">

Saturday

September 13th, 2025

Insight

Israel's Strike on Qatar Should Have Happened Years Ago

David Harsanyi

By David Harsanyi

Published Sept. 12, 2025

Israel's Strike on Qatar Should Have Happened Years Ago
SIGN UP FOR THE DAILY JWR UPDATE. IT'S FREE. (AND NO SPAM!) Just click here.

Israel's precise strike at Hamas headquarters in the petrostate sheikdom of Qatar happened about 23 months too late.

Every one of the reported targets has been sanctioned by the U.S. government for terrorist activities. Each one of them, by any moral or legal understanding, was engaged in war crimes.

Not only did they orchestrate and manage an ongoing war against Israeli civilians, but they also doomed Arabs in Gaza to destitution while sitting on billions of stolen dollars and sleeping safely in their luxurious hotel rooms.

Even if it turns out that Israel missed these targets, Hamas leaders know there is no place to hide.

Among the targets was Khaled Meshaal, whose net worth has ballooned somewhere between $2 billion-$5 billion, was one of the founders of modern Hamas.

Then there is Khalil al-Hayya, who praised the rape of women and murder of children as "a source of pride for our people," and bragged about using Palestinian civilians as "shields for the resistance."

Zaher Jabarin, known as the CEO of Hamas, siphoned billions of international aid to the group and procured funding from Iran and Qatar.

Nizar Awadallah, a longtime Hamas leader, had planned dozens of attacks on civilians. And Khaled Mashal, who promised his group would "repeat the October 7 attack time and again until Israel is annihilated."

After 700 days of bogus negotiations with these malevolent savages, Israel said enough. None of the people were diplomats or peacemakers. Every one of them pledged forever war.

There's no possible scenario in which Israel didn't inform the United States about its plan to target Doha, which sits near U.S. military installations. It's implausible that Israel would attack without a green light from the president. More than likely, Israelis held off while Trump attempted to craft a broader deal. But Hamas was never going to stop.

It might well be the case that Qatar also knew the attack was coming and decided to untether its fortunes from Hamas. Even so, the United States should decouple from this toxic theocratic city-state, which undermines American domestic politics by dropping billions into U.S. schools, politics and media to gain influence and normalize radicalism and Islamist ideas.

Remember that Qatar blamed Israel "alone" for Oct. 7. Without Doha's financial backing, the attack never would have happened in the first place. And if Qatar wanted the hostages released, it could have pressured the Palestinians to do so a long time ago. Qatar perpetuated this charade to lift itself as a power broker. Its duplicitous and unctuous playing of all sides does nothing to help our national interests.

Qatar also surely realized that Oct. 7 had been a colossal blunder not just for Palestinians but for Islamists across the Middle East. Since that day, Israel has decimated Hamas, killing thousands of its soldiers and eliminating virtually its entire leadership; it has decapitated Hezbollah's fighting force, possibly allowing Lebanon's leaders to try to dislodge the Iranian proxy militia from their country; it has precipitated the fall of the Assad regime, which had been in place in Syria for over 50 years; it has likely set back Iranian's nuclear program for years, not to mention knocked out a massive number of armaments and defenses; and it eliminated top Houthi leadership, as well.

It's a shame it took this long. Imagine, if you can, Mexico hosting Al Qaeda leaders in five-star Cancun resorts and giving them space for a headquarters in the year 2002. Now, if your contention is that Hamas is the legitimate governing entity of the Palestinian people, imagine Mexico hosting Imperial generals as Americans fought the Japanese in Okinawa.

The United States didn't conduct ceasefire talks with Ayman al-Zawahiri. The only reason Israel spent years in negotiations with Hamas was to attain the release of hostages. And the Jewish State was willing to make unconscionable demands to save them. It may never happen. But it was certainly never going to happen while the billionaires of Hamas conducted their operations in the safety of Qatar.

Those days are over.

(COMMENT, BELOW)


