Beware the Qataris

I feel some sympathy for the British royal family because of the ghastly people they are forced to meet. The late Queen had to greet Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu, Idi Amin and Robert Mugabe. This week the King and Prince and Princess of Wales had to meet the Emir of Qatar and his wife.

True to form, the state media in Britain managed to miss every major problem with this. The BBC did say that there might be protests around the visit because of Qatar’s record on ‘LGBT rights’. But more troubling is that Britain should ever have welcomed the leadership of such a sordid, terrorist-supporting statelet.

It’s troubling that Britain should have welcomed the leadership of a sordid, terrorist-supporting statelet

For two decades now Qatar has been one of the leading supporters, funders and hosts of the proscribed terrorist group Hamas. They have transferred billions of dollars to Hamas, and the Emir and his family continue to host the group’s leadership in luxury hotels and apartments in Doha.

Of course at this point the ‘wise heads’ in Whitehall will point out that Qatar is a major investor in the UK, owning as they do such properties as Harrods. Funnily enough, even before the recent revelations about Mohamed Fayed, ownership of Harrods is not a demonstration of anything good, apart from having oodles of money.

Qatar certainly has that. Over recent years they have used it to pollute some of our first- and second-tier institutions, such as King’s College London. In the US they have been even more munificent. There is no coincidence in the fact that almost every American university that has played host to pro-Hamas protests over the past 14 months is also the recipient of wads of bribes from Qatar’s slush-fund.