It’s no secret that the Qatari government has spent enormous amounts of money to buy influence in the US media in recent years. What is surprising is how much progress they’ve made.
The New York Times’ Nathan Thrall is the latest journalist to have his ties to the Qatari government revealed. His recent article, entitled “How the Battle Over Israel and Anti-Semitism Is Fracturing American Politics,” confirms his anti-Semitic worldview. He discusses the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and, as usual, he “accuses prominent Jewish philanthropists, like Haim Saban, of holding the Democratic Party hostage on Israel.”
The Free Beacon’s Adam Kredo reported:
Thrall works for an organization whose major donor, Qatar, is also the largest state funder of the terrorist group Hamas. Other significant donors to the author’s organization, [including] the International Crisis Group, are leading supporters of BDS.
Thrall is tied to a large network of BDS supporters that are funded into the millions by the Qatari government, which has long been engaged in efforts to spy on the American Jewish community and pro-Israel officials. Qatar’s foreign influence operations in Washington, D.C., have flown mostly under the radar, but are part of a larger proxy battle being waged by wealthy Middle Eastern governments eager to peddle influence in powerful D.C. circles.
Thrall, who the Times presents as a disinterested expert, serves as director of the Arab-Israeli Project at the International Crisis Group, or ICG, a left-leaning advocacy organization that has received around $4 million from the Qatari government in the just the last year. Qatar’s donations represent around 6 percent of ICG’s total budget. Qatar is not mentioned in Thrall’s 11,500-word piece.
Kredo’s piece, which can be read here, goes into great detail about Thrall’s past writings, which have been highly anti-Semitic.
The most troubling part of this is that the New York Times presents Thrall as an objective journalist. How many people will read his articles, and unaware of his bigotry, believe his words to be the truth?
Josh Block, the CEO and president of the Israel Project, finds the “Times‘ failure to disclose Thrall’s biases and ICG’s funding to be “horrifying.” He said:
It is outrageous that any newspaper, let alone one that takes itself so seriously as the NYT would commit what is such an obvious and horrifying violation of basic journalistic ethics and standards by publishing such a misleading article—presented as ‘news’—rife with falsehoods, ad hominem attacks on Jews and even including implying supporters of Israel were responsible for the Tree of Life massacre, all without acknowledging, even hiding the fact, that it is authored by a supporter of the ‘Destroy Israel Movement,’ which calls itself B.D.S., and who is employed and paid by an organization whose primary funders are leading sponsors and funders of the effort to destroy and boycott the Jewish state, starting with Qatar, followed by the Rockefellers and OSI. It boggles the mind.
Documentary filmmaker Adelle Nazarian, formerly a Fox News journalist, refers to foreign governments’ attempts to infiltrate and influence other countries media as “information terrorism.” In her new documentary below, she reveals how widespread this practice has become. Regarding Thrall, Nazarian said, “Qatar’s propaganda machine landed at The New York Times and it’s trying to drag Jews and pro-Israel advocates down with it.”
She points out that the Qatari government is guilty of everything that Thrall accuses the Jewish people of.
It’s not Jews that are paying journalists. It’s Qatar.
It’s not Jews who are telling prominent newspapers what to publish. It’s Qatar.
It’s not Jews who are using money to shape the national conversation. It’s Qatar.
Unfortunately, there are many US journalists who are working on behalf of the Qatari government as well as other foreign governments. Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist who was brutally murdered last October at the Saudi Embassy in Istanbul, was believed to be a paid Qatari intelligence asset. He was publishing content prepared by an executive at Qatar Foundation International in The Washington Post at the time of his death. My colleague, Streiff, wrote a detailed piece about this story here.
These journalists are working for many US media outlets, including CNN. This is an alarming trend. I will be posting on several of them soon.
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