Erasing Israel and Other Qatari Tales

A story came to light recently about a teacher in a New York City Public elementary school who displayed a map in her classroom of the Middle East. In place of showing Israel, it labeled the area as Palestine. Rita Lahoud teaches an Arab Culture Arts program, which is sponsored by Qatar Foundation International. QFI provides the curriculum, including the map, as part of their explanation of the Arab world.

I suspected that there was more to this story than ran in the news—and I was correct.

QFI has donated over $1million to the Department of Education between 2019 and 2022. They provide comprehensive curricula on the Arab language and culture. In case you think their motives are altruistic, here’s a portion of the contractual language to which schools must agree:

U.S. public schools that accept QFI’s grant money are contractually required to give over a degree of access to the foreign-funded organization, according to a 2013 agreement between QFI and the Tucson Unified School District in Arizona.

The contract stipulated that Tucson teachers participating in the QFI-funded Arabic program would allow QFI staff to:

• observe classroom activities and speak with students;

• have access to a program to monitor student progress;

• request that teachers administer an Arabic language proficiency test to students and share their results with QFI; and

• receive enrollment information for the Arabic classes, ‘including the number of students in each class and grade.’

In 2019, $30 million were given to U.S. public schools by QFI.

QFI makes no secret of its goals to influence U.S. public and political perceptions, rather than limiting its efforts to education:

QFI memos state that it exists to further the Middle Eastern nation’s goals, and its executive director has stated publicly that her bosses include a member of the Qatari royal family and the CEO of the foreign Qatar Foundation. Despite this, QFI is not required to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, because it says it’s strictly an educational organization.

As of 2019, 22 K-12 public schools and eight academic programs currently receive grants from QFI.

Fortunately, there is one organization that has persisted in investigating QFI in America: the Lawfare Project. Although colleges are reluctant to share information on the extent of QFI’s role in schools, the Lawfare Project is making headway:

‘This infiltration, funded and organized through QF and [Qatar Foundation International], has turned American universities and primary and secondary school teachers into de facto agents of the Qatari government, conveying its political (and anti-Semitic) views to students and the general population without any acknowledgment of the origins of these views.’

What is The Lawfare Project:

We are a global network of legal professionals that contribute our skills, time and expertise to defending the civil and human rights of the Jewish people, and fighting discrimination wherever we see it.

An example of the kind of case they work on is this one, where they represented a Jewish student at Carnegie Mellon:

Carnegie Mellon is a known recipient of foreign funding. As of 2021, it had received over half a billion dollars from Qatar. Through anti-discrimination lawsuits like this one, The Lawfare Project aims to shed light on the lack of transparency that exists at universities that receive foreign funding, in order to advocate for legal reforms that require greater accountability.

The CMU student’s exposure to the university’s antisemitic environment began in her freshman year when she was denied an excused absence to attend a memorial service following the Tree of Life Synagogue massacre. Her experience culminated during her last year, when she was told by her instructor, after creating a model to depict how an Orthodox Jewish community turned a public space into a private one for religious purposes, that it would have been better had she done her project on ‘what Jewish people do to make themselves so hated.’ The student’s complaints to the DEI and Title IX offices yielded nothing and her appeal to professors for help brought retaliation in the form of exclusion and an undeserved near-failing grade.

Keep in mind that QFI has donated to at least ten public colleges.

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It’s difficult to prioritize the dangers that Qatar poses at an international level. It is still active in the negotiations for a cease fire between Israel and Hamas. It has re-established relations with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE. It still funds terrorism in the Middle East. And now it has infiltrated U.S.schools, providing the propaganda about its culture and language, as well as meeting its anti-Semitic agenda.

At least the Jews are beginning to fight back.