 Hamas terrorists, every drone, every motorcycle, every weapon and bullet and all the munitions, and the Gaza underground with its “metro” of, according to Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, over 500 kilometers of tunnels, are what Israel’s soldiers would face when they enter this death trap. All of this is Qatari money.
War on Israel was declared on Qatar’s Al-Jazeera TV by Hamas military commander Muhammad Deif, on the morning of the Jewish holiday and Sabbath, October 7. This amounts to a declaration of war by Qatar on Israel through Hamas. Since then, the channel has broadcast all of Hamas’s messages. Al-Jazeera in Arabic is the megaphone for all of Hamas’ messages. Worse, their reporters are going all over Israel, with Israeli press passes, and are actually spying on the IDF and passing the information on to Hamas in the form of reporting.
The female broadcasters of Al-Jazeera, pretending to be Westernized, could not hide their glee when reporting on the Hamas atrocities of October 7 – including the rape and burning of Jewish girls.
Al-Jazeera directed Hamas to special targets such as Israel’s natural gas facilities in the Mediterranean Sea, and brings experienced Arab generals to analyze the front and give Hamas their best advice based on information that Hamas does not even have. Al-Jazeera invented the whole lie of the hospital that Israel allegedly bombed, which sparked violent demonstrations across the West.
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In 2017, Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Aal Thani publicly kissed terrorist spiritual leader Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi on the forehead. This photo appeared in a paid announcement published by MEMRI in The Washington Post on July 9, 2019, that also included a quote from a video clip of that spiritual leader Al-Qaradawi saying: “Allah imposed Hitler upon the Jews to punish them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers [Muslims].”
Qatar hosted that sheikh for many years, granting him his own weekly show, Sharia and Life, on Al-Jazeera to spread his antisemitic and jihadi incitement to the Muslim masses.
For years, Qatar has been doing grave harm to the U.S. Al-Jazeera aired all of Osama bin Laden’s speeches. It allowed Al-Qaeda spokesman Suleiman Abu Ghaith to speak freely on air for 10 minutes, and to call for 12,000 mujahideen to join Al-Qaeda – two months before 9/11. In 2014, the channel allowed a pledge of allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi to take place live on air.
In Spain in 2005, Al-Jazeera correspondent Tayseer Allouni was sentenced to seven years in prison for transferring funds to Al-Qaeda – and Al-Qaeda even issued a public statement in support of him.
Al-Jazeera broadcast, live, an Iraqi sniper’s killing of an American soldier – meaning that it had to coordinate with the killer to film the killing.
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Al-Jazeera was ordered by the U.S. Department of Justice to register as a foreign agent, but disregarded that order. And when it comes to Qatar, the U.S. administration could not care less about violations of its own authority.
Honest broker, hah!
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By Yigal Carmon – MEMRI President.
https://www.memri.org/reports/qatar-%E2%80%93-enabler-islamist-terrorism-and-dishonest-broker
Hamas political bureau head Isma’il Haniya with Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Aal Thani (Source: qudspress.com)
