Pamela Geller is trying to make everyone aware of the role Qatar plays in financing and supporting terror. Here's an example. It's a letter sent to CNN President Jeffrey Zucker.
This letter is being sent to you on behalf of the Qatar Awareness Campaign Coalition.
The purpose is to inform you and the public of the activities of the
state of Qatar. CNN regularly solicits the opinion of policy experts and
fellows from Brookings Doha, which receives millions of dollars in
funding from Qatar. CNN.com also featured a prominent ad for the Qatar
Foundation.
We urge to you read the information below, which includes evidence that
Qatar is arguably the preeminent sponsor of terror in the world today.
It is a benefactor of the genocidal armies of ISIS, al Qaeda, and Boko
Haram; it is involved in Taliban narcotics trafficking through a
relationship with the Pakistani National Logistics Cell; and profits
from operating a virtual slave state. Qatar is involved in terror operations from Nigeria to Gaza to India to Syria to Iraq.
So the public understands why this letter is addressed to you, the
president of CNN, here are some facts pertaining to CNN’s involvement
with Qatar.
Following the overthrow of the pro-Muslim Brotherhood government of
Mohamed Morsi, who simultaneously backed and supported Qatar, the CNN Global Public Square blog featured an interview with Gregory Gause III,
professor of political science at the University of Vermont and
non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Doha Center. Prof. Gause
expressed disapproval of the ouster of the government of Morsi, a close ally of Qatar.
In August 2014, during the Israel-Gaza war, the CNN Global Public Square blog featured an op-ed by Sultan Barakat,
Director of Research at Brookings Doha. Barakat was especially critical
of Israel, which he accused of “disregard for basic civilian
infrastructure” in Gaza, and stated that Israel “clearly prefers an
underdeveloped ghetto to a viable foreign country [in Gaza].”
[CNN.]com featured a special advertising page
for the Qatar Foundation. This ad linked to “a 30-minute monthly
feature program … that seeks to capture the dynamism and broad range of
cultural diversity in … the Middle East.” The Qatar Foundation, with the
Emir of Qatar, established
the Al-Qaradawi Research Center. Yusuf al-Qaradawi is the spiritual
leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and a vocal supporter of violent jihad.
In light of Qatar’s consistent and vocal support for the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, we ask that you consider the attached sourced report
on Qatar’s activities. The links cited are vetted and credible sources.
We hope you take the time to verify the truth of the statements for
yourself.
After doing so, the Coalition of the Qatar Awareness Campaign calls on you to exert
due influence on the Qatari government to cease any type of involvement
in all forms of Islamic terrorism, slavery, and drug trafficking!
It's come to this: Obama-Kerry 'peace talks' envoy paid by Qatar (and Norway)
The New York Times reported at length on Sunday on the financing of US think tanks by foreign governments (see also Memeorandum). Among the US think tanks who receive significant financing from foreign governments is the Brookings Institute.
The arrangements involve Washington’s most influential think tanks, including the Brookings Institution, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Atlantic Council.
Each is a major recipient of overseas funds, producing policy papers,
hosting forums and organizing private briefings for senior United States
government officials that typically align with the foreign governments’
agendas.
Most
of the money comes from countries in Europe, the Middle East and
elsewhere in Asia, particularly the oil-producing nations of the United
Arab Emirates, Qatar
and Norway, and takes many forms. The United Arab Emirates, a major
supporter of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, quietly
provided a donation of more than $1 million to help build the center’s
gleaming new glass and steel headquarters not far from the White House.
Qatar, the small but wealthy Middle East nation, agreed last year to
make a $14.8 million, four-year donation to Brookings, which has helped
fund a Brookings affiliate in Qatar and a project on United States
relations with the Islamic world.
Some
scholars say the donations have led to implicit agreements that the
research groups would refrain from criticizing the donor governments.
“If
a member of Congress is using the Brookings reports, they should be
aware — they are not getting the full story,” said Saleem Ali, who
served as a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center
in Qatar and who said he had been told during his job interview that he
could not take positions critical of the Qatari government in papers.
“They may not be getting a false story, but they are not getting the
full story.”
The directors of the institutions claim that all that money doesn't blind them and doesn't make them execute the donors' wishes.
In interviews, top executives at the think tanks strongly defended the
arrangements, saying the money never compromised the integrity of their
organizations’ research. Where their scholars’ views overlapped with
those of donors, they said, was coincidence.
Here's the reaction of one director whose name should be familiar to those who follow the goings on in Israel.
“Our business is to influence policy with scholarly, independent
research, based on objective criteria, and to be policy-relevant, we
need to engage policy makers,” said Martin S. Indyk, vice president and
director of the Foreign Policy Program at Brookings, one of the oldest
and most prestigious think tanks in Washington.
Do any of you think Indyk is telling the truth? If yes, consider this:
In
their contracts and internal documents, however, foreign governments
are often explicit about what they expect from the research groups they
finance.
