Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey will introduce a new generation to one of civilization’s oldest stories. Yet the tale of the Trojan Horse is not really about ancient Greece. It is about human nature.
For ten years, the Greeks could not breach the walls of Troy. So Odysseus abandoned force in favor of deception. The Greeks appeared to sail home, leaving behind a magnificent wooden horse as a peace offering. The Trojans admired it. They celebrated it. They pulled it through their own gates as a symbol of victory.
Only after nightfall did they discover what they had really accepted.
Clip from movie “Troy” on the Trojan horse
The lesson has survived for nearly three thousand years because it was never simply about a horse. It was about the danger of lowering one’s guard in the presence of an extraordinary gift.
Which brings us to a Boeing 747 from Qatar.
When Qatar offered President Donald Trump a 14-year old luxury aircraft for eventual use as Air Force One, the gesture was unlike almost anything in modern American history. The discussion quickly became political. Was it legal? Was it ethical? Should the United States accept such an expensive gift from a foreign government?
Those are important questions. But the first question national security professionals must ask is Can we trust it?
Air Force One is not merely an airplane. It is the President’s office, military command center, intelligence platform, and secure communications hub. Every inch of the aircraft—from its wiring and electronics to its communications systems and defensive capabilities—must be assumed vulnerable until proven otherwise.
Recent reporting highlighted the practical reality behind that principle. Secret service advised the president from flying on the Qatari aircraft as he left a NATO summit in Turkey. Heightened threats from the Islamic Republic of Iran on the president’s life, while he flew on a gifted plane from Qatar, another leading state sponsor of terrorism, as he departed from Turkey, an increasing radical Islamic country, demanded precaution.
None of this requires believing Qatar intended harm. In fact, that misses the point entirely.
The Trojan Horse was not a warning about any particular adversary. It was a warning about the responsibilities of those charged with protecting a nation. Their job is not to assume good intentions. Their job is to imagine every possibility before someone else does.
When Iran offered condolences after the death of former Qatari emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the gesture appeared incongruous. Iran had recently been firing missiles and drones at Qatar and across the Gulf. So why the words of consolation?
Iran was not primarily attacking Qatar as a Muslim or Arab society. It was targeting the American military presence on Qatari soil. The same pattern has extended across the region: U.S. facilities and assets in Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan, as well as American positions in Iraq and Syria, have come under Iranian attack. Recent strikes included an early-warning installation in Qatar, Patriot systems in Kuwait, a U.S. fuel depot in Bahrain and military facilities in Jordan.
That reveals the real fault line in the Middle East.
It is not simply Sunni against Shia, Arab against Persian or even Muslim country against Muslim country. It is increasingly a divide over how to handle the United States: between governments and movements determined to expel American power and those that invite it in and then seek to shape it.
Iran represents the first model. Since 1979, its hostility has been explicit. It calls America the enemy, demands the removal of U.S. forces and uses missiles, drones and proxies against American military positions. Its war is visible. It announces its contempt and fires at the flag.
Qatar perfected a more nuanced model.
Under Sheikh Hamad, Qatar financed and expanded Al Udeid Air Base, which became central to U.S. operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and across the region. At the same time, Doha built influence inside the United States, financing American university campuses, purchased entry into American television distribution, invested in think tanks and businesses, hired lobbyists and cultivated political relationships. It also hosted anti-Western terrorist groups including Hamas leaders and Muslim Brotherhood figures, and used Al Jazeera to broadcast narratives often deeply hostile to the West and its allies.
Iran attacks American power from the outside. Qatar embraces it corrodes it from within.
anti-American Iranians
Iran seeks direct confrontation; Qatar seeks leverage.Iran’s weapons are missiles and militias. Qatar’s are money, access, prestige and indispensability.
The West is naturally more alarmed by Iran’s model. And Qatar’s model is harder to confront because it arrives as partnership.
The military base protects American interests. The university campus carries a prestigious name. The investment creates jobs. Each relationship is defensible in isolation. Together, however, they create influence on a scale no tiny monarchy could achieve through military power alone.
The broader contest is therefore not between countries that love America and countries that hate it. Iran and Qatar represent different tactics of genocidal jihadists. One strategy attacks the fortress. The other purchases rooms inside it.
Iran’s war is louder. Qatar’s may prove more insidious and enduring.
The death of Qatari Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani on July 12 marks the passing of one of the most consequential – and controversial – strategists of the modern Middle East.
