Whitewashing Qatar: The reporting from Doha is disappointing - opinion

• Published date: 13 April 2024
• Author: DAVID M. WEINBERG
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

The vast majority of this funding has been invested in building terror attack tunnels and manufacturing rockets and missiles for war against Israel

But you would not know this from reading The Jerusalem Post last Friday. Instead, 7,000 words of reporting from the capital of Qatar by this newspaper's editor-in-chief would have you believe that "the humanitarian aid" and financial support Qatar has provided to the Gazans is "commonly misinterpreted."

Qatar's billions for Gaza, according to the Post, "often labeled as aid to Hamas," has in fact "been actions taken at the request of the Israeli and US governments, targeted specifically at the poorest families in Gaza" and "meticulously coordinated" with the IDF Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories to reach them.

All this is designed, so Qatar says, to "foster dialogue rather than support Hamas ideologies and actions."

The Post even offers its readers a lengthy primer in Qatari mathematical chicanery, to wit $10 million a month flows from Doha to poor families in Gaza, $20m. a month is dedicated to purchasing fuel for Gaza, and $35m. is transferred monthly to pay the salaries of supposedly more acceptable Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in Gaza (none of whom actually work in government in Gaza).

The Post does not bother to do the elementary math which would expose the millions more lavished on Hamas's military.

In the massive array of Hamas subterranean terror attack tunnels in Gaza that the IDF has entered over the past six months, Israel has found thousands of pieces of weaponry, technological hardware, and documentary evidence of Iran's material supply networks and military training regimes for Hamas, and Qatar's multi-layered funding channels for Hamas.

This includes full access to Doha's banking and investment sectors for globally sanctioned Hamas operatives and money men, as well as luxurious refuge for Hamas leaders.

But you would not know this from reading The Jerusalem Post last Friday. Instead, according to the Post articles, Qatar is a benevolent and honorable country "striving for a larger purpose on the world stage."

Qatar actively backs terrorist groups across the Middle East and around the world including the Taliban, Hezbollah, Al-Nusra (al-Qaeda) in Syria, the Houthi in Yemen, Al-Shabab in Somalia, ISIS, Iran's main Shi'ite proxies in Iraq, terrorist groups in Libya, and Algeria. It also funds radical Muslim Brotherhood groups in Europe and America.

BUT YOU would not know...