Qatari regime ‘poisoning children’ with antisemitism and anti-Americanism, says U.S. expert

The Qatari government's role in promoting antisemitism and incitement against Israel as well as the United States is being found to extend beyond its flagship channel Al Jazeera and the statements of government officials.

A new jaw-dropping report from the U.S.-based NGO Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) documents content found glorifying terrorism that was published in a children's magazine titled Jassim.

Since October 7, MEMRI has found that the monthly magazine has published poems and comics that incite against Jews and against Israel, deny Israel's right to exist, condone terror against Israel — which is termed ‘Palestinian resistance’ — and even encourage the readers to "seek martyrdom and attain Paradise.” MEMRI also reported that “many issues of the magazine feature maps that present the entire territory between the Mediterranean sea and the Jordan river as ‘Palestine,’ thus denying Israel's existence.” 

Just a month after the October 7 massacre in which Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel, killing approximately 1,200 people and taking over 250 hostage, Jassim director Shafiq Saleh said the magazine's November issue was "devoted to solidarity with the children of Palestine. Its cover shows children in traditional Palestinian costume waving the flag of Palestine, against the backdrop of a map of the Arab state of Palestine." The issue contains a poem called "The Land Is Mine," which states that "Palestine is my heart and the heart of the Arabs… We shall defend it with our hearts and souls, and attaining martyrdom is the most honorable of aspirations."

The November edition also includes a comic strip in which a father explains and defends Palestinian resistance to his sons, defining it as violent activities. The father tells his sons: "The usurping occupier seeks to sow destruction and devastation in the land in order to make [the Palestinians] leave their soil and their homeland… The usurpers came from different countries and stole Palestine by the force of arms in hope of making it their permanent homeland. But the proud Palestinian people refused, and resisted from the very first day until now.”

Jassim, which is financed by the Qatar state-sponsored Dar Al-Sharq Group, also demonized the U.S. in one of its comic strips that justified the October 7 massacre. Found in the January 2024 issue, the comic is titled "This is my nest," and tells the story “of a resplendent quetzal, a bird with red, green, white and black plumage, which represents Palestine. It fights off a blue-and-white cuckoo with a yarmulke, representing Israel as a cuckoo chick tries to take over the quetzal's nest. During the fight, a red-white-and-blue serpent appears alongside the cuckoo baring its fangs. 

At the story's end, the "Palestinian" quetzal strikes at the "Israeli" cuckoo, and kicks it out of the nest. The magazine's director, Shafiq Saleh, described the story as one about "guarding the homeland and resisting the usurping occupier."

Another comic from the April 2024 edition tells a similar allegory. This time, a family of birds tries to escape their cage while evading a cat waiting to eat them. The mother bird encourages the chick to "be a man and know that you must resist until your dying breath." The chick goes on to strike the cat and rescue his parents from its jaws. Once freed, the mother bird tells the chick: "Palestine teaches us that liberty is not granted as a gift but is taken by force."

In response to the MEMRI report, Jassim uploaded a video to its X account claiming that the magazine was subject to a “crude attack” by MEMRI, adding: “Qatar is a sovereign Arab country, with a free press that supports the rights of the deep-rooted Palestinian people.”

The Qatari-regime controlled daily Al-Sharq published a response to the MEMRI report, stating: "The Israeli occupation, which killed in cold blood more than 13,000 Palestinian children during its brutal aggression on Gaza, is not ashamed from directing the arrows of its media arms and research centers towards a Qatari children's magazine, whose only weapon is papers and a set of colors. "

Al-Sharq has previously published opinion articles justifying rocket attacks on Israel, including by Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari before he entered the role and became an adviser to Qatar's prime minister.

Rich Goldberg, who served on the National Security Council during the Trump administration, told i24NEWS, “We should not be surprised to learn that a top sponsor and ally of Hamas poisons its children with antisemitism and genocidal views. What’s surprising is that we still pretend Qatar is a friend and ally.” 

Goldberg, who is a senior advisor at the Washington D.C.-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is sharp critic of Qatar and testified in Congress last year about Doha's role in funding Hamas.

Many U.S. senators and Congress members have urged the Biden administration to reassess the American alliance with Qatar because of its reported support for Islamist terrorism. There have been calls from within Congress and by counter-terrorism officials for the U.S. to relocate its CENTCOM Al-Udeid military base in Qatar to another Middle Eastern country — such as the UAE — that does not sponsor Islamist terrorist movements. 

Israel does not have diplomatic relations with the tiny gas-rich emirate. Qatar is largely a totalitarian state without press freedoms and lacking civil liberties, and its government exercises control over media and publishing enterprises.

i24NEWS sent a press query to Qatar's embassy in Washington, which was not immediately returned.