OPINION:
While there is no doubt that Hamas could not exist without Iran’s backing — as Secretary of State Antony Blinken has acknowledged — the truth is that the brutal and depraved Hamas attacks on Israel were ultimately overseen by terrorist leaders who openly live in a supposed ally of the United States: Qatar.
Qatar has for years pursued a unique foreign policy of aligning closely with both the U.S. and our enemies. When Qatar was helping Afghan refugees escape as the Taliban violently took over two years ago, for example, the leaders who orchestrated that bloody coup did so from their haven in Qatar’s capital, Doha.
Now that it has been confirmed that Hamas has murdered and kidnapped U.S. citizens, that dual approach must end.
For two decades, our military’s most important base in the Middle East — the Combined Air Operations Center for the U.S. Central Command — has been in Qatar. Perhaps nothing better illustrates Qatar’s dual approach than the fact that our brave men and women in uniform who have served out of Al Udeid Air Base in Doha have gone on missions to combat terrorist groups funded by Qatar.
This bizarre reality has persisted because elites in America and the West have fooled themselves into buying Qatar’s narrative that the emirate’s support for terrorist groups actually benefits the U.S. — and even Israel.
The twisted logic works like this: Qatar’s deep financial and political support for terrorist groups will moderate them, produce critical intelligence about their plans, and that such backing positions the emirate to act as a “mediator” for the West with the terrorist groups, such as mediating negotiations with the U.S. for the return of Americans held hostage by the Taliban.
Just this week, Qatari official Abdulaziz Al Thani wrote an email to Washington think tanks — most or all of whom undoubtedly receive significant funding from Qatar — attempting to justify his country’s overt support of Hamas, explaining that doing so allows Qatar “to preserve and ensure our role as mediator in de-escalation.”
Any argument that Qatar’s providing sanctuary to Hamas leaders might keep the terrorist group in check went up in flames. And even though it provides Hamas’ terrorist masterminds with luxury homes and lavish spending accounts, the most generous assessment is that Qatar was somehow unable to detect the unprecedented attacks planned and overseen by terrorists right under their noses — so there is no intelligence benefit, either.
As for mediation, why should we enlist Qatar to negotiate with mass murderers when it could just as easily arrest them? Negotiations are about leverage. If Hamas leaders are negotiating from penthouse suites in Doha, far from Israel’s necessary acts of self-defense in Gaza, they have no incentive to end the carnage and release the 100 or more civilians who were kidnapped. The “negotiations” would be much faster and more fruitful if those terrorist leaders were arrested and transferred to either the U.S. or Israel.
Put another way, just as we would not have allowed Hitler to continue exterminating Jews after the Allies took Berlin, Hamas leaders should not be allowed to continue engineering terrorist operations from a supposed ally of the U.S. — let alone mere miles from the U.S. military’s most important base in the region.
On Oct. 7, as the world watched in horror as the first images of bloodshed began to emerge from Israel, Hamas leaders in Doha were filmed celebrating that terrorist campaign, engaging in an Islamic prayer of gratitude to give thanks to God for the mass murder of Jews. The footage also shows that these Hamas leaders were watching Al Jazeera, the propaganda outlet owned and ultimately controlled by Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani.
That Hamas leaders were watching Al Jazeera should come as little surprise, given that the network has provided untold millions’ worth of marketing and political benefit by whitewashing or even lauding the terrorist group. For example, on Oct. 7, Al Jazeera’s Arabic website published a story hailing Hamas as “the resistance” with the sickening headline “Activists praise the resistance’s humanitarian treatment of an Israeli woman and her children.” The article praised Hamas for its “humane treatment” of kidnapped Israelis and for acting “according to Islamic teachings.”
There is only one acceptable approach. Every single Hamas leader living in Doha — or in any nation that is an ally of the U.S. — needs to be arrested and all their assets frozen. Immediately.
The U.S. must give an ultimatum to Doha: You can be an arsonist or a firefighter. You cannot be both.
• Jack Bergman is a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general and politician serving as the U.S. representative from Michigan’s 1st Congressional District since 2017.
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