Before October 7, Israelis were unaware of Gaza's true economic situation ("prosperity and high-rise buildings") and Qatar's true nature ("an international Islamic jihadist terrorist stronghold") - this is how Yigal Carmon, president of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), begins his accusations against Israel's willful blindness toward Qatar's extended reach into the West. These are the arms that, in his opinion, funded terrorism and culminated in the images we saw this week of US President Donald Trump warmly embracing the Qatari Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani.
Carmon, who has been analyzing open-source Arab media for decades, became a vocal critic warning about Qatar's duplicity. Even now, he remains persistent: "Already in 2019, Netanyahu admitted in one interview that Qatari money was going to tunnels, not civilians. We knew this earlier. On the second day of the war, I was interviewed on television and said that Qatar is Hamas and Hamas is Qatar. People thought I had fallen from the moon."
Carmon says he also approached the families of hostages, asking them to stop appealing to the country that has become a mediator in the deal. He suggested that instead of making pilgrimages to the emir, Qatar should be attacked through various means. "I'm calling on all the cyber giants in Herzliya – attack Qatar's economy. There are 200,000 locals there and two million foreigners who have come to make money. The moment one central bank falls, they'll flee."
Q: The Qatari Emir tells Israeli media that the money invested in Gaza was at Israel's request, so why complain to him?
"They wanted to finance Hamas and waited for our approval to ensure they weren't added to global terrorism support lists. They asked Israel to arrange American approval for this money, and Israel did that."
Q: The Israeli government requested the money and created the pathway.
"We requested it, and they wanted it. Both things together."
Q: And now the path to returning the hostages runs through Qatar, including negotiations taking place there again these days. Perhaps we should work differently?
"We need to deal with the Qataris only through force. There's a prostitution of language here. Qatar is a mediator? They represent Hamas in talks, and the Americans are our representatives. There's no deal here, it's terrorist extortion. We must say there are no negotiations without leverage. The idea that you achieve something through appeasement is absurd. When you go to buy an apartment, you tell the owner you have three other apartments to see – even when you have nothing else to see."
While Trump works on his regional tour for American interests, including the forward base established there, Carmon dismisses claims that America needs Qatar.
He says: "The base was established when the Qataris needed the US there, when the entire Arab world was against them. This base protects Qatar, not Qatar serving American interests. The Americans could move it tomorrow morning to the Emirates or Saudi Arabia."
Carmon also disputed the entire "money buys quiet" approach that Israel and other Western countries repeatedly try to implement in the Middle East. "I once conducted a poll at our institute: who is willing to change their ideology for money? Nobody raised their hand. But everyone thinks you can buy Arabs with money because they're Arabs. That's racism. The truth is that in the end, it's the Jews who get bought."
Blindness and frustration
Carmon's deep frustration over the blindness toward Qatar resurfaces throughout our conversation. "Every vegetable vendor knows what I wrote back then about Qatar, but the intelligence chiefs in Israel and America knew nothing. The third problem we wrote about at the institute is that people here didn't know what Hamas is, and we wrote and published everything about their ideology.
All of this was available to our intelligence, too. But what was the difference? We believed what they said. And what do senior IDF officers say? Terrorism grows where there is poverty. That's stupid. Terrorism is the result of ideological intellectual elites, while all poor people think about is bringing food home."
Regarding Trump's tour, Carmon said we should look at it globally due to its influences on the entire region, not just Israel. "It seems he's becoming a promoter of jihadist Islam in the world. He forced a ceasefire on the Indians against Pakistan, and they immediately declared victory. He'll do the same to us. He's bringing disaster to the world."
According to him, "Trump no longer talks about the word 'peace' and has replaced it with the word associated with him, 'deal.' Instead of fighting evil, jihad, terrorism, extreme Islamism – we have a deal. It's not that he lacks values; he thinks the world consists of interests, and for everyone to be happy, everyone needs business. But you need to recognize who they are and the evil. You can't ignore ideology."
Regarding reports of direct communication between the US and Hamas, Carmon said: "We were defeated. What defeated us on the battlefield was that Hamas fought from within its population contrary to international law and sacrificed it. What defeated us diplomatically was Netanyahu's cooperation with Qatar in building Hamas's power, and his inability to act against them for fear they would expose his connections with them."
Carmon has very harsh accusations against Netanyahu regarding Qatar. With documents he claims are authentic, despite many questions about their reliability, he alleges Qatar transferred tens of millions of dollars to Netanyahu in recent years.
"Bibi deceived his camp. These people are patriots, fighters. And he pretended to be a nationalist, went with the enemy, and collaborated with Qatar. Netanyahu will face a test in legislation that Knesset members from his party are trying to advance, to declare Qatar an enemy state. He will fail this test too, because he doesn't dare do anything against Qatar since before the war."
"Why aren't they suing me?"
At MEMRI, they published documents purported to be part of the "Rabnew" documents, showing how Qatar invests money in world leaders, including Netanyahu. "The documents I published, according to which senior Qatari government officials ordered payments of tens of millions of dollars to Netanyahu, are not evidence in themselves, but they are grounds for investigation, which wasn't opened despite my transferring the material to the Attorney General and State Attorney in December 2023.
"However, while the documents themselves aren't sufficient evidence, Netanyahu's behavior toward Qatar is that of a captive, hostage, and collaborator. He's afraid to take any action against them. By doing so, he's preventing the release of the remaining hostages," Carmon said.
"They're suing Moshe Ya'alon because he quotes from these documents. So why isn't Netanyahu suing me? It's inconceivable that I would spread a horrible libel about the prime minister and not be sued. Netanyahu's actions to transfer money to Hamas through Qatar also violate the 2016 Counter-Terrorism Law. It's a criminal offense."
As of this time, the Prime Minister's Office had not responded.