Qatari Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani
When he took power in Qatar in 1995, he inherited a tiny Gulf monarchy with enormous natural-gas reserves but limited international influence. By the time he abdicated in 2013 in favor of his son, Qatar had become a global financial center, media power, diplomatic broker and investor deeply embedded in the institutions of the West.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres mourned him as a “visionary and transformative leader.” The question is what he transformed and toward what end.
For most Americans, the War on Terror was fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. The enemy was imagined as something external: terrorists hiding in caves, regimes sheltering them and armies that could be defeated on a battlefield.
Sheikh Hamad developed a different model. Qatar did not physically confront the West. It enmeshed itself.
That strategy began with security. The United States and Qatar signed a defense cooperation agreement in 1992, but the relationship expanded dramatically after Sheikh Hamad took power. Qatar financed the development of Al Udeid Air Base beginning in the 1990s. After September 11, the base became central to American operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in 2003 the United States moved its regional air-operations command center there from Saudi Arabia.
Qatari military base
Thus, during Sheikh Hamad’s reign, Qatar became essential to America’s military posture even as Doha cultivated relationships with Hamas, the Taliban and leading Muslim Brotherhood figures. That contradiction was core to the strategy: become so useful to Washington that Qatar’s other alliances would be tolerated.
Qatar is Hamas’s largest and principal sponsor
At the same time, Sheikh Hamad built Qatar’s machinery of influence.
In 1996, he launched Al Jazeera, which transformed Arabic-language media and gave Qatar a powerful instrument for shaping political narratives across the region.
Beginning in 1998, Qatar also imported elite American universities into Education City: Virginia Commonwealth in 1998, Weill Cornell in 2001, Texas A&M in 2003, Carnegie Mellon in 2004, Georgetown in 2005 and Northwestern in 2008. Qatar was not merely sending students to America. It was paying prestigious American institutions to plant their flags in Doha and bind their faculty, administrators and reputations to the Qatari national project. Simultaneously, it began pouring billions of dollars into American schools and think tanks in America.
Then came direct entry into the American media market. In January 2013, Al Jazeera purchased Current TV from former Vice President Al Gore and his partners in a deal reportedly valued at $500 million. The real asset was distribution: the purchase offered access to approximately 40 million American homes, compared with fewer than five million previously.
This was not a collection of unrelated investments. It was a coherent doctrine.
Qatar hosted America’s military command structure, funded American universities, purchased Western media distribution, invested in landmark properties, supported think tanks and lobbyists, and cultivated Western political relationships. At the same time, it provided sanctuary and legitimacy to movements hostile to the West.
In 2012, Sheikh Hamad became the first head of state to visit Hamas-led Gaza and pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to the terrorist enclave. Qatar also became a home for Hamas political leaders and a major platform for Muslim Brotherhood figures.
Saudi Arabia’s role in the rise of jihadism was more direct and more visible, as fifteen of the nineteen September 11 hijackers were Saudi nationals. The West responded with armies, invasions, intelligence operations and trillions of dollars in military spending.
Qatar’s jihadism arrived differently. Not as a bare bomb but wrapped in prestige, access and partnership.
It was a velvet bomb.
Its instruments were television studios rather than training camps, endowed programs rather than militias, lobbying firms rather than armies, and investment funds rather than explosives. Qatar learned that it did not need to defeat Western institutions. It could finance them, partner with them and make them dependent, while corroding their values from the inside.
That is why Guterres’s tribute is so revealing. To the United Nations, Sheikh Hamad was the visionary builder of a modern state. To his critics, he helped perfect a model in which a small authoritarian monarchy could use money, military protection and institutional legitimacy to amplify movements fundamentally hostile to the West’s own political order.
During Guterres’s tenure, the United Nations itself has increasingly appeared less like the guardian of the postwar liberal system and more like an arena in which the grievances and ideological priorities of the Global South are directed against the countries that built and financed that system.
Sheikh Hamad set that groundwork. He understood that changing the world did not require conquering it.
It required gaining access to its command centers, universities, media platforms, political networks and international institutions—and persuading the West to welcome the process as partnership.
That is his most consequential and controversial legacy.
The latest United Nations conference on “social justice” met in Qatar – that same Qatar that supports the antisemitic genocidal terrorists of Hamas and instills their narrative into the United States and the world.
UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed pretended to reach for the moral high ground, invoking the Copenhagen Declaration and the Doha Development Agenda as the guiding stars of global fairness. She spoke of social justice, inclusion, development, and the duty to “leave no one behind.” And then, inevitably, she cited Gaza – and only Gaza – not as a lesson in hypocrisy, but as a tragedy of war that, in her telling, derailed those noble promises.
But the fact is that Gaza did not collapse because the UN’s social programs failed to reach it or from war. Gaza was the UN’s social program. For decades, the UN built and funded the schools, administered the food aid, managed the clinics, and drafted the talking points. Generations were raised under their flag of humanitarian idealism. Yet what was taught was not coexistence, tolerance, or equality. It was grievance, entitlement, and the dream of a land without Israel.
If Copenhagen promised inclusion, Gaza delivered indoctrination. If Doha promised shared prosperity, Gaza institutionalized dependency. The UN’s own agencies became the state’s scaffolding—without the accountability of a state or the moral compass of true social justice. There was never any “leaving no one behind”; there was only teaching millions that history owed them everything and responsibility was optional.
The United Nations Deputy Secretary-General mourns Gaza as proof that war has undone the UN’s human-development vision. Alas, Gaza is proof that the vision itself was hollow, or at least deeply corrupted when it came to the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs). The declarations were printed on fine paper, but the values were never applied where it mattered most. No education for coexistence. No curriculum of compromise. No inclusion for those outside the narrative.
The Copenhagen and Doha declarations were supposed to represent the conscience of human values. In Gaza, they became the cover for a project that replaced human rights with perpetual resentment. That is not social justice. That is social decay, dressed up in UN language and called compassion.
There is a growing movement around the world to label the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. It is a cause whose time has come — and whose passage is long overdue.
The Muslim Brotherhood is not merely a political or religious movement. It is the ideological parent of countless extremist groups, from al-Qaeda to Hamas. The Brotherhood’s goal has always been clear: the creation of an Islamist world order governed by sharia law and fueled by perpetual jihad. It is the intellectual engine behind modern Islamic terrorism.
Hamas — officially designated by the United States and European Union as a Foreign Terrorist Organization — is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Its 1988 charter cites the Brotherhood as its ideological and organizational source. The brutal October 7 massacre, the ongoing rocket attacks, and the indoctrination of Gazan youth into genocidal hatred all stem from this same poisonous root.
Several nations – Muslim Arab nations – understand the threat. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain have all formally banned the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist entity. So have other responsible actors in the global north, including Austria and Russia. Yet the group still finds safe haven in Qatar and Turkey — two countries that finance, arm, and politically shield Hamas.
These sponsors of Islamist militancy must not be allowed any role in Gaza’s future. To invite them into post-war planning is to guarantee the next war. As Khaled Abu Toameh says “Inviting Qatar and Turkey to play a role in the Gaza Strip means again bringing Iran in through the back door.” To empower these countries diplomatically is to ensure that peace will never take hold. The Brotherhood’s network thrives on chaos, martyrdom, and perpetual victimhood; its ideology is incompatible with coexistence or modernization.
Turkey’s first lady, Emine Erdogan, was recognized with an award by the US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO) in New York in 2022. The award was personally delivered by Ousama Jammal, a key Muslim Brotherhood figure in the US. USCMO has been accused of ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
If the international community truly seeks an enduring peace in the Middle East, it must begin with moral clarity. The Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates must be banned — everywhere. Those who fund or defend them must be excluded from the table. Only when the root of jihadist ideology is removed can the region finally begin to heal.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan shake hands. Turkey’s involvement in Gaza with Trump’s blessing guarantees future bloodshed with Israel; and the next US president may not care.
Nothing so captures the European mindset like soccer. It’s a global sport with scant appreciation in North America, but Europeans are glued to it. Consequently, soccer (“football”) matches become backdrops for activists to shout their causes, knowing that it will attract millions – or perhaps billions – of eyeballs.
It was a moment anti-Israel advocates would not pass up.
UEFA had been criticized by pro-Gazan agitators for not coming out against Israel during this war. On August 12, the day before the match, UEFA announced an expansion of its existing “support for the humanitarian efforts for children in conflict zones,” to include Gaza. The wording was careful to not criticize either Israel or Hamas, and just focused on children.
Whatever the adults waging wars think they are doing, the children are innocent.
Aleksander Čeferin, UEFA President
UEFA took an added step during the match and had nine children from conflict zones where it supports humanitarian efforts – Afghanistan, Lebanon, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, and now Gaza – unfurl a banner on the field that read “stop killing children. stop killing civilians.”
