by Dave Gordon
How does a tiny Gulf state wield such outsized power - and why does the West keep looking the other way?
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How could it not raise eyebrows? Donald Trump is set to invest some $5.5 billion in Qatar, according to news reports, and he’s just received a $400 million jet from the Qataris.
This is the same Qatar that unabashedly hosted Hamas leaders, and
funds the terror organization into the billions of dollars. It’s the
same oil-rich country that is bankrolling Al Jazeera, a channel
virtually synonymous with Jihadist propaganda, and that is also being sued for having alleged terror ties. To top it off, Qatar’s Deputy Prime Minister has a history of pro-Hamas tweets.
Yet, if Qatar’s place in the world could be described as a Facebook relationship status, it’d be “It’s complicated.”
Complicated, indeed. After all, Qatar has announced that it is no
longer playing the role of mediator between Israel and Hamas, and that
it is closing the terror group’s offices within its borders. The country the size of Connecticut has also invested $50 million in pro-Trump American media Newsmax
in 2019 and 2020. It gave the green light to thousands of fresh kosher
meals being provided to Israelis during the 2022 World Cup in Doha,
which now hosts a recently opened Jewish center.
Additionally, Qatar also houses Al Udeid, the largest U.S. military
base in the Middle East with 10,000 troops, a sign of cooperation that
arose after the U.S.’s Saudi military base was shut down.
“It’s a massive amount of money that they have spent on an air base,
that America got for free. And what they have done through this direct
foreign direct foreign investment, is they have effectively convinced
American decision makers, Congress people, the White House, to look the
other way,” says Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
In an exclusive interview with this author, Schanzer described the
country of 330,000 citizens as “this weird place” that, by his
calculation, has “invested $150 billion to $300 billion in the United
States’ influential spheres” — which has been revealed in detail lately
by The Free Press.
In 2023, The New York Daily News reported that Qatar invested advertising contracts
and sponsorships for A-list media and entertainment outlets such as
Foreign Policy, VOX, Sundance, and Buzzfeed. $5 million was given to the
L.A. Mayor’s Fund, and $20 million for the Nixon Foundation, and the
Endowed Journalism Fellowship for the Carter Center. The “Qatari
influence ecosystem” expands its reach to think tanks, influencers, PR
firms, lobbyists and universities, and all of this “has effectively
advanced the virulently antisemitic and anti-Israel views of the Al
Thanis.”
With roughly 10-12% of the world’s energy resources, the Qataris can
“do whatever they want, and they do. They have bought off so many levers
of power that it makes it virtually impossible for the state to fight
back,” Schanzer warns.
Qatari tentacles have taken hold in Canada, too. In August 2021,
Canada and Qatar signed a Defence Cooperation Agreement (DCA), providing
a framework for joint defense activities. In May 2024, both countries
signed a Memorandum of Understanding to establish an annual bilateral
political consultation mechanism, further formalizing their commitment
to deepening ties.
Qatar is Canada’s fourth largest merchandise trade partner in the
Gulf. Between January and July 2024, bilateral trade totaled $193.72
million, with notable Canadian exports including aircraft ground
trainers, nuclear reactor components, and pharmaceuticals.
Major Canadian companies such as Bombardier, SNC-Lavalin, and CAE,
have a presence in Qatar, and joint ventures are active in various
sectors. Qatar Energy has entered into agreements with ExxonMobil Canada
for LNG exploration licenses off Newfoundland and Labrador. Canadian
healthcare institutions, such as SickKids and Accreditation Canada, have
established partnerships with Qatari organizations.
Meanwhile, France received a $11.5 billion investment from Qatar, of which a fraction is transparent, according to a report by The Counter Extremism Project (CEP)
last year. The Qatari government owns some $30 billion in French
assets, such as luxury hotels in Paris, Cannes, and Nice; a stake in the
French brand, LVMH, the Printemps department stores, and the majority
of the shares of Paris Saint-Germain.
