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Qatar’s Master Class in Manipulation
As Israeli hostage families literally run into Gaza in the hope of somehow retrieving their loved ones, it is important to recognize how we got here. International observers might be somewhat confused by the reality they see in Israel. There seems to be broad Israeli support for military pressure to bring back the hostages. At the same time, though, hostage families seem to be shouting – at the top of their lungs – “GIVE HAMAS EVERYTHING.”
The hostage families – at least those who are shouting – want to surrender the Egyptian-Gazan border which has been the conduit for so many arms. They want to surrender Netzarim, which controls the internal flow of terrorists and arms. They want to surrender to Hamas for the sake of their loved ones. While their personal desire is entirely understandable, on a state level their policy would be one of national suicide. Sinwar himself was returned on a prior hostage deal; every time Hamas is rewarded for their actions, they become more blatant about them. A permanent ceasefire would be interpreted as an outright Hamas victory. A surrender of the border would condemn countless Israelis to further violence.
So why do the loudest hostage families seem so blind to this reality? The reason is that those families are not random. Hamas, and presumably their sponsors in Qatar and Iran, chose which settlements to take hostages from. As the following graph demonstrates, they chose on the basis of politics.
The Politics of Kidnapping
Left-wing settlements not only had more victims, they had a far higher percentage of those victims taken as hostages. People were murdered in right-wing settlements, but almost none were taken hostage. Almost none were chosen to form a permanent sore in Israeli society.
With this data alone, it isn’t hard to imagine the Qataris expecting exactly the response they’ve had: vociferous demands for surrender in return for hostages. These left-wing and hard-left communities have always been against a military response. They are in opposition politically, and they formed the core of anti-government protests prior to the war. The hostages could be expected to exacerbate a fundamental fracture in Israeli society. In other words, the hostages were chosen based on the communities they were taken from.
The reality goes even deeper.
The Richard Center for Global Engagement is a world-renowned hostage negotiation group. On October 8th, they began to represent and help design the strategies that would be adopted by the hostage families. Their Vice-President, Mickey Bergman, has made a number of “practical” suggestions. Among them:
- “The only way to get the hostages out fast is for Israel to give in to Hamas’ demands, which include ending the war and releasing all Palestinian terrorists from prison.”
- “Pressure on Qatar would be counterproductive because Qatar holds all the leverage.”
What the Richardson Center didn’t talk about was that the Qatari government has provided them with more than $2 million from 2019 to 2023. When this was disclosed, they scrubbed any mention of Qatar from their website.
In other words, the world’s leading hostage negotiation group had been subsumed by Qatari money in the leadup to a hostage-taking conducted by Qatari-funded terrorists. Those terrorists’ perspectives have been faithfully represented by Al Jazeera, the propaganda arm of the Qatari government.
To unravel the whole thing, here is a timeline:
- 2019: Qatar starts funding the Richardson Center.
- Oct. 7th, 2023: Qatari-funded terrorists invade Israel. They kill primarily in left-leaning towns and take hostages almost entirely from left-leaning towns.
- Oct. 8th, 2023: The Qatari-funded Richardson Center begins to work “on behalf” of hostage families, helping with the negotiations, their public presentation and their relationship with Qatar.
- Every day since: Qatari-funded Al Jazeera works to condemn Israeli operations in Gaza.
- Every day since: Hostage families demand Israeli surrender to those same Qatari-funded terrorists, not only reinforcing Hamas but driving a wedge into Israeli society.
This is a natural play on the part of Hamas, Qatar and Iran. A smart totalitarian will always play the internal politics of free societies – it is an easily exploitable chink in the dragon’s armor. If you fail to do it, you end up facing an enemy that is not only united but has far more resources than you do, as free societies tend to be more productive. The Nazis made that mistake. ISIS made it. Hamas has made it in the past. On the other hand, the Soviets and quite a few of their proxies were decent at the division game. The Tet Offensive was a master stroke in this vein. In today’s world, Iran and its little friend Qatar are world-class. They are always playing the internal politics of the Saudis, Americans and Israelis. They are the best in the world at doing so.
So, what should Israelis do?
- Israel must come to realize the degree to which they are being played. This will strengthen our resolve in this conflict. I’ve made my position in support of the North Gaza Project (northgaza.org) clear.
