Rep. Jack Bergman
Washington Times, Oct. 16, 2023
“… 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.”
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.