In early December, Israeli journalist Nadav Eyal broke a story that drew far less attention than it deserved.
Israeli defense and intelligence officials, he reported, had concluded that much of the wave of anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiment that has engulfed global discourse over the past two years has been deliberately engineered by a state actor. The sophistication, coordination, consistency, and interconnectedness of both the messaging and those promoting it online and off led the officials to determine hat only a world power — or a state with vast financial resources — could be behind such a comprehensive influence operation.
While considering the involvement of other countries with axes to grind against the Jewish state, the Israelis have focused their attention on one primary suspect: Qatar.
To even casual observers, the signs of a broad effort to cultivate hostility toward Jews and Israel linked to the wealthy Gulf emirate are difficult to miss: from Al Jazeera’s propagandistic coverage to Tucker Carlson’s recently discovered affinity for the country, and from the appearance of Hamas leaders at government-hosted conferences to the prevalence of virulently anti-Israel narratives at academic institutions that receive Qatari funding.
Taken together, Qatar’s role in shaping global hostility toward Israel — and its remarkable success in leveraging its unfathomable wealth to advance its interests — has proven strikingly effective in fostering negative perceptions of the Jewish state and in undermining its legitimacy at a moment when Israel has been fighting for its very existence.
In this episode of the Jerusalem Journal Podcast, Eyal joins us to discuss how Israel identified Qatar as being behind this global defamation campaign, why the emirate has chosen to target Israel now, how it has cultivated influence in the United States and around the world, and what Israel can do to fight back.
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Nadav Eyal is one of Israel’s leading journalists and political commentators, a senior columnist for Yediot Aharonot and Ynet, and a regular contributor to Dan Senor’s Call Me Back podcast. He recently launched his own Substack newsletter, Between Us. Eyal is a senior scholar and adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, focusing on the Middle East, Israel, and the crisis of democracy.