Qatar-owned Al Jazeera would use the UEFA actions to generate its own anti-Israel story.
In an article titled “UEFA unfurls Gaza-related plea banner after Palestinian tribute fallout,” the pro-Hamas media site said that the banner was all about Gaza, even when children from multiple countries participated. The article pushed a Gaza narrative with “in the wake of heavy fallout over its meek tribute to a Palestinian player killed by Israel,” it mentioned Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah who condemned UEFA on August 10 for not calling out Israel in its statement.
Al Jazeera would then manufacture history, writing “Nine children refugees from Palestine, Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Iraq carried the banner onto the field of play before the game began.” But Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Iraq are actual countries, Palestine is not. The two children from Gaza who took part in the ceremony were in Milan receiving medical treatment, not fleeing persecution “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion,” which is the definition of a refugee according to the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees. Unless Al Jazeera believes these children are being targeted by Hamas.
Just days before this incident, on August 10, Al Jazeera had some of its journalists in Gaza killed by an Israeli strike. Israel said they were legitimate targets, as they were terrorists paid by Hamas. It was shocking to all that the media company which is owned by the wealthiest regime in the world needed its journalists to make some extra coin from an antisemitic genocidal organization that is supposedly “starving,” not that the journalists were terrorists, which was common knowledge.
The Qatari propaganda company has long accused Israel of committing a “genocide” in Gaza. It claims that “Israel kills an average 28 Palestinian children daily in Gaza,” attempting to make the Arab youth the primary victims and focus of the war, and portray Israel as a bloodthirsty monstrosity. It did not inform its readers that children under 18 account for 47% of the population of Gaza, but a much lower 31% of the fatalities according to OCHA, which gets its information from the Hamas run Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza.
When further considering that many of the children between 15 and 18 years old are part of the Hamas war machine, the much lower percentage of child fatalities points to Israel’s efforts to target Gazan fighters, not children. Even Hamas admits that nearly half of all fatalities in Gaza have been fighting-aged males (49%), even though they account for just one-quarter of the population (26%).
As for the 6,000 Gazans who invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, Al Jazeera had no concern for how they treated Jewish children. The Gazans killed 38 Israeli children in front of their parents. They took the same number as hostages to Gaza. What kind of people take babies as hostages as a matter of policy?
Bibas children Kfir and Ariel, with mother, Shiri, all taken as hostages by Gazans, later returned dead in an exchange for Gazan terrorists
“Don’t kill children. Don’t kill civilians,” should be the understood motto of all civilized people and organizations. That Qatar and Al Jazeera continue to stand by Hamas after all they have done – and then attempt to misdirect the world towards Israel – makes them deeply complicit in the deaths of thousands.
Desire Doué and Ousmane Dembélé of France St. Germain lift the UEFA Super Cup Trophy, sporting jerseys embossed by their sponsor, Qatar Airways
The October 7 Hamas-led massacre by thousands of Gazans did not spark antisemitism on American campuses. It merely exposed how deeply embedded it already was. At CUNY, UC Berkeley, and Georgetown, students and professors came out to celebrate the torture and murder of Israeli victims of terror — with institutional protection, foreign funding, and a growing network of terror-affiliated faculty and student activists.
UC Berkeley protestors come for Jews
Organizations like Canary Mission have tracked and documented the alarming volume of antisemitic activity from students and professors — revealing how extremism isn’t on the fringe anymore. The Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and StandWithUs have brought lawsuits against the universities. Now, the House Education & Workforce Committee is bringing the presidents of these three universities to Washington, D.C. on July 9.
CUNY: A Campus Captured by Hate
Canary Mission has documented dozens of CUNY students and professors who:
Featured speakers from U.S-designated foreign terrorist groups like Samidoun
Praised Hamas and Islamic Jihad
Supported Intifada
Called for the extermination of Zionists and Israelis
Calls Zionists “White Supremacists”
One notable example is Nerdeen Kiswani, a CUNY law graduate and founder of Within Our Lifetime (WOL), a group which openly calls for “globalizing the intifada” and “confront Zionists” wherever they are, including their homes and workplaces. Despite – or because of – this, she was chosen as the keynote speaker for the 2022 CUNY Law commencement — a decision defended by the law school.
