Follow Steve Postal: @HebraicMosaic
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As Israel is still trying to rescue hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7, Qatar is reportedly taking a smaller role as mediator, with Egypt now picking up the slack. As Qatar continues to harbor the terror group Hamas, mixed messages about the future of that relationship abound. Wall Street Journal reported that Hamas is contemplating leaving Qatar. Then, Qatar said that Hamas will remain in the country so long as the terror group remains “useful” in negotiations. And then, Turkey Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan stated that he didn’t think either Hamas or Qatar wanted to part ways.
Regardless of the future of the Qatar-Hamas relationship, Qatar continues to show it is not an honest broker in securing the release of the hostages. Like Qatar’s statements shortly after October 7, Qatar continues to show itself as bigoted against Israel and the Jewish people, and yet another prominent voice in the jihad that is Hamas’ (and the Palestinian Authority’s) raison d’être. For example:
Qatar Promotes Violence Against Israel
This month, Al-Jazeera published a video from Hamas of an ambush of Israel soldiers. The video also called for Muslims to rise up against Israel in jihad.
In March, the Qatari daily Al-Watan published a poem by a Palestinian columnist calling for the Palestinians to execute another October 7th-like attack on April 7 in Tel Aviv.
In January, journalist Abdullah Al-Amadi, formerly an advisor to Qatar’s Minister of Education and Higher Education and the deputy-editor of the daily Al-Sharq, called for “…a second, third and tenth Al-Aqsa Flood, which will frighten it [Israel] and cut it down to size, for what was taken by force will only be restored by force.” The previous month, Al-Amadi had called to “liberate all of Palestine from the Zionist-Crusader enterprise” and “purge it of all the filth and contamination of the sons of Zion.”
In December 2023, a journalist in Qatar’s Al-Watan implored Arabs to “[t]each your children that this is a war of the Quran against the Talmud,” and that war against Israel was necessary “even if it is at the expense of feeding our children.”
Various Qatari newspapers ran a number of political cartoons during the course of the Hamas-Israel war glorifying Hamas’ missile attacks on Israel and fantasizing about Israel’s destruction. One political cartoon in the Qatari daily Al-Watan showed a Palestinian trying to push Israel into the sea, but is prevented by “silence, negligence, condemnation and other factors.”
Qatar Continues to Praise Hamas’ October 7 Attack
In January, Al-Jazeera published an article by Bassem Na’im, a member of Hamas’ political bureau and formerly a health minister in the Hamas government, where Na’im called the October 7 attack “heroic” and “a scaled-down model of the final war of liberation and the disappearance of the Zionist occupation.”
The Qatari press also gushed praise on Saleh Al-Arouri, one of the masterminds of the October 7 attacks after he was assassinated by Israel in January 2024. Various Qatari outlets described him as “a daring fighter,” “a hero of the resistance,” “a great national leader,” and of course, a “martyr.”
Qatar Promotes Baseless Libels Against Israel and the Jews
This month, Qatari representative to the Arab Parliament, Shura Council Member Essa bin Ahmad Al-Nassr, stated flatly that “there can be no peace or negotiations with the Zionist entity,” because Judaism condones “deception, the violation of agreements and lies.” He added that “[t]hey only accept one thing, killing” and that “they are the slayers of the prophets.” Finally, Al-Nassr stated that Hamas’ October 7 attack would bring about the “annihilation of the corruption that the Zionist entity has spread…”
In March, Qatar’s state run media Al-Jazeera spread the false libel that the IDF raped a Gazan woman during its war against Hamas. This libel ran on the media outlet for over a day. A Jordanian reporter who previously had worked for Al-Jazeera admitted that the story was false, and stated that “the woman who spoke about rape justified her exaggeration and incorrect talk by saying that the goal was to arouse the nation’s fervor and brotherhood!”
Also in March, Al-Jazeera spread another false libel that the “Israeli settlers [were] storm[ing] Al-Aqsa [mosque in Jerusalem] under the protection of the Israeli police,” when in fact the footage they ran showed Israeli police forcibly ejecting an Israeli from the grounds of Al-Aqsa.
Qatar does not have Israel’s best interest in mind during its tenure as hostage negotiator. Over nearly seven months since October 7, Qatar continues to espouse the anti-Israel, anti-Jewish vitriol that it did right after October 7, and even before. Israel should fire Qatar from its job as negotiator, and re-evaluate its relationship with the country in a post-war Gaza. The United States should also significantly scale back its relations with Qatar as well, and do more to promote and expand the Abraham Accords.
