Bassem Eid
IPT, June 10, 2025
“… unlike Iran, with its regular “Death to America” chants, Qatar has never publicly positioned itself in opposition to the American-led international order.”
How did Hamas do it on October 7? This time, I don’t mean to ask how they had so little humanity as to butcher over 1,200 innocents in Israel in a single day of horrors, the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Nor do I refer to the level of brainwashing or innate evil necessary to kill 370 young people at a dance party, to rape and genitally mutilate screaming women and girls, or to drag 250 hostages – including 12 Americans – back to Gaza. No, at present, I am speaking of practical and, ultimately, financial capability: how was Hamas able to afford the trucks, the motorcycles, the assault weapons and grenades, the paragliders and massive tunnel networks that enabled their terroristic invasion on that black day? To a large extent, the answer can be found at a single address: Qatar, the absolute monarchy on the Arabian peninsula that is the beating heart of modern terrorism financing.
According to a newly revealed report by the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, one of the reasons that enabled Hamas to build up its forces for the October 7 onslaught was “the flow of money from Qatar to Gaza and its delivery to Hamas’s military wing” This occurred in partnership with the better known bête noire of the United States and Israel in the Middle East, the rogue state of Iran, which has been officially designated as a State Sponsor of Terrorism by the U.S. State Department since 1984. Overall, the Shin Bet determined that Hamas’s achievement of strike capacity “was to a large degree due to the strategic buttress provided by Iran and the use of the funds that came in from Iran and Qatar.”
What explains the deep involvement of Qatar in antisemitism and international terrorism? In a word: ideology. Qatar’s official version of Islam is the stark form called Wahhabism. Since the 1990s, Qatar has positioned itself as the major funder of the radical front for Islamist political theocracy known as the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Hamas, which Qatar has heavily funded, is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, and its 1988 founding charter commits it to the destruction of the State of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic theocracy in its place. Qatar was the primary physical residence and base for Hamas’s international leadership from 2012 until late 2024, when American pressure grew too great in the wake of the October 7 massacre,. ….SOURCE
Bassem Eid is a Jerusalem-based Palestinian political analyst, human rights pioneer and expert commentator on Arab and Palestinian affairs. He grew up in an UNRWA refugee camp. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @realbassemeid