“In Washington, it is difficult for a small country to gain access to powerful politicians, bureaucrats and experts,” states an internal report
commissioned by the Norwegian Foreign Affairs Ministry assessing its
grant making. “Funding powerful think tanks is one way to gain such
access, and some think tanks in Washington are openly conveying that
they can service only those foreign governments that provide funding.”
...
The Brookings Institution,
which also accepted grants from Norway, has sought to help the country
gain access to American officials, documents show. One Brookings senior
fellow, Bruce Jones, offered in 2010 to reach out to State Department
officials to help arrange a meeting with a senior Norway official,
according to a government email. The Norway official wished to discuss his country’s role as a “middle power” and vital partner of the United States.
Brookings organized another event in April 2013,
in which one of Norway’s top officials on Arctic issues was seated next
to the State Department’s senior official on the topic and reiterated
the country’s priorities for expanding oil exploration in the Arctic.
William
J. Antholis, the managing director at Brookings, said that if his
scholars help Norway pursue its foreign policy agenda in Washington, it
is only because their rigorous, independent research led them to this
position. “The scholars are their own agents,” he said. “They are not
agents of these foreign governments.”
But
three lawyers who specialize in the law governing Americans’ activities
on behalf of foreign governments said that the Center for Global
Development and Brookings, in particular, appeared to have taken actions
that merited registration as foreign agents of Norway. The activities
by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Atlantic
Council, they added, at least raised questions.
“The Department of Justice needs to be looking at this,” said Joshua Rosenstein, a lawyer at Sandler Reiff.
Ona
Dosunmu, Brookings’s general counsel, examining the same documents,
said she remained convinced that was a misreading of the law.
Norway,
at least, is grateful for the work Brookings has done. During a speech
at Brookings in June, Norway’s foreign minister, Borge Brende, noted
that his country’s relationship with the think tank “has been mutually
beneficial for moving a lot of important topics.” Just before the
speech, in fact, Norway signed an agreement to contribute an additional
$4 million to the group.
Here in Israel, the government now believes it knows why the latest 'peace talks' were so biased against Israel. His name is Martin Indyk and he's the director of Brookings and, as noted above, on the payroll (indirectly) of Qatar and Norway (and other countries).
“Qatar has been a major bankroller for Hamas and other terrorist organizations,” one government official said. “The fact that the same Qatari government is also a major provider of funds for a respectable Washington think tank raises a whole series of questions about that think tank’s relationships and impartiality.”
Among the questions this has raised in Jerusalem is the degree to which the institute can impartially draw up papers relating to Qatar, such as its role in the Middle East and the financing of terror organizations.
Qatar is Hamas’s main financial backer.
...
Indyk, who took leave from Brookings to serve as the US special Middle East envoy during the nine months of unsuccessful Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that ended in April, returned to the think tank after the negotiations failed and is currently its vice president and director of the Foreign Policy Program.
...
In a recent interview with Foreign Policy magazine about the Gaza conflict, Indyk said US President Barack Obama became “enraged” with Israeli criticism of US Secretary of State John Kerry.
Indyk said Gaza has had a “very negative” impact on the US-Israel relationship.
“There’s a lot of strain in the relationship now. The personal relationship between the president and the prime minister has been fraught for some time and it’s become more complicated by recent events.”
The Qatar connection might also explain why US Secretary of State John
FN Kerry was so anxious to do Qatar's (and Turkey's) bidding during
Operation Protective Edge.
Indyk, who served as US negotiator in the failed peace talks, has had his impartiality put into question before due
to his position on the executive board of the radical-left New Israel
Fund, which funds numerous anti-Israel NGOs. In May, Indyk was accused of engaging in a "nasty" anti-Israel tirade at a bar following an address to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Qatar has not only funded Hamas, but according to reports pushed the group to reject
a ceasefire in the recent Operation Protective Edge and return to its
terror war on Israeli citizens, threatening to expel Hamas politburo
chief Khaled Mashaal if it didn't do so.
The position of Qatar led Israel's Ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor in August to label the oil-state "a Club Med for terrorists,"
adding that the "hundreds of millions of dollars" Qatar gave Hamas
meant "every one of Hamas's tunnels and rockets might as well have had a
sign that said 'Made possible through a kind donation of the emir of
Qatar.'"
A few more take-aways from this story:
1. Maybe you all now understand why Israel has tried to control or stop foreign government funding of NGO's.
2. The Obama administration touted itself as the 'most transparent administration evah.' Is this what they had in mind?
3. With all the bellyaching by the likes of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer about a supposed 'Israel lobby,' Israel does not appear on the list of countries that have donated money to US think tanks. But nine Arab countries do appear on the list. I'm sure you're all shocked.
Kudos to the New York Times (for a change) for actually letting this story come out.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak has lived through just about everything and learned nothing since leaving the IDF in 1995. He proved it again on Friday night, by calling for the division of Jerusalem, something to which he tried and failed to get Yasser Arafat to agree in 2000-01.
Defense Minster Ehud Barak, who spoke after Clinton at the Saban dinner, also pledged to continue pursuing peace, stating that the contours of a two-state solution were well-known and going further than Clinton into the details of final status issues that have long rocked the process.
