There was a brief moment of optimism on Monday morning when Hamas announced that it would be releasing an important video statement on its Telegram channel at 4 p.m.
Maybe the remains of St.-Sgt.-Maj. Ran Gvili, the final hostage in the Gaza Strip, would be coming home at last.
It would have been a brilliant tactical move that would have caught Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu off guard ahead of his meeting with US President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Netanyahu would have been forced to agree to phase two of the Gaza peace plan that will only be implemented when all live and dead hostages are returned. And Gvili’s parents would have returned from Mar-a-Lago straight to the Funeral of the Century, 818 days after Oct. 7, which would have finally ended the war.
Such a dramatic script could have only been drafted by Hamas’s brilliant information war commander Huthafya Samir al-Kahlout, better known as Abu Obaida, who was the face of the terrorist organization for more than 20 years.
But Abu Obaida has been dead since August 31, when he was killed in a targeted Israeli airstrike in Gaza City.
Hamas took care of that trivial obstacle the same way Hollywood has handled it when actors playing key characters have passed away, from Harry Potter’s Albus Dumbledore to Marvel’s Thaddeus Ross to The Oracle in The Matrix.
Abu Obaida 2.0
The star of the video was a new Abu Obaida, dressed just like his predecessor. He confirmed Kahlout’s death and pledged to continue his legacy but did not reveal his name. The new spokesman, who is rumored to be a former journalist, will instead call himself Abu Obaida, too.
The main news of the video was that Hamas would not abide by its obligation to disarm, which is also a prerequisite for phase two’s implementation. But that did not make any headlines, which focused instead on Kahlout’s death, even though Israel announced it in August.
Veteran Palestinian affairs analyst Khaled Abu Toameh reported that Hamas waited to confirm the assassination until a replacement was ready, which takes time to be decided. Announcing it sooner would have created a vacuum that would have made Hamas look vulnerable.
As soon as the announcement was made, several members of the Qatari royal family rushed to praise Kahlout, extolling him as a heroic martyr. Analyst Eitan Fischberger revealed that even Qatari Education Minister Lolwah Alkhater posted a note of mourning as she has done in the past for Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh.
“It’s time for the knight to dismount,” Alkhater wrote in her fawning post about Abu Obaida that was far from educational.
West must oppose Qatar
After that post and so many like it, how could anyone in the West continue to stand with Qatar, take their money, and defend their regime and its propaganda machines – the Al Jazeera network and AJ+ streaming service?
I understand why a campaign discrediting Qatar cannot begin until Gvili is returned home. But as I have told top American Jewish leaders, every Jewish and pro-Israel organization around the world should be preparing now for such a campaign to start the moment the final hostage is in Israel’s hands.
The new year 2026 should be the year of quelling Qatar, making it taboo to do business with them and watch their channels due to their complicity in international terror. The same tactics used to try to make Israel into a pariah state should be used against Qatar.
Every antisemitic trope used for centuries against the Jews is actually true of the Qataris. They have undue influence over the media, the universities, Hollywood, and governments around the world.
Qatari media influence
Let’s start with the media. I wish it was just Qatari-controlled outlets like Al Jazeera, Doha News, and Middle East Eye. Unfortunately, it is also one of the most dominant voices on the American Right, Tucker Carlson, who announced at the Doha Forum that he would get a home in Qatar.
The pro-Israel media watchdog HonestReporting published its annual Dishonest Reporter of the Year Awards this week. Carlson was given the Sponsored by Qatar award.
“From hosting Holocaust-denying historians to enjoying chummy tête-à-têtes with neo-Nazi figures such as Nick Fuentes, Carlson returned, again and again, to Israel and Israel-adjacent topics, all while assuring viewers he would much rather be talking about something else,” the website wrote.
“What, one might ask, could have Riyal-ly prompted this volte-face on Israel? The answer can be found back in January, when Carlson acquired new patrons in the form of the State of Qatar. And once the Qatari riyals began flowing, the mystery rather resolved itself.”
Former Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief Yaakov Katz published a new study of Carlson and political commentator Candace Owens for the Jewish People Policy Institute this week that analyzed 3,000 YouTube video transcripts from their channels, each of which has more than five million followers. The analysis, using artificial intelligence, found that they have significantly intensified their focus on Israel in recent months, accompanied by a marked escalation in anti-Israel rhetoric and, in the case of Owens, explicit antisemitism.
If Carlson and Owens have received large sums from Qatar, it must be exposed, and it must taint them in the eyes of the Americans who are so enamored by them. They can only be rendered irrelevant if their own followers realize the hypocrisy in supporting people who are lying about being “America First.”
Universities, Hollywood, and governments
Next, are the universities. It’s time for top American universities to close down their campuses in Qatar, including my alma mater, Northwestern, as well as Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, and Georgetown.
I am proud that I helped the Coalition Against Antisemitism at Northwestern persuade the university’s board of trustees to break its agreement with Al Jazeera because they could be liable for supporting terror. A recent investigation by the Middle East Forum revealed that Northwestern’s Qatar campus functions as a training ground for Doha’s royal and elite families, while the Qatar Foundation, controlled by the Al Thani royal family, has poured more than $700 million into the partnership.
As for Hollywood, there has been an influx of Qatari-backed films spreading anti-Israel and antisemitic propaganda. The same Qatari education minister mentioned before, Lolwah Alkhater, is vice chair of Media City Qatar, which is wooing directors to film in Qatar. The Doha Film Institute gives grants to projects that promote the government’s agenda.
That leaves governments. Both the Israeli and the American administrations are grossly infected by Qatari influence and money. Netanyahu’s advisers are being investigated for Qatargate, and his son Yair was caught meeting with a member of the Qatari royal family at a sensitive time.
Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has business ties with the Qataris that certainly cloud his judgment. And European governments that have become more anti-Israel also have upped their financial connections with Doha.
This must be the year when such connections become socially unacceptable and even shameful.
The terrorists involved in planning and carrying out the Oct. 7 massacre and kidnapping Gvili and 250 other Israelis have paid a price, as have their Iranian sponsors and their allies in Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. It is long overdue for Qatar to be quelled as well.■
The writer is the executive director of the pro-Israel media watchdog HonestReporting. He served as chief political correspondent and analyst of The Jerusalem Post for 24 years.