I am not a scholar of antisemitism, but I am a journalist who spent over a decade working for Qatari media empire, including being a freelance producer for a number of documentaries for Al Jazeera (AJ) – the most-watched outlet globally. Recent data showed that from the outbreak of the US-Israel war against the Iranian regime to the pause in the military operation, AJ had more than 8.5 billion views across it various platforms.
Many people when they hear the words “Qatari media,” they think AJ, believing it is one entity. But AJ is part of the Al Jazeera Group, which includes AJ Arabic, AJ English, research centers, and AJ Media Institute which has trained more than 75,000 media professional worldwide since its establishment (including Western journalists). Add to that powerful and modern social media platforms with hundreds of millions of followers. The most successful one is AJ+, which broadcasts in Arabic, English, French, and Spanish. In addition to Al Jazeera Group, there is also Faadat Media, another group consisting of TV channels, newspapers, and social media platforms. This includes Ana Al Arabi, which is similar to AJ+ but this one aimed at influencing Gen. Z Arabs.
Each of these platforms are all connected to Qatar’s centers of power – and part of the same army who are tasked to take a pro-Qatari government stance; no criticism of Qatar’s rulers and domestic politics; amplifying Muslim Brotherhood and affiliated Islamist movements across the region which goes hand in hand with Qatar’s foreign policy agenda, which strongly centered on Palestinian Islamist perspective and heavily promote critics of Israel. News output and coverage is predominantly dedicated to campaign to libel, to boycott, to vilify and de-legitimize Israel.
When it comes to report on Israel and Jews in general, all Qatari media shares a similar position They coordinate together to convene an align messaging. To ensure no journalist “step out of the line,” all key appointments at the top of the hierarchy and specifically the board of directors goes to individuals who are skilled to promote and enforce Qatar’s agenda.
So, if you ever speculated why following the October 7 massacre, you saw a massive surge in university students in Europe, in North and Latin America shouting “globalize the intifada” and “IDF baby killers” – just tune in to one of Qatar’s octopus-media-arms.
Qatari media and rising antisemitism
Following October 7, the West saw unprecedented rise of antisemitism, a new kind that operates much like the traditional form of antisemitism, with same vehement views about the Jewish people, historical distortions, wild conspiracies, blood libels. These falsely accused Jews of murdering Christian children in order to use their blood in the performance of religious. The Islamist-antisemitism removed the word “Jew” and replaced it with “Zionist” and “Israel.” The blood libel of “Jews killing Christian children” was to be replaced with “IDF baby killers,” basically accusing Israeli Jewish soldiers for intentionally killing Muslim babies. Jew-hatred was to be normalized in every country in the Western world.
Qatari media propaganda and fake news were spread beyond the Arab and Muslim world and were packed as legitimate news who were repeated by mainstream western media. For years, Qatari media ran a relentless and vicious campaign against state of Israel and what it calls “Jewish supremacy.” Between 2016 to 2024, Qatari foreign lobby spending in the US per capita was over $781, whereas Israeli spending was over $20 per citizen.
Let’s move on to education, just in the past decade, Qatar has poured over $6 billion into US universities, making it the single largest foreign donor in American academia. The $6 billion check is not to support any programs but it concentrates in fields that shape policy, influence public discourse, and train future leaders.
In Europe, in recent years Qatar has funded 140 mosques, Islamic centers, and related projects across Europe, totaling roughly €72 million. These are not just places to pray but they function as an educational centers, designed to foster a new generation of European Muslim elite with a clear ideological objective.
For instance, the $6+ billion investment in US academia was to become Qatar’s ticket to buy power and influence over academic curricula promoting Qatar’s political agenda, it’s brand of Muslim Brotherhood Islam, and support for its allies from Hamas, to Hezbollah, to the Houthis, and to Iran. The funding also ensured that Qatar has a say in which academics get the top jobs. Regularly, we would see these “prestigious” academics pop up on AJ screen presenting their “evident” in way that enhance Hamas “moral authority” and demonize Israel. A mix of manipulated well-crafted cheery-picking facts combined with antisemitic libels all mixed together and packed as genuine facts.
For decades, large part section of Arab, Turkish, and Iranian media discourse has been centered around the debate if “Israel has the right to exist.” There are 193 countries in the world, yet only one of them is constantly discussed if it has the right to exist. Thanks to Qatar’s grip on the media landscape and billions of investment in the West, now the annihilation of the only Jewish state has moved globally. Today, a significant number of people in the West, including academics, journalists, politicians, bureaucrats, activists, and students, are joining the debate of “does Israel has the right to exist?” None of them ever questioned the right to exist of the remaining 192 UN member states.
“IDF baby killers” is another normalized hateful false accusation against Israel and the Jewish people in general. In 1986 to 1991, the late dictator Saddam Hussain launched a vicious genocidal Anfal Campaign against the Kurds in Iraq, my people, massacring more than 180,000 Kurdish civilians. This was a campaign of terror, where his Arab troops used chemical weapons against Kurds e.g. in the city of Halabja 1988.
Following October 7 Hamas pogrom and the war in Gaza, the Al Jazeera media machinery began a well-orchestrated campaign: “Genocide in Gaza.” This campaign literally started within weeks of IDF military operation against Hamas. Their distortion and manipulation of events were to spread like wildfire and suddenly we see an explosion of antisemitism in every country across the western world.