On Jerusalem – perhaps the most vexing issue – he described a solution splitting the city.
He said the issues would be discussed last and resolved along the lines of the Clinton parameters, namely “western Jerusalem and the Jewish suburbs for us, the heavily populated Arab neighborhoods for them, and an agreed upon solution in the ‘Holy Basin.’”
We've been there before, haven't we? And the 'negotiations' broke down when Yasser Arafat refused to acknowledge any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount. Funny how things don't change with the 'Palestinians,' isn't it?
Netanyahu clarified that Barak's speech to the Saban Center for Middle East Policy over the weekend did not reflect the official Israeli stance.
In his address to the center's seventh annual forum in Washington, the defense minister said that Israel should retain control of all Jewish neighborhoods in the capital and relinquish sovereignty over heavily Arab areas to the Palestionian authority.
But that won't stop Barak from continuing to say it, because Fat Fouad (Binyamin Ben Eliezer) threatened on Saturday night that Labor would leave the government if there were no 'negotiations.'
Secretary of State Clinton spoke at the Saban Center of the Brookings Institution on Friday night. Her topic was the Middle East 'peace process.'
The speech was rather lengthy; it stretches over three videos. Here's Part 1.
Let's go to the videotape.
Here's Part 2. Let's go to the videotape.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I was deeply disturbed by her insistence on making each insistence have a parallel for the other side (with the exception, of course, of her condemnation of Israeli 'settlements'). Who went after innocent civilians with suicide bombers and would still be doing it if it were not for the IDF presence in Judea and Samaria?
Analysts said that while the administration's credibility had taken a hit with little progress to show after two years of efforts, the new approach may prove more productive.
"They are doing what might have been wise much earlier -- that is making indirect talks 'substantive two-way conversations' ... about real things," said Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace team advisor. "I would argue that back-to-back talks, if the U.S. throws its weight around a bit, are more likely to advance the ball than direct bilateral negotiations."
"In essence, the Obama administration has just doubled down on pursuing a peace agreement in short order," former Middle East Quartet deputy envoy Robert Danin said. "Second, Clinton just launched final status negotiations by proxy. Succeeding at this approach will be difficult, and require even greater American involvement than we have seen so far.
"The Administration's tenacity is admirable, but I fear efforts that it raise expectations," Danin continued. "I surely hope they are also preparing a safety net in case this intensive effort does not reap the ambitious goals they are setting out for themselves."
On balance, Clinton "managed to reassert the U.S. commitment to leading the process forward despite the setbacks," said the American Task Force for Palestine's Ziad Asali. "Not a bad feat considering a week of 'the end of the peace process' doom and gloom."
Emerging from the State Department after his talks with Clinton on Friday, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat blamed the Israeli government for the breakdown in talks and said the Palestinians would continue to consult with the US, the UN, the European Union and Arab League on how to proceed.
"They are alone responsible for the derailment of the peace process," Erekat told reporters. "The Israeli government had a choice between settlements and peace and they chose settlements." He said the Palestinian position was unchanged and offered no predictions as to what might be next.
US officials say their hope is to make progress on security issues and setting a final border between Israel and a future Palestinian state in separate talks with the two sides, enabling a resumption of direct negotiations and an ultimate peace deal.
US envoy George Mitchell is to leave Sunday evening for the Middle East for talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. He will also visit neighboring Arab states.
No, they're not going to reach an agreement with the US shuttling between the parties and they know it. I think this is all a show - because the US has to maintain the appearance of 'negotiations' to keep 'our friends the Saudis' happy, and because Prime Minister Netanyahu needs the appearance of 'negotiations' to keep Labor in the coalition and Ehud Barak in the cabinet. But Abu Bluff has already announced to anyone who will listen that he won't continue to negotiate unless there's a full 'settlement freeze' and it's clear right now that won't happen.
Hopefully, the US will finally turn its attention to Iran now that the need for a 'settlement' between the Israelis and 'Palestinians' as a precondition to that has been exposed as a fraud by Wikileaks.
Why Obama can't just walk away from the 'peace process'
There's something very strange at work here.
For months we've been told that most Americans - and certainly most American Jews - don't care much about Israel, that it's not an issue that's important to them, that it's not an issue that would change how they vote, etc. Now, after the current iteration of the 'peace process' has collapsed, we are told that two thirds of Americans consider Israel a 'top five' issue, and one quarter believe it's a top three issue. These numbers are then used to show that the Obama administration 'cannot' just walk away from the 'peace process.'
The findings "are really striking," the poll's coordinator, Shibley Telhami told POLITICO on Wednesday. "The American public thinks this is a big-time issue."
Telhami is the Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland and a nonresident fellow at Brookings.
With 71 percent of those polled supporting American diplomatic efforts to mediate the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, President Barack Obama can't just walk away from the issue, Telhami said.
The poll also showed striking partisan differences in attitudes toward the conflict, with 46 percent of Republicans wanting American diplomacy to lean toward Israel, compared to 11 percent of independents and 14 percent of Democrats.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