- The world should open its eyes to the nefarious activities of Qatar. They affect not only Israel, but the United States. Qatar has spent $4.7 billion since 2001 on American universities. From 2016, Qatar has spent $250 million lobbying in the US. Only China (a stunning $5.4B in lobbying), Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea and Liberia have outstripped them. Then there is Al Jazeera. Americans have to realize that they are being played.
As soon as the blinders come off, Qatar’s games will cease to be effective. A small country with little but money to play with, Qatar has done an impressive job on the international stage. Many have been blinded by their manipulations without even realizing it. If the enemies of Qatar realize they are being played, then the game itself will be tossed aside and the manipulations of Qatar will come to naught.
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For those who would extend this to all Muslims, consider this: Qatar and the UAE are involved in proxy wars with one another in Sudan and Libya. Both have money, but they have very distinct visions of what should be.
Also note that I don’t stand with the right-wing on judicial reform. As I’ve also made clear, I think both sides are dangerously wrong and should know it. Heck, Aristotle wrote about the problems we’re facing almost 2500 years ago. This is why I wrote my proposed Israel Constitution (israelconstitution.org.il).
Published in Foreign Policy
Added this to the above:
An aside: I’m glad you put Qatar funding in context like this. It helps a lot to understand how important a factor this is.
The Richardson Center is the feedbag for Bill Richardson.
I think that the Israelis are the manipulators, including this post.
What is your end game, Joseph? Never-ending war? The slaughter of every man, woman, and child in Gaza — the policy announced by the Israeli prime minister? The ethnic cleansing of Gaza — the policy announced by other Israeli officials? Or do you advocate something else?
The manipulation in the negotiations has been obvious since May, I think. The Americans present a reasonable deal, claiming that the Israelis approved it. The Palestinians agree, then the Israelis change the terms.
What is unclear is whether those lying are the Israelis or the Americans. It is possible that the Americans lie about Israel having approved certain proposals. It is also possible that the Israelis tell the Americans that they approve, when they really don’t.
The hypothesis about Israeli prisoners being selected based on politics seems very weak, to me. From what I’ve heard and read, many of the non-military prisoners were seized as a matter of opportunity, by Palestinians who followed the initial Palestinian militant forces through the fence.
I’ve seen no evidence that either Iran or Qatar even knew that the attack was coming.
This is further manipulation, I think. The Israelis want to manipulate the US into a broader war, as they know that they cannot defeat the coalition forming due to their brutal slaughter of the Palestinians in Gaza.
Joseph, I don’t expect Israel to say this publicly, but I wonder if the only way Israel can be successful is to assume (but not state) that they must assume all the hostages are dead. It’s a terrible thing to say, but how can Israel defeat Hamas without acting that way?
Is there a dataset supporting the graph in the OP, that includes the population of each of the towns?
Also, is the distribution of leftist vs. not-so-leftist settlements uniform, or is there any tendency to cluster? (IOW, is there an Israeli equivalent of red and blue states?)
I remember a time when “we don’t negotiate with terrorists.”
Now we do a lot of that.
Israel has to act that way in terms of negotiations. Hamas can’t see any benefit to having hostages. But they still need to look for the hostages and attempt to rescue them.
So long as Hamas doesn’t directly benefit, you do everything you can. They can indirectly benefit. Israel is going into the tunnels to search, which endangers Israeli soldiers, which helps Hamas. But it is only an indirect benefit.
I keep hearing that Hamas wants to hold on to the hostages as a bargaining chip (which benefits them). What am I missing?
I think it would have been more clearly expressed as “Hamas cannot be allowed to see any benefit to having hostages.”
I used data from the Israel Elections Commission (which breaks election results down by town) and Oct7Map.com. I didn’t include it, but the IEC does include at least the adult population and total number of voters. The total population can be found elsewhere.
In some cases, yes-ish. Israelis really tend to cluster by ideology on a town-by-town. But not so much on a region-by-region basis (with a couple notable exceptions). This is one thing that makes drawing districts for a Constitution so hard (or impossible, imo).
In addition, there are really four poles: Secular, Religious, Nationalist, Arab. And then the Russians. So you don’t have two clear oppositions. You don’t tend to have Nationalist Arabs, but there are absolutely Religious vs. Secular Arabs – for example.
Near Gaza most settlements are left-wing, but some aren’t. Sderot, for example, was settled almost entirely by Jewish refugees from the Arab world. It is thus very right wing. Kibbutzim, being communist at heart, tend to be left wing.
