Pegasus software is heavily regulated. Sales are made only to state actors and require approval from the Israeli government. The judge found that the technical evidence submitted by Amnesty was insufficient – indeed, it was practically nonexistent – and extremely vague.

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There is a wealth of information pointing to the real reason for Amnesty's campaign against the Israeli company, and it offers indications of the depth and breadth of Qatari information warfare techniques.

To see the full picture, we need to go back to the death in October 2018 of former Saudi intelligence officer, government spokesman, and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Whatever the circumstances of his demise, which were never fully resolved, in life, Khashoggi was a follower of the Muslim Brotherhood. That organization is staunchly opposed to any hint of normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel, does not care for many of the internal reforms associated with Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman's "Vision 2030" plan, and criticizes Riyadh's involvement in the war in Yemen beside that country's internationally recognized government and in opposition to the Qatar-backed Houthis.

Nor were Faqih's ideas mere theoretical constructs. He is said to have maintained contacts with al-Qaeda since the late 1990s and was added to its list of affiliates by both the United States and the United Nations.

Omar Abdulaziz worked with Khashoggi prior to the latter's death on a project called the "Beehive," which consisted of "electronic bees," or bots, that would target pro-Saudi government social media accounts. In essence, it was an information warfare technique designed to demoralize supporters of the crown prince, distract from their attempts to engage with Westerners and sow confusion among any external observers, who might come to believe that these "bees" represented an official ideology, contrary to the government's claims.

The initial funder for this and other projects was supposed to be Saudi royal Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who briefly hosted Khashoggi and other regional opposition members on a station in Bahrain before being shut down. After Alwaleed's assets were frozen in the course of the 2017 corruption probe, Khashoggi purportedly turned to Abdulaziz's Qatari backers for financial support. Their arrangement involved an assurance that Khashoggi's column at the Washington Post would consist essentially of copy-pasting Qatar Foundation International material and delivering Qatar's perspective on the crown prince and on regional issues.

Most of Khashoggi's plans were realized eventually and mysteriously came together posthumously.

Khashoggi was reportedly in the process of trying to unite the various Saudi opposition camps with Faqih's assistance, but his efforts to bring together anti-crown prince factions had not fully materialized at the time of his death.

Another of his projects was a think tank, Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), which was ostensibly aimed at promoting democracy in the Middle East. In fact, it was meant to function essentially as a uniting of Islamist, pan-Arabist, leftist, and opportunist factions against traditional monarchies and other governments. The object was to put pressure on those governments by accusing them of human rights abuses, often in a misleading manner.

Faqih and others with terrorist links, such as Saudi al-Qaeda preacher Salman Ouda, who was responsible for the radicalization of many young people and ultimately jailed for terrorism, were portrayed by both Khashoggi acolytes and mainstream human rights institutions as peaceful dissidents suffering at the hands of intolerant monarchies. DAWN would help to whitewash these individuals and promote their causes in the West.

Following Khashoggi's death, his projects came to fruition thanks to the heavy assistance of Abdulaziz and an assortment of Washington-savvy Qatar-backed Muslim Brotherhood supporters. In addition to the relaunch of DAWN, which went ahead despite the pandemic, Abdulaziz took the helm of the "Jamal Khashoggi Academy," an online venture aimed at outreach toward young people and modeled after a similar recruitment effort based in Qatar. Despite the innocuous name and seemingly benevolent intentions, this academy preaches a Brotherhood version of Middle East history. It is aimed primarily at idealistic young people from dysfunctional or strict Middle Eastern and North African homes who can be lured in with promises of a cause promoting freedom, democracy and liberal values.

Khashoggi's death became a rallying cry for Islamist activism. It served as a catalyst for fellow travelers who were dissatisfied with the Saudis as well as for people looking for ways to do business with such factions, both in the United States and in other countries where such views were on the upswing.