Qatari investments have secured nearly $2 billion over the past fifteen years in the UK.
Schanzer states:
You could argue they’re the world’s largest political
hedge fund. They are hedged across a wide range of political causes,
political parties, lots of the United States, swaths of Europe, swaths
of the Muslim world. They are hedged across all of it. What does that
enable them to do? Access everywhere.
That includes as much the halls of power in Washington and London, as with leadership of the most infamous terror groups.
Schanzer likens Qatar to the Mos Isley cantina scene from Star Wars.
“I mean, you will see Taliban, you’ll see Hamas, you’ll see al Qaeda,”
but he believes the country is uninvolved in the dirty work of actual
attacks. Schanzer also stresses that Qatari officials “hang out with
Hamas people” in Turkey. To Western leaders, the cover story goes
something like this: “it gives us the ability to speak to these bad
actors,” but Schanzer isn’t buying it.
It’s all about influence, and part of the hedge fund deal is to buy
as much of it, in as many ways, in as many countries, as possible.
Qatar has its hand in billions of dollars in donations to institutions of higher learning, as well as ties to US teachers’ unions and grade schools.The Middle East Forum just recently released a deep dive report of Qatar buying influence in elite institutions.
In a bygone day, the financial network of alumni used to line the coffers; now it’s “sovereign wealth.” And for good reason.
Schanzer asks: “If you can get a ten million dollar check from
sovereign wealth, why do you want to go around asking for $10,000, in a
laborious process that may yield you less money over a longer period of
time?”
The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism & Policy (ISGAP)
and the US Department of Justice have since 2012 worked jointly to
examine the unlawful money trails flowing between foreign governments
and donors, and American universities.
Their 2019 report discovered that billions of dollars of Middle
Eastern donations – predominantly Qatar – had not been reported to the
Department of Education, even though it was required by law.
The ISGAP 2024 report revealed that between 2001 and 2023, the
Qataris donated $4.7 billion to US academia, including the largest
direct foreign donation to any university, that of $1.95 billion to
Cornell.
Other elite schools receiving nine or ten figure donations include:
Carnegie Mellon, Harvard, MIT, Texas A&M, Yale, and Johns Hopkins.
According to the Department of Education, Georgetown University received more than $870 million in gifts and contracts from Qatar since 2005.
This is just what is publicly known.
Although, there are some universities that have now cut ties, such as
Texas A & M. And of late, Medill School of Journalism at
Northwestern severed their relationship with Al Jazeera.
Those billions, meanwhile, have helped rev the engine of campus
antisemitism in North America, in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023 terror
attacks in Israel. The institutions receiving heavy donations “feel less
responsive to the alumni networks that are talking with disapproval,”
said Schanzer.
Administrators who were able to connect the dots, he said, “kept
their hands folded, quite content with the money that’s coming through”
lest the purse strings be not so coincidentally snipped.
Combined with the encouragement of leftist tenured professors, and
radical campus groups bought and paid for by extremist elements, the
malignant hate was given free rein to metastasize.
Given these red flags, the American government still isn’t paying
close enough attention to the stranglehold Qatar has on US interests,
Schanzer believes.
“I think that we should be heavily monitoring and restricting their
investment in the United States. We should be far more critical where
they spend their money abroad,” Schanzer states.
The U.S., he says, needs to “turn the screws” and remove itself from
the al-Udeid Air Base, revoke Qatar’s status as a major non-NATO ally,
force al Jazeera to be recognized as a political threat the same way as
Russian and Chinese propaganda, send Hamas officials to the U.S. to
stand trial, sanction Qatar, and revoke the visa waiver program that was
recently introduced to Qataris.
Much to Schanzer’s consternation, he warns, “we’ve not held them to account. Not once.”
Dave Gordon is a writer in Toronto. His work can be found in Jewish News Syndicate, National Post, Globe and Mail, BBC News, New York Times, Washington Times, and many others. He is author of three books and editor of eleven.
Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/qatar-the-real-face-of-the-snake/
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