Qatargate: Leaked documents reveal Doha funds meant for PM Netanyahu

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) released a second round of incriminating documents which shed more light onto funds that were allegedly ordered to be transferred from Doha to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which is claimed to have taken place at least twice in the past 12 years.

These documents were leaked as part of the Raven Project, which involved the leak of dozens of Qatar related documents portraying Doha as financially involved with political and military figures across the world. According to Reuters, the documents originate in a leak led by ex-NSA agents working for actors in Qatar’s rival-neighbor, the UAE.

This round includes a 2012 classified “top secret” letter from then Qatari prime minister and foreign minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani to then economy and finance minister Yousef Husain Kamal in which the prime minister explains the decision of the Qatari Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, to transfer a grant of $50 million to Netanyahu, and a second letter from the same year in which Kamal states that the money had been transferred to Netanyahu in cash by means of Qatar’s State Security Service.

Kamal’s letter notes that Qatar’s previous attempt to make a formal bank transfer, via the World Vision organization, had been unsuccessful. This allegation is reinforced by a series of Jordanian documents which MEMRI pledged to published later, in which HSBC bank in Amman explains the rejection of the transfer by Jordanian authorities arguing that they were intended “to finance suspicious organizations, including Hamas, in collaboration with Benjamin Netanyahu, by means of other bank accounts.”

MEMRI had published a first round of these documents already in December, originating in Project Raven as well, in which five documents dated to 2012 and 2018. These featured correspondences between high-ranking officials in the Qatari government, including Prime Minister Hamed bin Jassem Al Thani and Minister of Finance Yousef Hussein Kamal, ordering and allegedly confirming the transferal of dozens of millions of dollars to Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman as part of their election campaigns.

The MEMRI publication stresses that the letters do not constitute proof that the funds had indeed been received by Netanyahu.

Documents explain Israel’s questionable relation to Qatar

The Jerusalem Post reached out to Yigal Carmon, president and founder of MEMRI.

“We came across all this by conducting research not on Israel, but rather on Qatar, enemy of Israel and West, and the bastion of fundamentalist Islam in the world,” explained Carmon.

“In the UAE you have the Abrahamic House with a mosque, a church and a synagogue; but in Doha you have just a mosque named after Abd El-Wahhab,” he continued, referring to a Muslim preacher known as the founder of the extremist Wahhabi school of thought in Islam. “The Emir’s father also presented himself this way, saying to Ghaddafi in 2010 ‘we are the real Wahabis, and I’m the 16th generation descendant of Abd El-Wahab.’ This is the way they identify themselves; they try to buy the world through sports, culture, education, and of course politics. You have Qatargate in Europe, Jim Biden in the US, and more.”

“Unfortunately, the consecutive governments of Israel and its security officials failed to grasp the existential threat that Qatar poses to the State of Israel, and even cooperated with it, and today we are paying the price. Qatar is everywhere in the world, and it threatens Israel everywhere in the world.”

In the case of Israel, Carmon points to what he deems as the Israeli government’s “questionable policy regarding Qatar for years,” adding that “maybe now with these findings we’re beginning to see why. These documents present an explanation for the question of Israel’s dangerous relations with Doha.”

How so?

“Israel has been behaving outrageously vis-à-vis the Qatari issue, transferring funds and allowing it to go unchecked, and so there must be an explanation. Our question is: why give money to the enemy? And in violation of the law? And all this despite the endless rounds of conflicts?” Carmon asked.

“Bits and pieces of explanations were offered regarding the political money transferred to Hamas in the past years. One explanation was to let Hamas grow and separate the Palestinians into two heads, one in Ramallah and one in Gaza, which may have worked for a few years until it exploded in our faces. The second was that he might have attempted to ‘buy’ peace, a vain and ill-tempered idea. Do you really expect to buy out someone as psychopathic as Sinwar?”

