Less than a year after several Jewish and Zionist leaders assured us that Qatar was becoming more moderate, a new report has revealed that Qatari government-controlled newspapers are filled with blatantly antisemitic cartoons.
When officials of several Jewish organizations were revealed last year to have secretly participated in all-expenses-paid trips to Qatar, those officials defended themselves by claiming they were influencing the Qataris to become less anti-Israel and antisemitic.
It wasn’t a very convincing argument. It seemed obvious at the time that Qatar had no intention of actually changing its ways, that it was exploiting them to score public relations points in the United States and deflect attention from the fact that Qatar is the world’s largest financial backer of Hamas.
The latest development makes it clear that the skeptics were right all along.
In a report last week, the Anti-Defamation League revealed that the official Qatari media regularly publishes editorial cartoons that “blatantly demonize Jews.” The cartoons “cross the line from legitimate criticism of Israel or its policies into overt antisemitism,” according to the ADL.
The ADL’s report continues, “These cartoons draw on the worst kind of antisemitic themes and give them new life, including conspiracy theories of Jewish world domination; blood libels; the association of Zionism with Nazism; the demonization and dehumanization of Israel and Jews; the invocation of William Shakespeare’s Shylock; and the use of stereotypical medieval Jewish imagery.”
Among the examples cited by the ADL are cartoons: • Depicting US President Donald Trump and former president Obama as puppets in the hand of Israel and the US flag’s stars replaced by Stars of David.
• Showing “medieval Jewish figures relishing in drinking goblets of Palestinian blood and devouring the flesh of al-Aqsa Mosque, depicted as a steak.”
• Portraying Israel as an octopus, a snake, a pig and a wolf. One featured a giant swastika marked with a Star of David, crushing Arab figures.
The ADL points out that not only does the Qatari regime have a moral responsibility to refrain from antisemitism, but a legal one, as well – Qatar’s own press law forbids the publication of “any ridicule of or contempt toward any of the religions or their doctrines, including any motivation of sectarian, racial, or religious trends” or any content that harms goodwill toward a person through “defamation.”
The Qatari antisemitic cartoons are so frequent, and so vicious, that the ADL has sent a letter of protest to Qatar’s ambassador to the United States, Meshal bin Hamad Al Thani.
The ambassador hasn’t yet replied.
Nobody can accuse the ADL of rushing to clash with Arab regimes.
The fact that the left-of-center ADL has taken this stand against Qatar speaks volumes about how serious Qatari antisemitism is.
It’s also remarkable that it is the ADL and not right-of-center organizations that is speaking out against the antisemitic Qatari cartoons. Groups on the right have complained about the Palestinian Authority’s antisemitic cartoons. Why aren’t they saying anything about Qatar’s identical behavior? The cartoon controversy follows on the heels of the recent international book fair in Qatar’s capital, Doha, which featured an array of antisemitic literature. There were books with titles like The Myth of the Nazi Gas Chambers and Lies Spread by the Jews.
There was even an Arabic-language translation of Awakening to Jewish Influence in the United States of America by white supremacist leader (and former Ku Klux Klansman) David Duke.
They also had reprints of Henry Ford’s infamous The International Jew, which was based on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And something called Talmud of Secrets: Facts Exposing the Jewish Schemes to Control the World.
By now, it should be evident that the Jewish leaders who went to Qatar made an enormous error in judgment. The Qataris exploited them and now have tossed them aside like used shmattehs. The barrage of antisemitic cartoons is yet another slap in the face. It’s time for those who allied themselves with Qatar to publicly acknowledge their mistake and apologize to the Jewish community.
The writer, an attorney in New Jersey, is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. His book, A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror, has just been published.