In the summer of 2023, a reporter from The Jerusalem Post, Benjamin Weinthal, wrote to all the members of the Beverly Hills City Council, asking us if we knew that the Maybourne Hotel, in the middle of Beverly Hills, was owned by members of the Qatari royal family, who themselves had made antisemitic statements and who were part of a regime that had funded terrorist groups like Hamas in an effort to destroy Israel.
I had no idea.
Protest outside the Maybourne Hotel, March 2, 2025
I had no idea about Qatar's malign role in financing jihadi terrorism.
I had no idea that Qatar hosted Hamas. I had no idea that Qatar supported Hamas. I had no idea that Qatar funded Hamas. I had no idea that Qatar trained Hamas. I had no idea that, for all intents and purposes, Qatar was Hamas.
I had no idea about the way in which Qatar had been using its massive wealth in its well-oiled campaign to demonize, delegitimize, and employ double standards against Israel.
I had no idea about Qatar's infiltration into Western countries through its massive real estate acquisitions, worth tens of billions of dollars in Manhattan alone, including 10% of the Empire State Building, world-famous hotels such as Claridge's, the Berkeley, the Connaught, and the Maybourne in Beverly Hills, the Harrod's department store in London, and a 20% stake in the company that operates London's Heathrow Airport.
I had no idea about Qatar's sportswashing activities, including ownership of the French soccer club PSG, stakes in the Washington Wizards and Washington Capitals, among other teams, and the machinations behind its hosting of the 2022 World Cup.
I had no idea how Qatar used its massive wealth to burnish its image and blunt criticism by liberally spreading Qatari cash to an assortment of universities, NGOs and even politicians.
Although it always had seemed suspect to me, I had no idea of the horrific extent to which the Qatar-owned Al-Jazeera network was, in fact, the world's leading propaganda machine – in both English and Arabic – for anti-Israel, anti-Jewish, Islamist terrorism.
In short, I had no idea how this small country with approximately three million residents, of which only 10-15% are actual citizens, managed to exert such outsized influence in world affairs, including trying to portray itself as an "honest broker" in sensitive negotiations within the Middle East, including hostage negotiations. I had no idea of the extent of its malign activities and how its whole existence seemed to be focused on undermining and attacking Israel, and, by extension, Europe and the West, while spreading its intolerant and violent brand of Islamism.
Now I know.
And for more than the past year, during Councilmember comments at the end of our Beverly Hills City Council meetings, I have made the following statement:
"Furthermore, I propose that we designate Qatar a state-sponsor of terrorism; that we sanction Qatar, freeze its assets and use them to compensate the victims of Qatar-funded terrorism; and that we ask the State Department to expel the Qatari consulate from Beverly Hills.
"Jew-hating racists and sponsors of terrorism are not welcome in our City."
On September 11 of last year, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the Associate Dean and Director of Global Social Action at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and the Chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom; Rabbi Pini Dunner, the Senior Rabbi of the Beverly Hills Synagogue and the chair of the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce, Western Region; and myself paid a visit to the Consul General of Qatar in Beverly Hills.
We delivered a letter in which we decried the murders by Hamas of six hostages, including the American Hersh Goldberg-Polin. We called upon Qatar to use its influence to secure the immediate release of all the hostages. We called upon Qatar to change its ways and to transition to becoming "a valued, tolerant, and civilized member of the Community of Nations and a leader among the brotherhood of Abrahamic nations."
The Consul General promised to forward the letter to Doha. Unsurprisingly, we never received a response.
Since that meeting, there has been a change in the administration. President Trump has forcefully suggested that all the hostages should be released at once, rather than in "drips and drabs."
Despite the President's statement giving Israel free rein to take whatever actions it felt was necessary to free the hostages, Hamas has held onto as many hostages as it can, exacting an untold ransom from Israel, while using hostage releases as an extreme form of propaganda -- with the full support of Qatar's Al-Jazeera.
What kind of pressure can Israel or the U.S. exert on Hamas to achieve the goal of the swift, simultaneous release of all the hostages? Hamas is a death cult, with nothing to lose.
Yet Qatar, with its mafia-like royal family, outsized international influence, and massive wealth, has everything to lose.
If the U.S. really wants all the hostages released at once, it needs to employ a tactic of maximum pressure on Qatar, as only the U.S. can. If the U.S. issued an ultimatum to Qatar, which finances Hamas, hosts Hamas, supports Hamas, propagandizes for Hamas, which for all intents and purposes IS Hamas, the hostages would all be released immediately.
Qatar has everything to lose.
The ultimatum would include the U.S. revoking Qatar's non-NATO ally status (which never should have been granted in the first place); it would include sanctions on Qatar, such as freezing Qatari assets and personal sanctions on Qatar's royal family, including those who own palatial mansions in Bel Air; it would include the threat of shutting down and moving CENTCOM's Al-Udeid airbase, perhaps to Bahrain or Saudi Arabia; it would include banning Al-Jazeera, which has already been banned in a number of countries, as well as in the Palestinian Authority.
If the U.S. really meant business and issued Qatar an ultimatum with real consequences if the hostages aren't all released immediately, the hostages would all be free because Qatar has everything to lose, even if Hamas does not.