Israel was to be labelled as “Nazi-state” who is committing “war crimes” and “genocide” against the Palestinians, as well as its Jewish soldiers were to be labelled as “baby killers.” Jewish Diaspora communities were to become victims of antisemitic crimes, such as harassment and physical and verbal abuse. Synagogues were set on fire and Jewish business and homes were to be vandalized. It peaked in the last year with number of innocent Jewish civilians were murdered in the UK and the US.
As a Kurd, whose people were butchered by four Muslim countries, I don’t recall a single incident when e.g. Iraq was accused of being a “Nazi-state” who committed “war crimes” and “genocide” against the Kurds, or had its Arab-Muslim-army labelled as “baby killers.”
Let’s take a more recent example, Sudan. According to a recent date, the Sudan war is the deadliest and most destructive conflict in the world – compared with the war in Gaza against Hamas, the war in Ukraine, and the Myanmar civil war. Yet, not a single Arab or Muslim media outlet dedicates a tiny fraction of it’s coverage talking of the immense suffering of the Sudanese people!
Here, it evidential that “singling out” of Israel and the accusations are similar of a key theme in traditional versions of antisemitism, since they accuse the Jewish people collectively / the people of Israel of being, in effect, collectively committed to evil, Nazis, and genocidal.
Therefore, I was shocked when I start seeing hateful marches week after week invading cities and towns across Europe and North America transforming Hamas’s October 7 pogrom into a “beautiful heroic resistance.” Nor I was surprised when elite universities in the US but also in the UK, Sweden, and France were turn into breeding grounds for Jew-hatred and a vehicle for Muslim Brotherhood and Iran’s Velayate-e Faqih propaganda.
Years before October 7, numerous studies and surveys were shown there is a correlation between Islamism and radical left and the rise of contemporary antisemitism in Western societies. However, Western governments hesitate to openly address the issue for a number of reasons including the fear of being accused of Islamophobia.
Western governments were also well aware that state of Qatar – the haven for prominent exiled Islamist figures, including the terror-listed Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and the Taliban – was pouring billions of dollars in variety of investments.
Two weeks before October 7, I was in Israel, working as Israel-based producer for a film commissioned by Al Jazeera. The film director was a former colleague of mine from my time working at Al Araby Television Network (another Qatari funded media outlet). I had a good working relationship with him and the filming crew. A week or so, after October 7, I came back to Israel to report on Hamas’s October 7 massacre. My work was commissioned by the Jerusalem Center for Foreign and Security Affairs (JCFA) – my reporting generated an avalanche of hateful and smear campaign towards me. I was called a “criminal Zionist,” supporter of “baby killers,” and even received death threats.
Within days of IDF operation in Gaza, Qatari media octopus start running devoting most of its coverage to give platform to those who support Hamas narrative. Their coverage played a major role in the rise of antisemitism among Muslim diaspora communities and further radicalized “Western” Leftists. Their usage of negatively charged emotional words were to become the new-norm, headlines such as “Israel using starvation as a weapon of war,” “Israeli Occupation Forces committed a massacre in Khan Yunis, where most victims were children and women,” or “Israeli soldiers killing children,” were to be adopted even by Western mainstream media outlets as well as some politicians.
We all remember the fake story of “IDF sexually assaulting Gazan women” a story who was published by AJ and taken down within 24 hours and giving a cheap apology. The editorial management and the journalists were well aware it was a fake-story – yet they went ahead with it – because they knew Israel haters will take it as a fact. Another one was “There are 14,000 babies that will die in Gaza in the next 48 hours unless aid reach them.” The list of lies goes on…
On the first anniversary of October 7 massacre, AJ aired a documentary called Occupation Architecture. The documentary featured anti-Zionist Prof. Ilan Pappe (for those who are familiar with Qatari media, Pappe is on their payroll – I myself interviewed him twice while working for them). The documentary refer to October 7 as the “beginning of the end” of Zionism as the “dawn after the darkness.”
Muna Hawwa, was one those who worked on that documentary. A year earlier, on the morning of October 7, Hawwa posted on her social media account the “Barrier of fear to the path of possibility has become a reality.” The following year, on March 2024, she rejected Israeli women were raped on October 7 and tweeted its “Zionist propaganda” meant to “justify genocide” in Gaza.
Hawwa is not an isolated case, opinion pieces and news coverage on Israel are often characteristically biased. The style of reporting also differ significantly from reporting e.g. on a humanitarian story from Sudan or Ukraine. Journalists are expected to use emotionally charged words to influence their viewers by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes to favor the Palestinian side.
Qatar fund the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist terrorist organization outlawed in a number of Arab countries including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and recently in Sudan. Western leaders have resisted the pressure to designate the Muslim Brotherhood or challenge Qatar’s behavior.
We need to put political correctness aside and admit that the new wave of antisemitism taken grip on the Western world is an “imported one” – Radical Islam in the past decades alone, has killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of Muslim civilians across the Middle East and Africa. Countries like UAE have been front runners uprooting this murderous ideology. While western leaders been given refuge and platforms to variety of terrorist organizations and their affiliated media machinery to spread their hatred and incite against the Jews and to us all who reject their ideology.
The fight against antisemitism requires courage and not just words. It start with standing together in moments of difficulty and fear, not just in principle but in demanding actions.
The writer is a Kurdish-Swedish journalist and researcher specializing in Middle Eastern affairs. She was an Israel-based journalist and podcast presenter for the Arabic and English series Exposing the Lies – The Voice of Truth from the Middle East at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs. She previously worked as a field producer and journalist for several Qatari media outlets.
