https://www.frontpagemag.com/qatar-the-real-face-of-the-snake/
How could it not raise eyebrows? Donald Trump is set to invest some $5.5 billion in Qatar, according to news reports, and he’s just received a $400 million jet from the Qataris.
This is the same Qatar that unabashedly hosted Hamas leaders, and funds the terror organization into the billions of dollars. It’s the same oil-rich country that is bankrolling Al Jazeera, a channel virtually synonymous with Jihadist propaganda, and that is also being sued for having alleged terror ties. To top it off, Qatar’s Deputy Prime Minister has a history of pro-Hamas tweets.
Yet, if Qatar’s place in the world could be described as a Facebook relationship status, it’d be “It’s complicated.”
Complicated, indeed. After all, Qatar has announced that it is no longer playing the role of mediator between Israel and Hamas, and that it is closing the terror group’s offices within its borders. The country the size of Connecticut has also invested $50 million in pro-Trump American media Newsmax in 2019 and 2020. It gave the green light to thousands of fresh kosher meals being provided to Israelis during the 2022 World Cup in Doha, which now hosts a recently opened Jewish center.
Additionally, Qatar also houses Al Udeid, the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East with 10,000 troops, a sign of cooperation that arose after the U.S.’s Saudi military base was shut down.
“It’s a massive amount of money that they have spent on an air base, that America got for free. And what they have done through this direct foreign direct foreign investment, is they have effectively convinced American decision makers, Congress people, the White House, to look the other way,” says Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
In an exclusive interview with this author, Schanzer described the country of 330,000 citizens as “this weird place” that, by his calculation, has “invested $150 billion to $300 billion in the United States’ influential spheres” — which has been revealed in detail lately by The Free Press.
In 2023, The New York Daily News reported that Qatar invested advertising contracts and sponsorships for A-list media and entertainment outlets such as Foreign Policy, VOX, Sundance, and Buzzfeed. $5 million was given to the L.A. Mayor’s Fund, and $20 million for the Nixon Foundation, and the Endowed Journalism Fellowship for the Carter Center. The “Qatari influence ecosystem” expands its reach to think tanks, influencers, PR firms, lobbyists and universities, and all of this “has effectively advanced the virulently antisemitic and anti-Israel views of the Al Thanis.”