However, Qatar has managed to use its wealth so strategically, on all sides of the political spectrum, that no administration, not even this one, seems likely to take a hard line with Qatar. Qatar has managed to create ties with prominent Americans, as well as Europeans, in academia, the economy, and politics (including instances of outright bribery, for example, ex-Senator Menendez). Unsurprisingly, there are members of the Trump administration, as well, with close ties to Qatar.
If more people become aware of what Qatar really is and what Qatar has been doing to foment terrorism and undermine peace in the Middle East, perhaps there is a chance that the administration will recognize it will have no choice but to put real pressure on Qatar, particularly if it intends to expand what likely may be Trump's greatest foreign policy achievement and lasting legacy: the Abraham Accords.
While pressuring Qatar may likely be the only way to achieve an immediate release of all the hostages – something that may not happen because of key Trump administration staff's close ties to the regime – ending the Qatari cash infusion into our university system and forcing Qatar's Al-Jazeera to register as a foreign agent should be at the top of the Administration's to do list, even under existing law and policy.
MEMRI's Yigal Carmon, who has been the leading expert in alerting the world to Qatar's complicity as the puppet master for Islamist terrorism and, along with the Iranian regime, the biggest obstacle to peace in the region, has exposed in detail just how Qatar's Al-Jazeera has consistently acted as a propaganda organ for Hamas and other jihadi terrorist groups.
Attorney General Pam Bondi needs to finally enforce the Department of Justice's order for Al-Jazeera+ to register as a foreign agent. In September of 2020, the Justice Department under the first Trump Administration ordered Al-Jazeera to register under Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). The Biden administration sat on its hands and almost five years later, as Al-Jazeera has continued unabated with its anti-Israel, anti-West propaganda, nothing has happened. It's not like Al-Jazeera's jihadi propaganda was anything new, even then: It was also almost five years ago when MEMRI's Amb. Alberto M. Fernandez and Yotam Feldner wrote Al-Jazeera Unmasked: Political Islam As A Media Arm Of The Qatari State, a searing indictment of Qatar and Al-Jazeera's role in furthering the Qatari agenda of radical, violent, jihadi Islamism.
If the U.S. government doesn't at the very least take this long overdue action against Qatar's propaganda machine, there is no reason to think that Qatar will not continue its machinations and double-dealing against the interests of the United States. For example, Qatar hired ex-CIA agent Kevin Chalker (who failed to register under FARA as a foreign agent) to spy on a raft of American lawmakers, including Senators Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton, and Congressman Mario Díaz-Balart, who were critical of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. Documents drafted by Chalker's company, Global Risk Advisors, include the telling sentence: "High Alert: An attack on Hamas is an attack on Qatar. An attack on the Muslim Brotherhood is an attack on Qatar."
Senator Cruz had proposed legislation that would have outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood. It is clear that, in addition to urging Attorney General Bondi to proceed with implementation of Al-Jazeera's FARA filing, he and his colleagues – as well as the Trump administration writ large – should swiftly work to outlaw the Muslim Brotherhood, as other countries have done. The Muslim Brotherhood must be designated as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) and countries supporting it, including Qatar and Turkey, must be sanctioned.
For way too long, Qatar and Al-Jazeera have been peddling propaganda as "journalism," with much of the propaganda aimed at the Arab world in an effort to destabilize the region, whip up Main Street sentiment against Israel, and to derail the Abraham Accords. Any criticism of Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood on Al-Jazeera is strictly forbidden, and the propagandizing has gotten so extreme that even the Palestinian Authority has taken the step of banning Al Jazeera.
Despite its all too predictable protestations, Al-Jazeera's coordination with Hamas has been well documented, as has the fact that Hamas (and Islamic Jihad) operatives have been moonlighting as Al Jazeera "journalists."
This is not a First Amendment matter; this is a national security matter. Al-Jazeera should be sanctioned or banned in the US, in much the same way that Russian government media outlets have been sanctioned for spreading propaganda and disinformation.
At the very, very least, Al-Jazeera must be forced to register as a foreign agent under FARA, with all the oversight that implies.
For much too long, Qatar has been able to act with impunity, a two-faced Batman villain, funding and masterminding Islamist terrorism and radicalization throughout the world, all the while posing as an "honest broker."
Qatar is the quintessential arsonist who then wants to bask in the glory of putting out the fire he set. The hostage negotiations are a case in point. It should come as a surprise to nobody who knows Qatar's modus operandi that Qatar, which is synonymous with Hamas, has paid for consultants advising the Israeli families of Hamas's Gaza hostages.
Qatar's massive propaganda machine, including Al-Jazeera, and the targeted exploitation of its fossil fuel wealth by buying influence throughout Western societies -- up to and including what appears to be outright bribery -- means that many people have been unaware of the extreme extent of Qatar's multi-pronged stealth strategy to spread its malign brand of Wahhabi Islamism.
Up until less than two years ago, I didn't know.
Now I know.
Now you know.
* Guest contributor John Mirisch was elected to the Beverly Hills City Council in 2009 and has served three terms as mayor. He is also the Chief Policy Officer of ICAN (the Israeli-American Civic Action Network).