Professors at CUNY have supported Hamas terrorism and protect antisemitic groups like Students for Justice in Palestine. They include Saadia Toor, Eve Tuck, Danny Shaw and Lucien Baskin. They have:
Called Israelis “Nazis”
Called to “Globalize the intifada”
Posted on social media the desire for destruction of Israel
They proudly teach this in their classrooms in departments that include “Center for the Humanities,” rebranding their noxious antisemitism as a component in the fight for human rights. This isn’t just tucked into a comment during a class; there are literally classes on globalizing the intifada.
UC Berkeley: The Legalization of Hate
Influence Watch has tracked Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FLP) which was founded in the 2023-4 school year. It is a network of professors which is associated with the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) and “advocates that universities end study abroad programs with Israeli universities, and advocates that universities end disciplinary action against students involved in pro-Palestinian campus protests.” There are chapters at UC Berkeley and Georgetown, among others.
Coordinate with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)
In December 2022 – before the October 7, 2023 massacre – the Office of Civil Rights for the U.S. Department of Education (OCR) launched a formal investigation into UC Berkeley Law School over a controversial anti-Zionist bylaw adopted by several student groups in August. The groups sought to ban Zionists – individuals and groups – from campus.
Professors like Hatem Bazian are affiliated with several antisemitic and anti-Israel groups. He regularly calls out Jews and pro-Israel advocates as the leading spreaders of “Islamophobia” who are evil manipulators of Congress. He teaches courses at Berkeley on “Islam in America: Communities and Institutions” and “De-Constructing Islamophobia and Othering of Islam.” He addresses audiences and asks why there hasn’t been an intifada in the United States.
The school has been sued over its “unchecked antisemitism.”
Georgetown: Foreign Funds, Foreign Values
Georgetown – located in the nation’s capital of Washington, D.C. – is one of the most bought universities in America. It has received roughly $1.3 billion from foreign actors, with over $1 billion coming from Qatar, one of the leading sponsors of the U.S.-designated terrorist group Hamas.
Robert Groves, the interim president of Georgetown, is a regular in Qatar. Georgetown opened a campus in the sheikhdom and Groves interacts regularly with the royal family, seemingly as a conduit for influence in the nation’s capital.
Though Georgetown has a more diplomatic tone, Canary Mission has documented:
Students and guest speakers who supported Hamas and BDS
Faculty like Jonathan Brown, who have repeatedly called Israel practicing “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing.” He said Jews and Christians view the Middle East through an anti-Muslim lens but Muslims do not think of the conflict as stemming from antisemitism. It’s a remarkable dynamic considering Brown is a director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding in the School of Foreign Service and the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. The prince is a Saudi billionaire.
Georgetown has hosted a number of people with links to jihadi terrorism:
Ribhi Karajah, affiliated with terrorist group PLFP, who was convicted in 2019 for his involvement in a bombing which killed a 17 year old girl.
Georgetown professor Badar Khan Suri with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh as covered by CAMERA
Unsurprisingly, Georgetown students have rallied to the terrorist group Hamas and its supporters in the aftermath of October 7, joining in the Global Intifada against Jews.
The Middle East Forum did a 30 minute video about Georgetown’s ties to Hamas sympathizers. It is worth watching:
Conclusion: Universities Incubate And Spread Antisemitism
The picture is clear. Professors promote terror. Students celebrate slaughter. Hostile governments fund it, and administrations on the take allow it to fester.
If these universities continue to protect hate under the banner of “academic freedom,” they will soon graduate leaders who believe murder is resistance, and Jewish life is expendable.
“We are going to have an intifada on every college campus! We are going to shut down all the Zionist events!”
Husam Kaid, YouTube, Nov 15 2019
People from CUNY in Times Square in 2019 calling for an intifada in every classroom and the destruction of Israel
This is not a free speech issue. It’s a moral emergency.
ACTION ITEM
Call Rep. Tim Walberg’s office at (202) 225-6276 to thank him for holding the session on campus antisemitism.
Call your senator to support the DETERRENT Act and call Sen. Thom Tillis’s office at (202) 224-6342 to thank him for sponsoring it.
Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI), the chairman of the 45-person committee, said the “hearing will focus on the underlying factors instigating antisemitic upheaval and hatred on campus. Until these factors — such as foreign funding and antisemitic student and faculty groups — are addressed, antisemitism will persist on college campuses. Our committee is building on its promise to protect Jewish students and faculty while many university leaders refuse to hold agitators of this bigotry, hatred, and discrimination accountable.”
