The Puppet’s Dance: How Qatar Manipulates American Institutions While Shielding Terror

(essay)

Imagine a puppet dancing on top of a large globe. The room is dark, and you can’t see the strings. To all the world, it looks as though the puppet is moving on its own. But when the lights are switched on, the truth is revealed: a single puppeteer is pulling the strings.

Why does the puppet allow itself to be manipulated? The answer is as old as politics itself — money, power, influence, dominance.

The puppeteer is Qatar: a nation that harbors Hamas leaders, praises them, poses as a neutral interlocutor between the West and terror, all while funding Hamas’s terror tunnels, promoting its genocidal ideology, and influencing a generation of journalists to amplify its message under the guise of independent media.

The puppet is, of course, every country, every institution, and every individual that stands to gain from this putrid alliance.

We rightly pay attention to Iran, the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas. But where is the scrutiny of Qatar — our supposed ally? Perhaps we’ve become too enamored by the puppet’s dance to ask who’s pulling the strings.

Just last week, the State Department approved the sale of nearly $2 billion worth of advanced military drones to the Qatari government. The official statement claimed the sale would help Doha “meet current and future threats.” That line, in sterile bureaucratic jargon, is steeped in bitter irony: the U.S. is arming a regime that actively empowers one of the gravest threats to its ally Israel — Hamas.

Qatar has long served as Hamas’s patron and protector. Senior Hamas leaders — those not already killed in the war — live comfortably in Doha today. On October 7, 2023, as the massacre in southern Israel unfolded — babies burned alive, elderly grandparents taken hostage, women raped and mutilated — Qatar’s foreign ministry issued a statement blaming Israel for the “ongoing escalation.” Hours later, videos surfaced of Hamas leaders celebrating the carnage while watching live Al Jazeera coverage — Al Jazeera, of course, being Qatar’s flagship media weapon, the most-watched outlet in the Arab world, and a relentless source of anti-Israel, often blatantly antisemitic narratives.

This is the double game Qatar plays — or rather, the quadruple game. It is the safe haven for terrorists. The intermediary in ceasefire and hostage talks. The megaphone for propaganda. And the friendly “partner” buying favor across U.S. institutions. It is both the arsonist and the firefighter. It provides the match, controls the narrative, and then offers itself up as the solution.

So why are we selling them drones?