Qatar’s support of the terrorist group Hamas, as well as its past criticism of Donald Trump, has come under renewed scrutiny as the authoritarian state acts as the mediator between Israel and Hamas.
Qatar is being relied on to negotiate a cease-fire deal, in which innocent hostages, whether dead or alive, have or will be exchanged for as much as 50 times more Palestinians, many of whom murdered Israeli parents and their children. That same Qatari government has supported Hamas and vilified Israel ever since the October 7 massacre.
As the October 7 massacre of over 1200 Israelis began, Hamas leaders celebrated from their comfortable quarters in the Qatari capital of Doha. On that same day, the Qatari government issued a statement that blamed Israel for the massacre, writing, “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs holds Israel solely responsible for the ongoing escalation …”
.@paulrubens nailed it: #Qatar told Hamas to keep the hostages, proving it’s no friend of the U.S., Israel, or any hope for peace.
We in America can’t overlook how Qatar enables terror—it’s time to call it out.
And it’s time to #BringThemHomeNow pic.twitter.com/sI6lyvhoNW
— Jacob Baime (@JacobBaime) January 27, 2025
As the terms of the ceasefire deal have come to light, criticism has mounted for using Qatar as a negotiator. “Again, Qatar celebrates Hamas and the October 7 mass slaughter and kidnappings,” bestselling author Mark Levin commented Sunday, citing Qatar-owned media’s glorification of the terror attack. “How can these terrorist lowlifes mediate anything?”
Again, Qatar celebrates Hamas and the October 7 mass slaughter and kidnappings. How can these terrorist lowlifes mediate anything?https://t.co/5g30NDda8B
— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) January 27, 2025
Qatar’s record of promoting anti-Trump propaganda has also come under the spotlight. “The state-controlled media in Qatar, a regime that has long been the patron of radical groups, smeared President Donald Trump as a ‘Nazi’ and as a ‘vulgar’ and ‘insufferable’ person during his first term as president,” Breitbart noted.
Among the hundreds of Palestinians to be released under the deal are “three architects of the Jerusalem bus bombing on June 11, 2003, the perpetrator in a 2018 terror stabbing in the West Bank, and one of the organizers of a December 2002 attack inside the kitchen of a yeshiva, killing two students and two IDF soldiers,” the AJC noted.
Qatar’s leaders have been demanding a ceasefire within hours of the attack by Hamas. Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, in a recent interview with Israeli journalist Arad Nir, reportedly said, “We’ve been calling since, since the beginning, since October 8, that we need to get this done as soon as possible.”
“Excuse me? Get what done?” responded Daniel Rubenstein, who has served as an advisor to Israeli prime ministers Benjamin Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett. “You think that the proper response to the October 7 Massacre, while Hamas terrorists were still on the loose in Israel, was to get a deal done that would ensure that Hamas leaders would survive what they had just unleashed, that hundreds or thousands of convicted Palestinian terrorists would be released from Israeli prisons, and that Hamas’s army would remain completely intact and would be in a position to carry out another massacre at a time and place of its choosing?”
“Friends, please understand: Qatar told Hamas to keep the hostages until Hamas gets a deal that allows Hamas to remain in power in Gaza,” Rubenstein warned. “I am stunned that I have to be the one to explain this to everyone. Wake up.”
Are people under the impression that on October 7, 2023, Qatari government officials in Doha walked down the street to the office where Hamas leaders were watching Al Jazeera and thanking God for the success of Hamas’s invasion and said to them: “Guys, what you did was really…
— Daniel Rubenstein (@paulrubens) January 27, 2025
A 2022 study conducted by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) stated, “Receipt of foreign funding was associated with increased levels of campus antisemitism, and this relationship was larger when the foreign funding came from Middle Eastern/authoritarian states,” adding that a 2019 ISGAP research project “revealed, for the first time, the existence of substantial Middle Eastern funding (primarily from Qatar) to U.S. universities that had not been reported to the Department of Education as required by law.”