Carmon added a third possible explanation for the political money transferred to Hamas, which lies in the so-called ‘humanitarian crisis’ of Gaza. “This was complete nonsense from the beginning,” he stressed. “We started a project called Qatar before October 7, where we show how Aljazeera, TRT and other channels portray a beautiful, prosperous Gaza, with shopping malls, hospitals, boulevards, cafes, dog barbers, water parks, 22 higher education institutions, and more. So, there was no humanitarian crisis.”

“As for the issue of the personal money which was claimed to be transferred to Netanyahu, this is where we need even more explanations, which would require criminal investigations and more,” he said. “It might be seen as unthinkable, but many Qatar related things were unthinkable until they suddenly became plausible. Take Qatargate for instance – who would’ve thought that the Greek vice president of the European Parliament Eva Kaili was holding millions of dollars from Qatari bribe money in cash in her house? And yet, there it was, and now she is in jail. There’s also the example of Prince Charles, who was practically seen holding Qatari cash bags worth millions. All of these were inconceivable yet true.”

Do you think this is Netanyahu’s case too?

“I don’t conduct research on Netanyahu, and this is not my area of expertise. But there are some oddities, including weird trips to Guatemala as well as the well-known issue of the so-called ‘dirty laundry’ the Netanyahus would carry during their travels in guarded suitcases – not in the belly of the planes, but in business class with two guards, and not from the Shin Bet, mind you.”

“Even with regards to the money suitcases sent from Qatar to Gaza there were oddities,” Carmon continued. “They arrived in Israel and were sent to a hotel. The luggage would spend a night in there and not go straight to Gaza, and who knows if a suitcase found itself going astray.”

Carmon reminded that former prime minister Naftali Bennett decided to stop the money suitcases. “Bennett also owes an explanation to the public as for the reasoning behind his decision. He is trying to avoid it, too, but he has to offer explanations to the public. Why did he stop the suitcases? What did he see there?”

Already in 2021, Carmon wrote an article for the Kibbutzim News, where he mentioned what he referred to as ‘the blood wedding of Netanyahu and Qatar.’ “This was one of the first publications about the dubious relations between Netanyahu and Doha, years before everyone started talking about Qatar’s role after the massacre. So, relations between the parties were always problematic.

“It’s not like I’m anti-Netanyahu, and this is not a personal vendetta” stressed Carmon. “Regarding the families of hostages protesting against him I actually agree with him. Hamas is the one that keeps rejecting the deal, and he has no ability to change it. In my view, had they invested even 5% of their efforts against Bibi for protests against Qatar, the hostages would’ve come home faster.

“When we created an anti-Qatari lobbying group in Washington in regards to their ties to Hamas, Qatar’s claim was always ‘this is in coordination with Israel.’ The Qataris leaked three letters from Israeli officials thanking Doha for ‘contributing to security and stability’. My guess is that they are threatening to expose what they have about Netanyahu. So, for him it is better to have these demonstrations, than to direct the public’s rage against Doha and have them on his back.

“But all this is not my business,” he stressed. “My only area of interest is Qatar and the documents. They look completely authentic to me, and no one has brought me to court and sued me. Should anyone do that, I will try to prove how I know they are real according to their content, formulation, background, and the issue of political money. Once again, we can’t say anything about the receipt of the funds, as the documents only discuss their allocation, which is why this must all be investigated.”

‘If these documents are forged – let them sue me.’

Some would cast doubt on the authenticity of the documents.

“The main reason for suspicion is that the findings are so shocking. The automatic reaction of many is that ‘it can’t be, it’s just too much,’ and so they reject it on the spot. Nevertheless, if we come to think of it, it is in fact plausible. First of all, because some of what we had thought to be inconceivable already turned out to be true. I’m referring to the facilitation of funds to Hamas by the Israeli government. If you had asked anyone about it on October 6, they would have told you that it’s impossible, yet in the meantime ex-Mossad chief Yossi Cohen confessed that this has happened, and even admitted that ‘we were wrong.’”

