Even in the age of rising humane consciousness and importance of being politically correct, real politics are stronger than anything, and they are lead by many interests. Some say liars, thieves, criminals and politicians have fewer scruples than the rest of us, and maybe they aren't very far off. Call it a professional skill, but it seems that even "good politicians" who want to do the right thing, won't necessarily do the right thing until they have to.
Many interests stay hidden until outed, and somehow, it seems they always have to do with that dirty five letter word - money. Look at Qatar, for instance. This tiny Persian Gulf emirate, populated by less than 300,000 citizens and more than 1.8 million foreign residents to serve them, enjoys a reputation of a peaceful and harmless country who is a great friend to the West. How friendly? In 2013 it imported over $30 billion worth of goods from U.S., UK, Germany, and France, among others. And that's before recently signing an $11 billion arms deal which it will purchase from the U.S.
But how similar is Qatar's real face to the image it's trying to portray? For one thing, Qatar has funded many extremist Islamic movements, such as ISIS, something it's probably regretted once ISIS got out of hand and began threatening Qatar as well.
But apart from ISIS, Qatar has also become nearly the sole contributer to Hamas. While most Arab countries have washed their hands of Hamas and stopped supporting it, Qatar has been the one keeping this ruthless terror organization alive. Qatar has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to Hamas in the past couple of years, some say even billions. Moreover, Hamas leader Khaled Meshal has been residing in Qatar since the civil war in Syria began, leading a rich and famous lifestyle and running the terror regime in Gaza from his fancy hotel gym. That's where he's been while telling the world that Hamas will not cease its fire and will fight down to the last drop of Palestinian blood (presumably as long as it's not his own). To make it a bit easier, Qatar has recruited its television network Al-Jazeera, in order to make sure the accurate message is being sent across to the world.
During the past weeks of deadly fighting between Hamas and Israel, it's become quite clear where the Qatar funds were invested: apart from making Hamas leaders rich men, the money did not go into building Gaza for the welfare of the Palestinians, but into the purchase of thousands of murderous rockets which have been fired at Israel, and also into a sophisticated infrastructure of tunnels underneath Gaza for the use of diverse terror activity. These tunnels, which are suspected to have been built with forced child labor and are now being destroyed by IDF, are assumed to have cost at least 90 million dollars. Other tunnels at an estimated cost of $1 million each that were used for smuggling weapons and goods through Rafah, were destroyed and closed by Egypt about a year ago. Good money that could have been used for good causes and for the welfare of the Palestinians, literally down the drain.
So how can Qatar get away with such things and maintain a clean reputation? Al Jazeera is one answer, but maybe it is also the Western politicians' preference to keep relatively quiet so as not to stand in the way of the Qatari shopping spree.
Recently Qatar has been promised by FIFA to host the World Cup in 2022 in order to upgrade its international image even more. The fact that it finances terror and cruelly exploits workers from Bangladesh has not made many headlines around the world.
How can this be changed? It looks like it can be changed only with public opinion. Even good politicians, as we know, are lead by financial interests, among other things. Financial interests can only be diverted by public opinion, because politicians need public opinion in order to get reelected. Let's hope the public conscious outcry at the hypocrisy behind funding terror and death in Gaza and Iraq will make Western politicians rethink their priorities, and stop pretending beautiful Qatar is just a friendly harmless little country. It's quite clear that it's not nearly as moderate as it would like us to believe.