This Republican-led hearing will have the following witnesses:
Dr. Robert M. Groves, Interim President, Georgetown University
Dr. Félix V. Matos Rodríguez, Chancellor, The City University of New York
Dr. Rich Lyons, Chancellor, University of California, Berkeley
Here we will review foreign funding of universities.
Foreign Funding
Americans for Public Trust (APT) produced a report in March 2025 focused on foreign funding to universities. It found that “$60 billion in foreign gifts and contracts have been funneled into American colleges and universities over decades.” In particular, $20 billion went to ten elite schools with transparency laws being “lightly enforced” leading many universities to not report. Alarmingly, “many of the countries that top the list of foreign gifts… are long-standing adversaries and enemies of the U.S..”
The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) noted in February 2025 that “a key culprit [for so much foreign money coming into universities] is universities’ failure to comply with the provisions of Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, which requires US institutions of higher education to report income from foreign countries valued at over $250,000, such as gifts or research contracts. But American universities have failed to report billions in foreign funding, which drove the first Trump administration to launch several investigations into Section 117 noncompliance.”
The databases from the Education Department Office of Federal Student Aid Section 117 compliance can be found here.
AEI found “US schools reported over $4 billion in Qatari funding, making it easily the largest foreign donor to American universities. Looking at Qatari money together with China and Saudi Arabia further highlights how entangled these sources are with US higher education—seven of the universities investigated under Section 117 received most of their foreign funding from these three countries alone.”
APT reported that several “foreign adversaries” have donated to U.S. education, with “China, Russia, Iran, Qatar, Venezuela and Yemen have collectively syphoned billions into American schools.”
APT raised a red flag on the number of university researchers who have been arrested for illegally collaborating with China, including the chair of Harvard’s chemistry department. AEI was alarmed by the association of these foreign funders to universities doing work in artificial intelligence (AI). The COVID pandemic and risks from AI to society are reasons enough to clamp down on this funding, before even approaching foreign money stoking antisemitism.
“influenced… the academic environment, research priorities, and faculty recruitment, particularly within the School of Foreign Service (SFS), the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS), and the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU).”
created centers that mainstreamed “political Islam, minimizing the threat of Islamist extremism, and advancing anti-Israel narratives.”
Georgetown, based in the nation’s capital of Washington, D.C., thereby produced a large cohort of alumni who “occupy prominent positions in the U.S. State Department, intelligence agencies, media, and NGOs, effectively introducing and reinforcing these ideological perspectives within American foreign policy-making processes.” It has also led to a spike of anti-Jewish actions on campus.
The ISGAP report specifically called out Qatar, “from being a major funder of the Muslim Brotherhood’s global operations to providing resources to Hamas—the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood—and harboring the remnants of its leadership, Qatar has consistently positioned itself as both an ideological incubator and logistical facilitator of Islamist extremism. The Muslim Brotherhood is committed to destroying democracies, including the United States and Israel, and to replacing them with a distorted version of an Islamist caliphate.”
The funding works two ways – monies flowing onto American campuses as well as building campuses of American schools in foreign countries. Six American universities maintain campuses in Doha’s Education City: Georgetown, Carnegie Mellon, Virginia Commonwealth, Cornell, Northwestern, and Texas A&M, although Texas A&M is scheduled to close in 2028 (bolded countries in top 10 receiving foreign money). The state-run Qatar Foundation finances the campuses and personnel in Doha.
There have been numerous studies which analyze whether funding from foreign institutions – and those from countries which might be viewed as hostile to the U.S. – have an increased level of anti-American and antisemitic activity. A comprehensive statistical study showed “consistently strong evidence that institutions that received Section 117 funding from OIC (Organisation of Islamic Cooperation) member countries or authoritarian countries had much higher levels of antisemitic/anti-Zionist activity.” Interestingly – and counter to the argument of liberals – the study added “that there is minimal evidence here that foreign funding, per se, is associated with erosion of liberal democratic norms around campus speech.”
The Jew hatred was not confined to the universities’ campuses. In additional analyses, the study found “that as campus antisemitism goes up or down, so does antisemitism in the surrounding communities.”
