Anwar Gargash, UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs talks to the media during a press conference in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Saturday, June 24, 2017. The top United Arab Emirates official says the Arab countries isolating Qatar do not seek to force out the country’s leadership but are willing to cut ties with it if it does not agree to their demands. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)

While we’re sort of reeling from the attack at NAS Pensacola by a Saudi flight trainee upon people who had trusted him,  the first “green on blue” attacks in the United States, it is all too easy to blame Saudi Arabia, as a whole, for the incident. While Saudi Arabia has had a problematic history with radical Islam for some years, the regime under Mohammed bin Salman has made strides in tamping down the overtly radical and violent anti-Western elements. And though Saudi Arabia comes under constant attack from the American left, the real locus of Islamic terrorism in that region of the world, Qatar is not only ignored, it is favored.

We’ve written about the endemic influence Qatar is allowed to have on American politics. It is a major funder of the Brookings Institution. And, for those of you following the Russia Hoax, you know that the single biggest online purveyor of Russian collusion claptrap was Benjamin Wittes, who runs Lawfareblog, which is a wholly owned entity of Brookings. Wittes was renowned for his multitude of pronouncements of President Trump’s impending demise prefaced by BOOM!…or more accurately, pfffft! His minion, Susan Hennessy, has tied herself in knots trying to rationalize the impeachment charade.

Brookings is not alone, the Washington Post gained notoriety for employing a Qatari intelligence asset, Jamal Khashoggi, as an op-ed writer whose singular job was to push Qatari propaganda and take Saudi Arabia to task. It was only after Khashoggi was offed in a Saudi intelligence operation that we discovered he wasn’t even writing much of his own material. It was being prepared by a foundation wholly owned by Qatar.

The political power of Qatar, and particular its alliance with the American left seems strange. The American left is all about equality and inclusion (so long as you have the right beliefs), and yet, Qatar is the one country in the Middle East that openly condones what can only be called slavery–according to Amnesty International, 90% of Qatar’s population is composed of foreign laborers who cannot leave the country and who have no civil rights. Women’s rights are non-existent. According to some studies, it is safer to be an out homosexual in Iran than in Qatar. And we’ve all seen the overtly Islamist claptrap generated by al-Jazeera which is somehow allowed to operate in the US without registering as a foreign agent. Qatar is the one Middle Eastern state with which we have close relations that continues to fund all manner of terrorist organizations; when terror groups like Hamas want to meet, they head to Qatar.

Though Qatar outright buys a lot of influence on the US, one of the subtle ways that Qatar punches way above its weight is its enlistment of far left and left leaning groups to appear at an ongoing event called the Doha Debates. These debates, hosted by the Qatar Foundation, cover hot button topics, past topics include refugee crisis, water shortage, loss of trust in institutions, gender inequality, capitalism, global citizenship and artificial intelligence–note terrorism and radical Islam are not on the agenda. Never mind that they take place in a nation that acts as the banker for al-Qaeda and which is socially regressive by virtually any measure, groups like Vox and like Ted Talks (many of which support the BDS nonsense) show up to bash the West despite what is happening right in front of their eyes.

A few progressive media orgs–@TEDTalks @NowThis @Voxmediainc–have quietly partnered with the Islamist and human rights violating regime in Qatar to produce @dohadebates, a debate series aimed at Americans. Tell them to https://t.co/GN7ovMou1m https://t.co/8Jr7AybpwS pic.twitter.com/9XyMVpbdCK

— Charles Jacobs (@DrCharlesJacobs) December 6, 2019

If you go to https://t.co/GN7ovMou1m, you'll be able to quickly send tweets to @TEDTalks @NowThis @SXSW @Voxmediainc, telling them to distance themselves from the human rights violating Qatari regime in Doha. Find out more here: https://t.co/orT3i1yMbC pic.twitter.com/ximsgBKced

— Charles Jacobs (@DrCharlesJacobs) December 6, 2019

Forced labor—compelling a person to work under the threat of violence for little or no pay—is a form of modern slavery, and Qatar is one of the world’s worst offenders. Tell @TEDTalks @NowThis @SXSW @Voxmediainc to https://t.co/GN7ovMou1m https://t.co/8Jr7AybpwS pic.twitter.com/vnxTwIy5BP

— Charles Jacobs (@DrCharlesJacobs) December 6, 2019

#DumpDoha Making sure Qatar is responsible for all its human rights violations is important. My org, the American Anti-Slavery Group, has a new website about our latest campaign. Go to https://t.co/GN7ovMou1m to find out more.

— Charles Jacobs (@DrCharlesJacobs) December 6, 2019

.@AnandWrites attacks “the hypocrisy of billionaires"– in Qatar, which is run by a family of billionaires who use their petroriches to control domestic media, host terrorist groups, and bribe foreign officials. Shameful! https://t.co/kESVogibbZ https://t.co/orT3i1yMbC pic.twitter.com/u6zH9pdtPM

— Charles Jacobs (@DrCharlesJacobs) December 6, 2019

A challenge for partners of the @DohaDebates like @TEDTalks @NowThis @Voxmediainc: Be honest about how much money Qatar has paid for your silence on its human rights record. What strings were attached? Time to https://t.co/GN7ovMou1m https://t.co/8Jr7AybpwS

— Charles Jacobs (@DrCharlesJacobs) December 6, 2019

It is kind of hard to stomach nonsense like this being preached at us from a perch where voicing such views on the street could get you an appointment with the secret police bearing tin-snips and electrodes.

"When you show deep empathy toward others, their defensive energy goes down, and positive energy replaces it. That's when you can get more creative in solving problems." – Stephen Covey

How do you practice empathy? pic.twitter.com/V7volhKXBJ

— Doha Debates (@DohaDebates) December 5, 2019

“Their money cannot be taken or stolen from them in the same way as so many as their rights have.”@Tonilanec explains how blockchain will not only revolutionize governance, but empower women as well: pic.twitter.com/PtVRHix3v2

— Doha Debates (@DohaDebates) December 7, 2019

“The only difference between a leader who’s young and someone who is just young is that the leader has decided to shed fear.”@raad_zeid on courage and leadership: pic.twitter.com/4tO3IcZWS0

— Doha Debates (@DohaDebates) December 7, 2019

While such an alliance might seem hard to understand at first blush…a woman extolling how blockchain can empower women in a country where women can’t have personal bank accounts…it really isn’t. Qatar is rich and hostile to the West. Vox and TedTalks and their ilk like Qatar’s money and they are hostile to the West insofar as the West represents freedom of thought and speech. They are making a calculation that Qatar’s funding of terrorism will not affect them and what’s enslaving tens of thousands of South Asians if a larger objective can be achieved.