Qatar campus of Georgetown University hosts Hamas-affiliated media personality

A US university campus located in Doha, Qatar, is hosting a Hamas-affiliated media personality as a keynote speaker at a conference, in addition to other officials from designated terror organizations. The conference, titled “Reimagining Palestine,” took place September 20-22 in Qatar. One of the main speakers was Wadah Khanfar, a former official at Qatar’s mouthpiece Al Jazeera whose relationship with Hamas has been well-documented throughout the years.

Khanfar was named as an early leader of Hamas’s office in Sudan by multiple Arabic-speaking outlets, including the Palestinian Raya Media Network, the Yemen-based Mareb Press, and the British Al-Arab website. Likewise, according to Mohamed Fahmy, a former Al Jazeera English Egypt bureau chief, the Muslim Brotherhood described Khanfar in 2007 as “one of the most prominent leaders in the Hamas office in Sudan.” Khanfar was also reportedly connected to the al-Aqsa Foundation in South Africa, which the US Treasury Department designated “a critical part of Hamas terrorist support infrastructure.” Finally, Khanfar’s brothers – Hakam, Mehdi, and Fahmi – were all identified as members of Hamas by either the Muslim Brotherhood, the Palestinian Authority, or even Hamas itself.

Khanfar was also close with Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a prominent Qatar-based cleric and high religious authority of the Muslim Brotherhood who endorsed suicide bombings and starkly supported Hamas. In 2011, in a 15-minute speech, al-Qaradawi praised Khanfar for his efforts on behalf of Al Jazeera and the Islamic world, and in 2022, Khanfar delivered a eulogy for the Sheikh following his death in the presence of Hamas leaders, including Khaled Meshaal.

Other speakers at the conference included Shawan Jabarin, who is closely affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, another designated terror organization, and Issam Younis, who in the past supported Hamas’s oppressive rule in Gaza and sat on a panel with Hamas leader and notorious terrorist Yahya Sinwar.

Qatari influence from K-12 education to sports, energy, and media

Qatar’s Georgetown campus is part of the university’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service (SFS), the world’s top foreign policy school. According to reports, Qatar has given roughly $1,000,000,000 to Georgetown University since 2005, which may imply undue foreign influence over the institution and raise concerns about what messages are being taught to America’s future diplomats and foreign affairs officials.

After discovering that it had been giving intellectual property to Qatar, the Texas A&M University board decided to close its Doha campus in February. Texas A&M and the Qatar Foundation, a regime-controlled agency that upholds relationships between Qatar and foreign universities, signed the agreements. These contracts allowed Qatar to obtain control of research and discoveries, including those related to nuclear research, made at Texas A&M’s Doha campus using the university’s world-renowned resources.

Doha’s involvement in the education sector of the US is not limited to universities; reports have shown that a Qatari foundation recently began funding and promoting courses for K-12 schools in several school districts in California and across the US, many of them revolving around the Palestinian narrative that erases Jewish presence in and ties to the Land of Israel.

Qatar is a major supporter and promoter of the Muslim Brotherhood and its violent endeavors. It has hosted Hamas leaders for the past decade and also granted safe haven to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

In this context, it should be noted that Qatari influence in the US is notable in many other fields, with endeavors led mainly by the regime-sanctioned Qatar Investment Authority (QIA). Examples include involvement in real estate, with QIA’s purchase of a 10% stake in the Empire State Building and the $660 million purchase of the New York Plaza Hotel in 2018; sports, with the purchase of a 5% stake in Monumental Sports & Entertainment, the company that owns the NBA team the Washington Wizards, the NHL team the Capitals, and the WNBA team the Mystics; energy, with QIA’s $550 million purchase of the Midstream crude operator Oryx in 2019; and even social media, with QIA’s reported contribution of $375 million to Elon Musk’s buyout of Twitter in 2022.

These examples, along with Khanfar’s appearance at the Doha-based conference, demonstrate Qatar’s “double game:” gaining influence in the US through soft power and popular culture on the one hand and, on the other hand, generously sponsoring terrorists and terror groups while propagating pro-Hamas narratives through their media channels, as part of the Qatar-Al Jazeera-Hamas axis.