Qatar’s Two-Faced Foreign Policy Makes the Middle East More Dangerous

Qatar is home to an airbase that is essential to American operations in the Middle East and, as of this year, it is an officially designated U.S. non-NATO ally. But Doha is also a key financial backer of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, maintains ties with the Taliban, and owns and operates Al Jazeera, a major source of anti-Semitic and anti-American propaganda in the Middle East. President Biden recently thanked the peninsular emirate for its role in negotiating the ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. But this role conceals something more sinister, as Hussain Abdul-Hussain explains:

In an interview with Al-Jazeera Arabic, Majed al-Ansari, the spokesperson for the Qatari Foreign Ministry, tied himself into knots while seeking to explain the contradictions of Doha’s foreign policy. First, he took credit for the ceasefire, saying that Qatar communicated with all parties involved, including “Palestinian factions in Gaza.” He paused, then added, “and with the Israeli side, also.” Ansari was clearly reluctant to admit any interaction with the Jewish state, likely because Al Jazeera and other Qatari organs spend so much time condemning those Arabs who prefer normal relations with Israel to perennial hostility.

One way for Doha to iron out the contradictions in its foreign policy is to broadcast different messages to Arabic speakers and English speakers. Accordingly, when Al Jazeera English played clips of Ansari’s interview, it left out his denunciations of Israel, while letting him boast of Qatar’s role as peacemaker.

At other times, the network simply veers into blood-libel territory. One tweet asked, “What are the roots of the genocidal Zionist doctrine?” It linked to an article on that subject that quotes violent passages from the Bible and claims the Zionist movement applies them directly to Palestinians. The article was not an exception.

Qatar simply speaks from both sides of its mouth and expects global accolades for its troubled thinking and troublemaking behavior. If Washington wants to prevent further conflict in Gaza, it should let Doha know the game is up.

Read more at Jerusalem Post

More about: Al Jazeera, anti-Americanism, Anti-Semitism, Gaza Strip, Qatar

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society