Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Jewish Tug Of War Over Qatar Charm Offensive

An attempt by the Qatari government to break its international isolation by reaching out to the American Jewish community is being met with pushback.

The small Gulf nation has been under pressure for months after neighboring countries, led by Saudi Arabia, imposed a boycott on Qatar because of its support for terrorism and its close ties with Iran. The United States has also spoken out about the need for Qatar to change its policy and end funding for terror groups including Hamas.

Recently, in an effort to repair its image and perhaps break through the diplomatic siege, Qatar hired the services of Republican Jewish political strategist, Nick Muzin who has been trying to arrange a meeting between the country’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and Jewish communal leaders on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly next week.

This effort is being met by resistance from some in the Jewish community who believe sitting down with the Qatari leader would amount to whitewashing his country’s support for terrorist targeting Israel.

“It’s wrong to meet with them without seeing that they’ve made serious movement toward reform and change,” Morton Klein, leader of the Zionist Organization of America told Haaretz. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a long time vocal opponent of the Qataris, already ran a full page ads in the New York Times denouncing the country’s backing of Hamas and intends to continue his ad campaign against “Qatar’s PR makeover.”

Contact Nathan Guttman at [email protected] or on Twitter @nathanguttman

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.