Carmon highlighted that the idea of facilitating funds to Hamas was not only unreasonable, but also illegal. “The transferals were clearly illegal according to Israel’s own laws. Why did they travel in suitcases in cash, rather than being funneled through the Bank of Israel? The reason is that we would be thrown out of SWIFT for indirect financing of terror groups. So here they went and bypassed the law and called it ‘policy.’ No one is authorized to do such a thing, not even a prime minister,” he said.

“Attorney-General Mandelblit reportedly approved this policy, but who was he to have approved it?” asked Carmon angrily. “This is a blatantly illegal policy. If Netanyahu had a majority in Knesset – he should have led the way and changed the law. But this never happened because of course it would have no majority in Knesset. It all remained confidential as a sort of Mossad operation, and in the end, it was the Qataris who revealed this whole story.”

What would you say about the Emirati involvement in the supposed leaking of these documents? Wouldn’t that make these documents even more suspicious, considering the bitter rivalry between the two countries?

“Let me reinforce this question,” Carmon answered confidently. “The leaking of these documents stemmed indeed from a counterattack by the Emiratis against the Qataris after Qatar chose to reveal documents about the UAE and create scandals for their neighbors, who suffered real blows. So, it is probable that this was indeed a reaction to the Qatari move.

“But this doesn’t mean that the documents are forged,” continued Carmon. “The old documents we revealed in December were found on a website named Blast long before we started this investigation, and Israel wasn’t the focal point of them at all. The documents dealt with funding Sarkozy in France, Jumblatt in Lebanon, militias in Mali, the former South African President Mbeki and even organizations such as Human Rights Watch. The internal conflict between them has nothing to do with us specifically, and I find it hard to believe that the UAE forged documents to harm Netanyahu.”

Carmon holds that forging documents which stem from various different sources entails the creation of an entire industry, entailing the need to coordinate dates, references, serial numbers, and more. “I am convinced that they are authentic. New documents which confirm some of the claims, and which we will publish soon, are not from Project Raven but from Jordanian investigations, giving this story even more credibility,” he explained.

“Finally, I am putting my professional honor on the line here. I haven’t been contacted nor sued for spreading misinformation, and no other public figure mentioned in these documents has filed a single complaint. The Qataris themselves never bothered to deny any of the findings. I’m convinced that these documents are real, and I deem it necessary to conduct relevant inquiries, because the public deserves answers.”

Why do you think the media in Israel and around the world aren’t picking up this story? These are some staggering findings.

“It really is weird that I received only a handful of media requests, save for some podcasts and talk shows. The previous documents stirred up a little more noise, but now people are just not interested at all. My guess is that they decided it was too much, so they decide that it’s unthinkable and move on,” Carmon reasoned.

“Again, this is despite the fact that the issue of the political money Hamas, which was also found on these documents, has already been confirmed. The political and personal money transfers both stem from the same documents. Why is political money accepted, as Yossi Cohen had already confirmed, but personal money not?” he asked.

“Incidentally, Netanyahu was asked in a press conference about the last round of documents, where he responded that they were 100% fake,” Carmon reminded. “For me it was an important comment, because prior to that he commented that it was ‘a joke.’ But if it’s indeed an instance of forgery – how can someone forge documents about the prime minister and not get sued? I, Yigal Carmon, am propagating a horrible conspiracy about the Prime Minister everywhere just like that – why aren’t they suing me? Saying that these are 100% fake is not serious. Their policy is in and of itself an explanation. As I said, many unthinkable things suddenly became plausible. What we need is an investigation and what we need is accountability,” he concluded.

Comments

Sources close to Qatar commented that “Spreading unfounded rumors is not only irresponsible but can also lead to misunderstandings. We encourage everyone to engage in constructive dialogue and rely on verified sources of information.”

A spokesperson for the Likud party commented: “These are false and illusory news, and false propaganda against the State of Israel, in the midst of a war.”

Yigal Carmon also responded following the publication of the report, stating that he “would like to correct things I said in relation to the coordinator of operations in the territories, Maj.-Gen. Poli Mordechai, in connection with the transfer of Qatari money to Gaza. According to his direct testimony, he was not connected in any way to these transfers that were made after he finished his position. I would like to correct my words on this subject.