While the study cautioned about drawing direct conclusions about the direction of antisemitism (perhaps society has caused antisemitism to spike in schools rather than vice versa), it was clear with its conclusion:
“The present research highlights two troubling possibilities that deserve further investigation. The first is that receipt of Section 117 funding from foreign sources, especially authoritarian ones, has contributed to these [antisemitic] developments. The second is that providing massive financial support to campuses with ascendant illiberalism serves the interests of foreign actors hostile to the U.S. in particular or liberal democracy in general.”
These are profound concerns not just for American Jews but America.
Biased Think Tank Fig Leaves: Brookings Institute
There are a number of “think tanks” that offer opinions and research papers about a variety of issues, including antisemitism at universities and the impact from foreign funding. Many are deeply conflicted. For example, the Brookings Institute had a center in Doha for 14 years, until it was closed in 2021. It often works in partnership with Georgetown University which takes significant money from Qatar. It is therefore not surprising that Brookings publishes defensive reports on Qatar which paint the sponsor of terrorist groups as a partner for the United States against bad actors in the Middle East, rather than a fountain of funding for evil: “a window may still be apparent whereby Qatari policymakers would welcome inventive U.S. suggestions as to ways that they could make themselves useful to American counterparts, all in the name of firming up their U.S. partnership in the face of hostile local states.”
Considering the Brookings-Qatar-Georgetown dynamic, it is not surprising that the group published a study that the Trump administration’s efforts to root out antisemitism at universities was really about Trump attacking his critics, not combatting Jew hatred.
Recommendations
AEI recommended that the government “move the enforcement of Section 117 out of the Office of Federal Student Aid (the office that gave us the FAFSA debacle) and return it to the Office of the General Counsel, which is better equipped to investigate and address non-compliance with federal statutes. The Education Department should also audit far more universities to ensure adequate reporting of foreign funds. Finally, department investigators should work closely with their counterparts in the Department of Justice and FBI to tackle this issue—especially when foreign funding could be linked to influence campaigns, technological espionage, or other efforts to undermine national security.”
The Senate should pass the DETERRENT Act (Defending Education Transparency and Ending Rogue Regimes Engaging in Nefarious Transactions Act) which seeks greater transparency of foreign funding in universities, especially from a “foreign country of concern.” It was passed by the House on March 27, 2025 with a vote of 241 to 169 (with 20 abstentions). Nearly 97% of Republicans voted for the measure while fewer than 15% of Democrats voted for the bill. It is before the Senate as S. 1296, sponsored by Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) with 13 Republican co-sponsors.
Conclusion
Billions of dollars are seeping into American universities from countries which are undermining American society and values. Qatar and China are particular actors which deserve heightened scrutiny regarding their potential nefarious efforts in artificial intelligence, biochemical research and promoting antisemitism.
ACTION ITEM
Call Rep. Tim Walberg’s office at (202) 225-6276 to thank him for holding the session on this important matter.
Call your senator to support the DETERRENT Act and call Sen. Thom Tillis’s office at (202) 224-6342 to thank him for sponsoring the bill.
Qatar has been buying its way into the heart of American power. Not metaphorically—literally. The small Gulf state has dumped billions of dollars into American universities, co-opted think tanks, and inserted itself into political circles on both sides of the aisle. It’s not just about soft power anymore. This is strategic infiltration.
According to Middle East Forum, Qatar pumped “$33.4 billion into businesses and real estate; $6.25 billion to universities; $72 million to lobbyists. Qatar purchases access to our corridors of power while simultaneously funding Hamas terrorists who seek our destruction. The pattern is clear: Qatar targets critical infrastructure, including our energy grid. It bankrolls academic departments that foment campus unrest, buys Manhattan skyscrapers, and infiltrates Silicon Valley. Its capital flows to Washington insiders who shape Middle East policy.”
And now, in the latest display of quiet power, Qatar gifted the President of the United States a brand-new plane.
This isn’t a gift. It’s a transaction. And we don’t know what was sold.
Experts Sound The Alarm
Jonathan Conricus, a former Israel Defense Forces spokesperson and now senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), has made it clear that Qatar is not neutral. He describes the Gulf emirate as an “active nefarious actor,” using its wealth to export ideological influence and to shield organizations like Hamas. He’s seen what this money funds—from underground terror tunnels in Gaza to misinformation and antisemitic narratives in the West.
Others, like Michael Doran of the Hudson Institute, argue Qatar is just playing defense—just a tiny monarchy with a population of 300,000 surrounded by giants like Saudi Arabia and Iran. But here’s the flaw: Qatar already hosts the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East, the Al Udeid Air Base, just outside Doha. With thousands of American troops stationed there, Qatar doesn’t need more protection. What it IS doing is leveraging that partnership as cover for its far-reaching agenda.