There are some regional biases. Tel Aviv and its immediate surroundings tend to be pretty far left. Northern Israel is far more Arab. The Negev has a substantial Beduin population which votes for the conservative Arab parties (there is also a far-left anti-State Arab party). The settlements across the Green Line tend to be nationalist right. But mostly there is a mishmash of dots of different ideological leanings.
Here’s an actual map to explain. The Likud, Religious Zionist and Jewish Home are Nationalist Right Wing. The Religiously Driven voters are Shas and United Torah. The State Camp is centrist. Yisrael Beiteinu is Russian. RAAM is religious Conservative Arab (and generally pro-state). Hadash is anti-Israel Communist Arab, Balad drops the Communism. Labor and Meretz are left wing to very left-wing.
They do see a benefit. That perception has to be made to end.
Fascinating and insightful
Thanks
Definitely worth rereading.
So I was correct in #10.
A simpler approach.
The hostages, even if alive, may as well be dead.
Israel should act accordingly.
It seems there have even been examples of when a rescue is nearing success, the hostages are then killed.
Yes. Didn’t see your comment before I replied :)
As this post has now gone main-feed I will respond to some of the comments by one of our resident Jew Haters.
I remember this differently. As long as I can remember (which goes back to the 1960’s) Israel has always negotiated with terrorists, and done so badly. I remember deals where Israel would free literally hundreds of dangerous Palestinian prisoners and murderers in exchange for two or three innocent captives. Sometimes they would free scores of terrorists just to get back a dead body, not even a live hostage. I could never see the sense in this. It just encouraged more hostage taking. The mass kidnapping of October 7th was a completely logical step by Hamas.
It was only in the U.S. that we followed the dictum “we don’t negotiate with terrorists.” I think that goes all the way back to Jefferson and the Barbary Pirates. But in recent decades, Presidents Obama and Biden caved-in gravely to violate that rule, and we are quickly becoming world-wide victims of the hostage-taking business. Note that there is no such thing as taking Russian, Chinese, or Arab hostages. There would be absolutely no reward money – just severe and utter retribution heaped on the kidnappers.
Agreed that it was a completely logical step. But there have been some classic non-negotiations. Entebbe is the best example. There was also the pilot who slammed the terrorists into the ceiling (https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-to-defeat-airplane-terrorists-from-the-only-pilot-who-ever-foiled-a-skyjacking/). In that case, history rhymed as the British authorities wanted to try the sky marshals for manslaughter and/or murder. I have a friend whose mother was kidnapped on the TWA flight referenced in the article.
But you are correct in that it was never policy. What was effectively policy was that no matter what negotiations may have occurred hostage-takers would typically not survive very long.
The US has certainly caved in – taking Americans hostages has become very popular. But I think that Russians, Chinese and Arabs just wouldn’t care much unless the hostages were VIPs. But for VIPs…. well, even the seizing of assets can trigger an aggressive response: https://www.lloydslist.com/LL1149800/FPSO-engineers-detention-in-Equatorial-Guinea-arbitrary-and-illegal
I agree with the characterization of Qatar.
I don’t think there is enough evidence to support the theory of targeted kidnapping. Note, the exclusion of the Nova festival, 364 people were killed and 40 hostages.
I don’t doubt some of the hostage agitation is politics. Netanyahu seems to be well hated on the left and for others is guilty of being a politician.
I can’t say what I would do if one of my children was a hostage. Probably support the short term idea of any deal is better than no deal, without regard to impact on the future.
Thank you, Joseph. That is the first time I read of that incident.
I didn’t include it because there are no voting records for a pop-up like that. But it certainly represents a community – a community dropping acid and other drugs during an all-night rave on a religious Jewish holiday. It suggests definite secular and liberal tendencies. Of course there were also people seized from army bases. But they come from every community by nature. We have videos of people pleading that they have Palestinian friends, that just seems to seal their fate. But in terms of communities there are towns and there is Nova, which was definitely a community on the left of Israeli society.
Of course. And while I was once a fan of Bibi’s I am no more. I do not think he should be in office anymore and it is remarkable to me that he is. I did not vote for him in any recent election. But politics ends up being personal. Bibi hasn’t done anything on the ground, except perhaps hold back on striking harder and faster, that the vast majority of Israelis wouldn’t support. They hate him because he is Bibi. I actually believe that Bibi should go, in this case, precisely because he has no political capital to speak of.
And I wouldn’t hold that against you. But I would appreciate you admitting the costs of your understandable position and not just calling those who don’t agree monsters.
And we should all hope for leaders who don’t bow to OUR personal weaknesses.