In 2014 alone, Hamas spent $90 million on tunnel construction, and may have spent over $1 billion on the tunnels altogether, an investment made possible by the largess of Qatar, whose monarch, and the seniormost of his wives, recently received royal treatment on a visit to the United Kingdom. The British writer Nicole Lampert comments:

I watched our prime minister tell a Labor Friends of Israel lunch that his government stands behind the “independence” of the International Criminal Court to issue warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant. That means—however much they are presently pussyfooting around the issue—our government will attempt to arrest the Israeli politicians should they step foot on UK soil.

Meanwhile, just a day later, we are literally rolling out the red carpet for the leaders of Qatar, the nation which has for years housed and funded Hamas. So eager are our leaders to show a huge welcome to the Qataris that the poor princess of Wales disturbed her cancer recovery to be dragged out to Horse Guard Parade.

A lunch, golden carriages, and a fancy-pants Buckingham Palace state banquet await. But I’m thinking about the British hostage Emily Damari. Who knows what her last meal was? What rags she is dressed in? Has anyone even mentioned Emily to the sheikh as they gladhand and grin in photographs with him?

There is an irony too that of the many things Israel is accused of doing, Qatar gets away with barely a peep from the sanctimonious crew. . . . Meanwhile, we in the UK have allowed Qatar to buy up huge swathes of our nation—an incredible £40 billion worth—with stakes in everything from Heathrow and Barclays to the Ritz, the Savoy, Harrods, and even become the largest stakeholder in Sainsbury’s.

In a recent episode of 60 Minutes, a former State Department official tells the interviewer that U.S. support for Israel following October 7 has “put a target on America’s back” in the Arab world “and beyond the Arab world.” The complaint is a familiar one: Middle Easterners hate the United States because of its closeness to the Jewish state. But this gets things exactly backward. Just look at the rhetoric of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its various Arab proxies: America is the “Great Satan” and Israel is but the “Little Satan.”

Why, then, does Iran see the U.S. as the world’s primary source of evil? The usual answer invokes the shah’s 1953 ouster of his prime minister, but the truth is that this wasn’t the subversion of democracy it’s usually made out to be, and the CIA’s role has been greatly exaggerated. Moreover, Ladan Boroumand points out,

the 1953 coup was welcomed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, [the architect of the 1979 Islamic Revolution], and would not have succeeded without the active complicity of proponents of political Islam. And . . . the United States not only refrained from opposing the Islamic Revolution but inadvertently supported its emergence and empowered its agents. How then could . . . Ayatollah Khomeini’s virulent enmity toward the United States be explained or excused?

Khomeini’s animosity toward the shah and the United States traces back to 1963–64, when the shah initiated sweeping social reforms that included granting women the right to vote and to run for office and extending religious minorities’ political rights. These reforms prompted the pro-shah cleric of 1953 to become his vocal critic. It wasn’t the shah’s autocratic rule that incited Khomeini’s opposition, but rather the liberal nature of his autocratically implemented social reforms.

There is no need for particular interpretive skill to comprehend the substance of Khomeini’s message: as Satan, America embodies the temptation that seduces Iranian citizens into sin and falsehood. “Human rights” and “democracy” are America’s tools for luring sinful and deviant citizens into conspiring against the government of God established by the ayatollah.

Or, as George W. Bush put it, jihadists hate America because “they hate our freedoms.”