Previously:
09/05/25: An Open Letter to My Esteemed Colleagues at the International Association of Genocide Scholars
08/29/25: The President Doesn't Get to Dictate How We Express Ourselves
08/22/25: Is Socialism as Popular as the Media Think?
08/15/25: Save the Little Sisters of the Poor!
08/08/25: RFK Jr.'s War on Vaccines and Public Health Continues
08/01/25: Europe's Recognition of 'Palestine' Is a Cynical Joke
07/18/25: Legacy Media Still Covering for Biden
06/27/25: Trump Learned the Lessons of Iraq
05/30/25: We Have No Constitutional or Moral Duty to Subsidize Harvard
05/30/25: Welcome to the Intifada, America
05/16/25: Scapegoating Biden Isn't Going to Solve the Dems' Problems
05/09/25: The Pulitzer Prizes Have Become a Sad Joke
05/05/25: How Do You Do, Fellow White People? Tim Walz Says Hello!
04/25/25: Ketanji Brown Jackson Makes a Powerful Argument for School Choice
04/18/25: If Everyone Is an Expert, No One Is
03/31/25: The Left's Imaginary COVID 'Reckoning'
03/21/25: Sorry, Conspiracy Theorists -- Lee Harvey Oswald Acted Alone
03/03/25: Mitch McConnell: A GOP Hall of Famer?
02/21/25: RFK's Dangerous Autism Lie
02/14/25: It's Time to End the EV Racket
02/07/25: If You Really Support Immigration, Stop Excusing Chaos
02/03/25: Trump's Gaza Proposal Makes Complete Sense
01/24/25: How Biden's Pardons Normalize Abuse of Power
01/17/25: Israel Makes a Deal With the Actual Devil
01/13/25: Why Javier Milei Matters
12/20/24: The Obama Doctrine Is Dead
12/13/24: It's time for a national conversation about left-wing violence
12/09/24: It's time for a national conversation about left-wing violence
11/08/24: Don't Trash the Constitution to Dunk on the Libs
11/08/24: This 'liberation' will NOT be reported
11/01/24: HARRIS Is the Bigger Threat to the Constitutional Order
09/20/24: Fact checked! Harris Is the Extremist
07/13/24: Explain Yourself, Kamala Harris!
07/05/24: How Biden's Mental Decline Went From 'Misinformation' to Fact in a Week
04/12/24: Biden Is Now Chasing the 'Death to America' Voter
03/15/24: Turns Out Biden Lied About Hur, Beau, And Why He Pilfered Classified Docs
02/09/24: Why Biden Is Threatening to Veto Aid to Israel
02/09/23: Electric Cars Are a Scam
06/30/23: Americans Have Never Been Less Threatened by 'Extreme Weather'
03/03/23: Questioning Biden's Ukraine Policy Doesn't Make You an 'Isolationist'
01/20/23: No ribbons? Don't hide behind religion!
01/13/23: On Classified Documents, Joe Biden Is Out of Excuses
04/29/22: Biden's Ministry of Truth
04/08/22: The Most Radical Abortion Law in the Nation
04/01/22: Recuse Yourself, Joe Biden
03/25/22: No, School Boards Are Not 'Banning Books'
03/11/22: Let Them Drive Teslas
01/28/22: It's Not Government's Job to 'Root Out' Misinformation
01/14/22: Biden's Big Elections Lie
01/07/22: Schumer's Ugly 'Voting Rights' Gamble
12/24/21:AOC's Grasp on American Governance Is a 'Farce'
12/17/21: Dems Pivot from Build Back Better to Useless Extremism
11/19/21: Reckoning' Over Steele Dossier?
10/15/21: The Biden White House Will Pay for Playing Inflation Games
09/24/21: The most demonstrable political scandal still ignored
09/17/21: Sorry, AOC, The Rich Already Pay Their Fair Share
09/02/21: Why Isn't Biden to Blame for COVID-19 Deaths?
08/06/21: Biden's Unprecedented Attack on the Constitution
07/30/21: Jan. 6 Was Deplorable. It Was NOT a Coup
06/21/21: The Myth of Republican Obstructionism
05/21/21: What Does Putin Have on Biden?
04/16/21: Kristen Clarke Is Unfit to Be in Government
03/26/21: No to DC Statehood is far from GOP being reflexive
03/22/21: Biden Prepares to Strip College Students of Due Process Rights The Hypocrisy of the Filibuster Busters
03/12/21: Biden Prepares to Strip College Students of Due Process Rights
03/05/21: AOC's Terrible Minimum Wage Argument
02/12/21: The Dem Party Is Radicalizing against the Constitution
02/05/21: What NOT to Do with Marjorie Taylor Greene
01/15/21: Free Speech Is a Value Not Just a Right
12/31/20: It Can't Get Any Worse Than 2020. Here's a 2021 Political Wish List
10/26/20: Wanted: An Honest Debate about the Death Penalty
10/26/20: These are the questions 'Big Guy' Biden must be forced to answer about Hunter's emails
09/11/20: The Dems' Dangerous Delegitimization of the Election
08/28/20: Biden Is Underperforming Hillary in Battleground States
08/14/20: Kamala Harris, Imaginary Centrist
07/24/20: Who you calling a fascist?
07/17/20: Speech Police have finally gone too far
07/03/20: 'But Gorsuch' Is Still Trump's Best Argument
06/22/20: Welcome to America's Cultural Revolution
06/12/20: The color of my skin is not an indictment of my morality, nor does it strip me of my agency
06/05/20: What this son of immigrants knows about bulding bussinesses --- and the dismay of destruction
05/28/20: The Folly of Twitter's Fact-Check
05/22/20: Dems Warning Trump Will Reject Election Results Should Look in the Mirror
05/15/20: Obamagate Is NOT a Conspiracy Theory
05/08/20: Really, Joe --- due process is the opposite of justice?

Columnists

Toons