[The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons]

Middle East ‘Ally’ Plays American Elites For Fools

For all the talk of Palestine being an “open air prison,” at least a few of their leaders have managed to live a wonderful life abroad while directing the population in Gaza to stay in their homes and be used as human shields or hiding in refugee camps as Israelis respond to the massacre of civilians from a week ago.

As their shock troops were slaughtering babies, some of Hamas leadership was staying in a luxury hotel in Qatar celebrating the largest mass execution of Jews since the Holocaust.

“Shortly after the start of Hamas’s brutal attack against Israel on October 7,” writes The Times of Israel, “a video began circulating of the terror group’s leader Ismail Haniyeh in his elegant office in the Qatari capital Doha, watching the bloody onslaught unfold on Al Jazeera and “prostrating in gratitude” with a group of other Hamas officials for the killing of over 1,300 Israelis, among them at least 1,000 civilians.

For years, Haniyeh has been rebuked by many Palestinians for leading a comfortable life away from the hardships of Gaza in the oil-rich Gulf monarchy, which offers shelter to the terror group’s leaders and an internationally recognized platform to spread its propaganda through Al Jazeera.”

If Palestine is a prison, then Hamas are corrupt prison guards from Shawshank Redemption. 

Haniyeh, the newspaper continues, “was appointed prime minister of the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip, and his wealth rapidly grew thanks to the control that he and other ministers in the Hamas government exerted over the Gazan economy and the taxes they levied on goods imported into the Strip from Egypt.

Senior Hamas figures, including Haniyeh, would levy a 20 percent tax on all of the trade passing through the tunnels, according to a 2014 report in Ynet, an Israeli news site.

A senior PA official alleged that the tunnel-smuggling market had transformed 1,700 senior Hamas officials into millionaires, according to a report in Saudi weekly Al-Majalla.”

The luxury hotel that has been serving as Hamas’ foreign headquarters was purchased by Bill Gates in 2021. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2021 that “Saudi Prince al-Waleed bin Talal has agreed to sell half his stake in Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts to co-owner Bill Gates, giving him control in a deal that values the luxury hotel operator at $10 billion.

Under terms the companies announced Wednesday, Mr. Gates’s Cascade Investment LLC would pay $2.21 billion for a 23.75% stake in the Four Seasons held by Prince al-Waleed’s Kingdom Holding Company.”

The purchase was likely part of a plan by Qatar to whitewash their support for terrorism while casting itself as an ally to the West. Along with accusations of “sportswashing” their activities to bolster those who want to destroy Israel, Qatar has been spending millions of dollars in the United States to influence politicians, mainly Democrats. 

In 2020, Qatar threw $5 million at then Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, giving him a slush fund to help him secure his standing in the City of Angels. In 2022, New Conservative Post noted that the deal with Garcetti, now Biden’s ambassador to India, appeared to be a case of “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” 

Garcetti, reported The Nation, “has been quietly aiding and abetting the Qatar World Cup in return for funding for the struggling city. In 2020, his “Mayor’s Fund for Los Angeles” accepted a $5 million donation from the Consulate General of the State of Qatar to help fight the spread of Covid-19. “This generous gift will save lives,” Garcetti said at the time. But the donation also serves the purpose of burnishing Qatar’s image while the lives lost building stadiums for the World Cup are consigned to the shadows.”

Jack Bergman, a retired general now serving in the House of Representatives, has explained in The Washington Times how our “ally” Qatar plays both sides. “While there is no doubt that Hamas could not exist without Iran’s backing — as Secretary of State Antony Blinken has acknowledged — the truth is that the brutal and depraved Hamas attacks on Israel were ultimately overseen by terrorist leaders who openly live in a supposed ally of the United States: Qatar.

Qatar has for years pursued a unique foreign policy of aligning closely with both the U.S. and our enemies. When Qatar was helping Afghan refugees escape as the Taliban violently took over two years ago, for example, the leaders who orchestrated that bloody coup did so from their haven in Qatar’s capital, Doha.

Now that it has been confirmed that Hamas has murdered and kidnapped U.S. citizens, that dual approach must end.

For two decades, our military’s most important base in the Middle East — the Combined Air Operations Center for the U.S. Central Command — has been in Qatar. Perhaps nothing better illustrates Qatar’s dual approach than the fact that our brave men and women in uniform who have served out of Al Udeid Air Base in Doha have gone on missions to combat terrorist groups funded by Qatar.

This bizarre reality has persisted because elites in America and the West have fooled themselves into buying Qatar’s narrative that the emirate’s support for terrorist groups actually benefits the U.S. — and even Israel.”

Over the past few weeks, the atrocities by Hamas appear to have awakened more Americans to the fact that many of our elites, both in universities and in the State Department, have become willing accomplices to anti-semitism. The only question left is to ask how long the American public is willing to put up with it.  

This article originally appeared on New Conservative Post. Used with Permission.

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