Earnest but fruitless
Regarding “Did Hamas protest against itself?” (April 9): One theory is that Hamas, noticing the earnest but fruitless search for anyone else willing to govern Gaza, is setting up a cadre of phony opponents whom the world will gratefully embrace as an alternative but who will never actually trouble Hamas’s interests or agenda.
If the protests had been serious, the argument goes, the reaction from Hamas would have been considerably more ferocious.
MARK L. LEVINSON
Herzliya
Dangerous misperception
Neville Teller’s “The Qatar conundrum” (April 7) typifies the Western, American, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s dangerous misperception of Qatar. Qatar has been playing the West for decades and no one seems to have noticed.
Qatar is an enemy of the West and Israel, as is Turkey. Since 2007, Qatar has spent $6 billion lobbying the US government, and funneling cash to American universities, with the results which we are now observing: the radicalization of American students and academia against Israel.
Qatar has given or contracted more than $5.6 billion to 61 American schools since 2007, including the Ivy League’s Harvard University, Yale University, and Cornell University, and also Stanford University.
The country has also doled out more than $243 million on lobbying efforts in the United States since 2015, with more than $16 million spent in 2023 alone.
The money has enabled Qatar to have an outsized influence in American politics and academia, efforts which have mainstreamed anti-Israel propaganda and silenced criticism about Doha’s longstanding ties to Hamas, the Iranian regime, and other terror groups.
Former US president Joe Biden and current President Donald Trump both consider Qatar a special ally, undoubtedly because the US has a huge air base in Qatar.
In a recent article, a Turkish student in Israel explained why Turkey has turned so viciously against Israel; Qatari money.
Qatari investment in Turkey tops $20 billion, and 220 Qatari companies are active in Turkey, while 727 Turkish companies are in Qatar (Hurriyet Daily News, October 2023).
Qatar finances the rabidly anti-Israel Al Jazeera, which spreads conspiracies and lies throughout the world.
Will the West wake up to this threat ? Of course it won’t. The real question is will we? Probably not while Netanyahu is running the circus otherwise known as the Israeli government.
YISRAEL GUTTMAN
Jerusalem