Buying The American Narrative And Minds Of The Youth
Qatar’s influence isn’t just in think tanks and campuses—it’s also in your living room.
In 2013, Qatar’s state media arm Al Jazeera bought Al Gore’s cable network, Current TV, for a staggering $500 million. The rebranded Al Jazeera America failed commercially, but its goal wasn’t ratings. It was presence in 40 million American households.
The acquisition gave Qatar the ability to market propaganda under the guise of serious journalism. It continues to do so under the AJ+ brand on social media, pushing anti-Israel, anti-Western, and often antisemitic narratives to audiences across the globe. It doesn’t aim to inform—it aims to manipulate.
The monarchy’s influence extends into elementary public schools.The Qatar Foundation provides materials for New York City’s “Arab Culture Arts” program which has a map of the Middle East with Israel removed. Tova Plaut, a New York City public school instructional coordinator for pre-K through fifth grade classrooms, said “It’s not just that we’re experiencing Jewish hate in NYC public schools, we’re actually experiencing Jewish erasure.”
A report by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) uncovered extensive foreign influence and anti-Israel bias infiltrating as many as 8,000 K-12 classrooms, reaching one million students. Qatar is mentioned 48 times in the report.
Congressional Sleepwalking
Disgracefully, few members of Congress have called out Qatar for their support of Hamas and fueling antisemitism in American schools.
Rep. Carol Miller (R-WV) did so in November 2023 noting “the influence of foreign governments on tax-exempt college campuses, [specifically] Qatari funding for Northwestern University. It is no coincidence that it now has a campus in the Gulf country and has become a pipeline for reporters for the Qatari state-owned media Al Jazeera and their youth-focused subsidiary, AJ+.”
Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MO), Vice Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee said in May 2024, “It’s simple: if Qatar can’t pressure Hamas to make a deal with Israel, they must expel these terrorists so they can be brought to justice and punished for their horrific crimes against humanity. If they won’t do either, then the United States should seriously examine whether Qatar still deserves the privileges of its status as a major non-NATO ally.”
Yet it’s taken the public gift of an airplane to President Trump to finally make everyone in Congress wake up to the evils of Qatari influence.
Conclusion: Start The Audit And Pressure Campaign
President Trump has no qualms bankrupting Iran’s oil business if it continues to pursue a nuclear weapons program. It is time to threaten the Qatari regime to reverse its nefarious connections to state sponsors of terrorism and vicious antisemitism, or face actions similar to those inflicted on the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Congress should use the airplane gift as an opportunity to open a wide ranging probe into Qatari influence everywhere in the USA.
When President-elect Donald Trump announced that “hell will break out” if Hamas doesn’t return the hostages that it brutally seized from Israel, this site pondered whether the Hamas-dominated Palestinian Authority and Hamas-affiliated-UNRWA will be targets of the United States. It stands to reason that the media companies and sites of Qatar-owned Al Jazeera and Palestinian run-Wafa should be shut down in the United States under the same principle.
Al Jazeera has long been a mouthpiece of Hamas. Saudi Arabia shut down the media operations in 2017 stating that “the move comes after Al Jazeera promoted the plots of terrorist groups, supported the Houthi militias in Yemen, and tried to break internal ranks with Saudi Arabia by and harming its sovereignty.” Israel decided to shutter AJ’s operations in May 2024, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying “the incitement channel Al Jazeera will be closed in Israel.” Even the Palestinian Authority, perhaps looking to curry favor from the incoming Trump administration, decided last week to shut down Al Jazeera in the West Bank.
Al Jazeera has been fanning the flames of antisemitism in the Muslim world for years, claiming that Jews are “storming” the Al Aqsa Mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem. This is an echo of the Palestinian news site Wafa which continues to attempt to enlist the Muslim world to demand a Jew-free Temple Mount. The New York Times picks up on the propaganda and spreads it to its global liberal readers, cementing the socialist-jihadi alliance.
Even today, Wafa calls all Jews who are in Israel “colonists” who “storm the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque”, just by visiting Judaism’s holiest site, insisting that the only worshipers be Muslim.
It is highly probable that Trump will reverse course of the Biden administration, and ban Al Jazeera from the White House briefings. It will be interesting to see if the ban will cover all U.S. operations, and extend to Palestinian media as well.
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