Abdulaziz, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and others sued NSO for supposedly playing a part in Khashoggi's death, and an unrelenting campaign against the Saudi crown prince and the Israeli software company followed. Amnesty International and other human rights organizations played a key role in supporting these accusations.

Once the Khashoggi-related turbulence died down, Amnesty applied the same method to attack Morocco, accusing Rabat of using the technology to surveil and harass a leftist journalist named Omar Radi. Radi, by his own admission, had traveled to Algeria shortly before his recent arrest, triggering scrutiny from the Moroccan security service due to the tensions between the two countries. Radi is known to hold views that are heavily backed by Algeria and other states and parties adversarial to Morocco, particularly in Europe.

The Rif region of Morocco, about which Radi has written, has a history of defying central authorities and experiencing tensions with the government. However, under King Muhammad VI, the situation changed significantly. The king has invested a great deal of time and resources in the region and has traveled there for pleasure, even without security.

There is believed to be a great deal of foreign interference and astroturfing of otherwise peaceful protests in the Rif region related to general economic issues. Radi's activity and frequent visits to an unfriendly state naturally drew suspicion.

Further research not included in Amnesty files shows that Radi may have been working as a paid agent of a foreign government. This raises two issues. First, if Radi was indeed an intelligence operative, he would be legitimately considered a security threat to Morocco, and the government would be fully within its rights to use either Pegasus or any other means to surveil him as a suspected spy. The fact that "human rights activists" are frequently on the payroll of foreign states to demonize their own governments is an issue that human rights organizations do not address adequately.

The second issue is that Amnesty must have known about these allegations and elected not to address them, possibly because they contained a modicum of truth. Indeed, at least 17 of Amnesty's partner outlets in the mainstream Western media, which shared the NGO's report, did not do even a perfunctory independent investigation of the allegations, and Amnesty's own attempt was less than vigorous. This is exactly what happened with the Khashoggi matter: Qatar, Turkey, and other beneficiaries of the publicity fallout were not only never questioned but directed and to an extent even dictated the narrative.

If so, Amnesty showed consistency in echoing Qatar's political line and defending rogue intelligence officers such as Khashoggi, foreign moles, spies, and agents of influence. The organization essentially served as an agent of intelligence agencies and not as an independent human rights monitor.

Finally, the recent "Deepfake" scandal exposes the depth of Qatar's influence over human rights organizations and understanding of what catches their attention, and it offers clues to Qatar's overall information warfare infrastructure. The scandal erupted over the discovery that many of the articles submitted to a variety of conservative outlets criticizing Qatar and Turkey were published under assumed names by nonexistent "personas" created, presumably, by the UAE, which is Doha's and Ankara's archrival. Significantly, the person making this revelation was Marc Owen Jones, a British professor specializing in outing Saudi and Emirati bots. As it happens, Jones works in and for Doha. He has never questioned or outed Qatar-backed bots or other cyber warfare activities.

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As it turned out, many if not most of the articles were plagiarized from real work submitted and even published by writers specializing in the area, including at least one by this author. Ben Minick, a veteran journalist who also noted the similarity between his oeuvre and the articles, pointed out the convenience of the Qatar-based professor's having helped to "uncover" this story, which may well have been Qatar's doing in the first place. It is in line with Qatar's consistent accusations that its regional rivals, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, are guilty of hacking, while Doha itself is being sued for illegal penetration and distribution of personal and professional data.

The point raised by Minick was driven home by further reporting on the issue. A pro-Palestinian couple that is suing NSO for having been used to surveil them found themselves the subject of a fake persona who was contributing to well-known English-language Jewish publications. The convergence of unsubstantiated allegations adds to growing concern that both the systematic allegations of surveillance by ideologues sharing anti-Israeli pro-Islamist views and the proliferation of plagiarized articles under assumed names may be a long-term, well-planned disinformation campaign that effectively illustrates the infrastructure and broad reach of Qatar's information warfare.

UPDATE: Omar Radi has been arrested on charges of rape and receiving funding from a foreign agent.

