Millions of viewers tuned into the Formula One Qatar Grand Prix earlier this month, where drivers throttled around a circuit adorned with advertisements for Qatar Airways. But the motor race was not the only major event Qatar recently sponsored. While the Qatari regime reveled in the Grand Prix, terrorists on its payroll were busy at work murdering more than 1,300 innocent civilians in Israel. For Jews, it was the darkest and deadliest day since the Holocaust.
Qatar is a shockingly wealthy emirate of only 300,000 citizens. It has managed to amass the world's fourth-highest per capita GDP, build a glimmering capital in Doha, take major investment stakes in global brands, and even host a World Cup. At the same time, it is a shockingly brutal monarchy, headed by a royal family known for its deep ties to radical Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood. It is also, by far, the largest funder of the Hamas terrorist organization.
For decades, Hamas has been a personal project of the Qatari regime. The terrorist organization receives more money from Qatar than from any other source. Hamas has used those funds for more than 15 years to build a potent infrastructure of terror that reached a bloody crescendo on Oct. 7, when its terrorists, flush with cash from the sheikh in Doha, streamed into southern Israel, butchering children, raping women, while decapitating and burning bodies in the process.
Intelligence agencies are still discerning Qatar's role in Saturday's attacks, but as Benjamin Franklin's old saying goes, "He that lieth down with dogs shall rise up with fleas." And for the better part of this century, Qatar has been sleeping with dogs.
The emirate has also been feeding and sheltering them. Despite their claims that they represent the working people of Gaza, Hamas senior leaders have long since left the strip. Today, terrorists like Hamas chair Ismail Haniyeh, the mastermind of the recent attacks, live like kings in opulent homes in Doha, where the Qatari regime provides them carte blanche to orchestra mass murder.
Qatar couples its financial support for terror with a sophisticated propaganda machine. State-run Al Jazeera has been instrumental in spreading anti-American and antisemitic content around the world. It cravenly exported the rhetoric of Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda to global audiences.
Qatar has gone to great lengths to whitewash these crimes, using strategic investments to distract from its abysmal human rights record. In fact, many Westerners may not realize the extent to which Qatari petrodollars have penetrated their daily lives. In Western capitals and boardrooms, Qatar is keenly interested in cultivating a slick, modern image. It invests millions in influence campaigns abroad with one hand, and with the other, it is cultivating a global ecosystem of radical Islamic terrorists, who desire to kill citizens of those same Western nations.
In the United States, U.K., and Germany, Qatar has invested billions in many of the countries' most beloved and famous institutions.
Until earlier this summer, Qatar Airways sponsored Germany's most popular soccer club, Bayern Munich. The Qatar Investment Authority purchased stakes in industrial giants like Volkswagen and British Airways, as well as global strategic Financial Institutions like Deutsche Bank and Barclays. In Manhattan, the Qataris own a stake in the iconic Empire State Building. Much of what Americans and Europeans consider their own now runs through Doha.
But Qatar is a country of contrasts, and every good-faith effort to bolster its standing in the West comes with a strong dose of subterfuge. Nearly every one of its soft-power investment campaigns has been marred by bribery, blackmail, and intimidation. In many cases, Qatar has taken aim at the cherished liberal value of free expression, using its economic weight and proclivity for blackmail to silence Westerns who dare to critique the emirate.
Look no further than Qatar's signature soft power achievement: the World Cup. FIFA didn't award Qatar the World Cup because of its rich football tradition. Qatar got the competition after it hired black hat hackers—many U.S. trained—to breach the personal computers of key FIFA officials who had criticized Qatar's bid. These agents collected damaging information to use as leverage over these officials, many of whom rescinded their earlier criticisms of Qatar and voted to award it the Cup.
Qatar can no longer speak in a modern Western voice, while actively supporting medieval actions and ideologies. Qatar must decide: Does it forswear terror, cut off the spigot to Hamas, and extradite Hamas' leadership to the West for trial? Or does it maintain course, underwrite global terror, intimidate, and hack Western officials, and host a few big-ticket sports competitions as distractions?
All those in the international community, especially liberal democracies, have a role to play in Qatar's decision. They must make it abundantly clear to the decision maker in Doha—disavow Hamas and stand on the right side of history, or be relegated to the ranks of other adversaries of progress and stability: Iran, Venezuela, Syria, and North Korea.
The international community should tell Qatar what President Joe Biden said to Hamas, "Our hearts might be broken, but our resolve is clear."
Ron Prosor is Israel's ambassador to Germany and former ambassador to the United Nations.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