This article was first published by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

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Dershowitz begins by duly admitting that his visit was offered and paid for by the emir. That may not be a reason to reject a visit, but it is certainly a reason to ask tough questions and to remain skeptical throughout. The article is peppered with disclaimers about how "everything should be verified." Why, then, write an opinion piece, which is essentially an argument exculpating Qatar and laying blame on its Gulf neighbors, if the information on which this argument rests is unverified?  Is it not, then, in essence the knowing peddling of likely false information under the approval of Dershowitz's name?

First, Dershowitz states that the attempted shuttering of Al Jazeera is an attack on free speech. That is rather a surprising argument about a media entity connected to government funding – essentially, Qatar's Pravda –  which spreads disinformation about Israel and Jews, the United States, and Qatar's regional rivals. It has promoted Islamism and in Arabic, called for the bombing of Saudi and UAE airports. In essence, it has promoted and supported terrorism, hosting the Islamist Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual pillar of the Muslim Brotherhood. Shutting down adversarial propaganda is not a violation of freedom of speech any more than stopping any other active measures by foreign intelligence is.

Second, Dershowitz claims that Qatar's hosting of Hamas was in response to a request by the United States. That is simply not true. Under the interpretation of events most favorable to Qatar, the small state, which was trying to play off its bigger, stronger neighbors, tried to maintain ties with the full spectrum of regional actors, including, initially, Israel, and later Hamas. There is no denying that Qatar once hosted former Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Mashaal. This story is not new. Qatar's links to Hamas go back many years.

However, if then-U.S. President Barack Obama had asked Qatar to host and support Hamas, that was news to Congress, which investigated these connections at the time and heard from experts who recommended sanctioning Qatari individuals and entities. Likewise, Qatar has a long history of support for the Muslim Brotherhood.  The Brotherhood was designated a terrorist organization by a number of Middle Eastern countries, including Egypt, and was acknowledged to have generously supported various terrorist organizations, including Hamas. Its Western shill organizations – the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America and others – were unindicted co-conspirators in a series of trials against Islamist charities that laundered donations supporting terrorism.

Those in the foreign policy establishment who have posited that the Gulf standoff over the Muslim Brotherhood has been largely manufactured are right about one thing: The Muslim Brotherhood's connections with Qatar did not happen overnight.  This relationship has been an ongoing source of tensions within the GCC prior to the escalation six months ago. What changed? The Saudi leadership, which has had enough of the Islamist threat in the region, and has decided to boldly confront the problem and anyone connected to that problem. Part of the issue is that Hamas and other such organizations have been funded by Iran, which became increasingly aggressive and expansionist over time. UAE and others in the past have traded with Iran, despite tensions and differences; however, with its march through Iraq, involvement in Syria, completion of a land corridor to Syria, and the arming of the anti-Saudi Houthis in Yemen, Iran is now perceived as a direct existential threat – which was not nearly the case even two years ago.

Finally, without citing any specific evidence to that effect, Dershowitz paints the Saudis as the "not necessarily the good guys" in the story. He claims that the other Gulf states do far more business with Iran and that due to the blockade, the destitute Qatar has had to increase trade with Iran. The first claim is hard to dispute because Dershowitz cites no numbers or specifics of such trade. The second issue is laughable. Qatar is a wealthy country which has not been devastated by the blockade. Moreover, it has continued trade and good relations with Morocco, has grown even closer to Turkey, continues its strong relationship with the United States, housing a large U.S. military presence at Al Udeid Air Base, and is a significant resource for Japan, China, and other Asian countries, among other partners. It is not desperation for trade partners that drove Qatar into the arms of Iran, but rather, perhaps, Iran's far more aggressive stands and more extensive military preparedness than Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia's push to have Qatar choose between the two regional rivals and cut off Iranian proxies backfired.

Intellectual honesty demands healthy skepticism in the pursuit of truth. Professor Dershowitz's oeuvre has these qualities; there should be more of both in his future writings about Qatar.

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