Don’t know much about geography,
Don’t know much trigonometry,
Don’t know much about algebra,
Don’t know what a slide rule is for…
– Sam Cooke, “What a Wonderful World” (1960)
Everyone who follows the news knows that Qatar, a mini-country that is a huge player in the oil and natural gas markets, has been buying influence in the United States (and in Europe as well).
At the highest levels of government, President Trump’s two Jewish Middle East negotiators, son-in-law Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, have had extensive business dealings with Qatar, and even President Trump accepted an enormous gift from Qatar, a new Air Force One plane. (Regarding the latter, I have to agree with the Democrats that it constitutes an emolument in violation of the Constitution, although I question whether, given how many other officials have accepted gifts from foreign nations, it rises to the level of an impeachable offense.)
Moreover, Qatar funds American think tanks such as the Brookings Institution, invests in American businesses, and has many journalists around the world on its payroll, enabling them to influence reporting about events in the Middle East.
Nevertheless, perhaps an even greater threat to America is the Qataris’ buying American higher education.
The statistics tell the tale: Between 2001 and 2021, Qatar donated at least $54.7 billion to American universities, more than any other foreign donor. The exact number is undetermined because in 1995, the emir of Qatar established the not-for-profit Qatar Foundation for Education, Science, and Community Development, which allows his nation to conceal government funding as private donations that aren’t required to be reported to the Department of Education as required by federal law for foreign contributions of at least $250,000. Overall, research done by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) found that “[a]t least 100 American colleges and universities illegally withheld information on approximately $13 billion in undocumented contributions from foreign governments, many of which are authoritarian.” (Notably, the U.S. Department of Education has just introduced a portal for universities to report foreign donations.)
ISGAP’s November 25, 2023 report on the subject stated “there is a direct correlation between antisemitism and censored speech on campus and undocumented contributions from foreign governments, notably Qatar. In institutions receiving such undocumented money:
- Political campaigns to silence academics were more prevalent.
- Campuses receiving undocumented funds exhibited approximately twice as many campaigns to silence academics as those that did not.
- Students reported greater exposure to antisemitic and anti-Zionist rhetoric.
- Higher levels of antisemitic incidents were reported on their campuses.
- This relationship of undocumented money to campus antisemitism was stronger when the undocumented donors were Middle Eastern regimes rather than others.
- From 2015-2020, institutions that accepted money from Middle Eastern donors had, on average, 300% more antisemitic incidents than those institutions that did not…
- Speech intolerance – manifesting as campaigns to investigate, censor, demote, suspend, or terminate speakers and scholars – was higher at institutions that received undocumented money from foreign regimes.”
Such biases should come as no surprise, since Qatar funds the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoot, Hamas, as well as ISIS and al-Qaeda. The Gatestone Institute reports that “According to ISGAP’s Executive Director, Charles Small, the Muslim Brotherhood aims to isolate Israel and weaken U.S.-Israel ties, fragment U.S. society through antisemitism and campus radicalization, and challenge democratic norms and replace them with Islamist ideological frameworks.”
A similar process is ongoing across India, the United Kingdom, and the European Union, aimed at bringing the entire world under Islamic rule, according to the Usanas Foundation, a geopolitics and security affairs organization based in India.
Looking beyond the statistics, here are representative samples of what Qatar’s money is buying:
- Virtually every major university has a Middle East Studies Institute staffed by opponents of Israel. The Middle East Studies Association has voted 80-20% in favor of an academic boycott of Israel, and MESA academics have downplayed Hamas attacks by claiming Israel does the same to Palestinian civilians.
- In recent years, New York City has become a major center of antisemitic actions – from visibly Jewish pedestrians being assaulted on the street to numerous incidents on campus. These include the one at Cooper Union, where Jewish students had to barricade themselves in the library to escape from a mob, and at the New School, where the local chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine called for “an academic boycott of the genocidal Zionist apartheid state,” with administrators agreeing to discuss divesting from companies doing business with Israel.
- At Columbia University, Jewish students and professors faced intimidation, death threats, and even physical violence, and Israeli-born Professor Shai Davidai found his university card deactivated and he was barred from entering the campus for a pro-Jewish rally. The response of Columbia University President Nemat Minouche Shafik was to enter into negotiations with the antisemitic thugs who had taken over the campus, rather than calling the NYPD, while advising Jewish students to stay at home and take courses online for the rest of that semester. As for the government, outgoing Mayor Eric Adams, a supporter of Israel and friend to the Jewish community, lamented that he had no real authority to send in the police without a request from the University, while Governor Kathy Hochul declined to call in the National Guard to deal with her political allies.
In fact, the situation on American campuses moved Hana Levi Julian, writing in The Jewish Press on April 25 26, 2024, to liken conditions to the University of Vienna in October 1932, when Nazi students used iron bars, whips, and sticks as weapons to injure 19 and 25 Jewish students, respectively, in two separate riots that necessitated closing the campus. (Several Americans were among the injured.) As in Germany, where the universities spearheaded the Nazi takeover of society, it is the most highly educated elements who are the instigators, which constitutes a scathing indictment of higher education.
Also writing in The Jewish Press, on November 1 3, 2023, Rochester Institute of Technology principal lecturer and Campus Watch fellow A. J. Caschetta noted, “A recent poll of U.S. college students shows that only 50 percent of Democratic students and 73 percent of Republican students blame Hamas for the assault on Israeli civilians. We should expect more protests to come as media outlets continue to present Gaza (i.e., Hamas) sources as reliable and factual, and as college professors actively promote Palestinian narratives.”
A more detailed account of problems on campus can be found in Mosaic magazine’s “A College Guide for the Perplexed.”
Concomitant with the decline in academic standards over the past few decades has been a corresponding decline in American students’ academic proficiency, especially in math, as measured by standardized tests. This could enable the rise of the People’s Republic of China, which still practices meritocracy, to be the world’s new superpower, much to the delight of the leftist-Islamist alliance, including Qatar.
In summary, our nation’s ruling elites, thanks to the leftist majority of K-12 teachers (for proof, look whom they elect as their union officials) and college professors, are producing a society of ignoramuses who, in the words of Sir Joseph in Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore, never think of thinking for themselves at all. This will render them easier to manipulate, with the side benefit of allowing the elites’ corporate backers to import thousands of Asian engineers on H-1B visas and pay them half of what they would have to pay Americans.
Increased immigration would also ensure a ready supply of gardeners and domestics. Just imagine the outcry if the elites had to do their own household chores! The title of Jamie Wilson’s recent article at pjmedia.com says it all: “The Jobs Americans Won’t Do? Try: The Skills Young Americans Weren’t Taught.”
The Islamist threat to America is obvious. Witness the recent tragedy of an inadequately vetted Afghan immigrant, one of thousands of locals formerly working for the CIA who were admitted to the U.S. under a crash program spawned by the Biden administration’s ignominious withdrawal from Afghanistan, coming from Washington State to fatally shoot two West Virginia National Guard troopers, within blocks of the White House.
There is a special threat to American Jews, however. With antisemitism being mainstreamed and normalized – even becoming fashionable – we can expect to be increasingly denied admission to colleges, especially the prestigious universities whose graduates rise to high positions, as well as to medical school, law school, and MBA programs. At the same time, opportunities for self-employment are likely to decrease as giant corporations swallow up smaller businesses, and book publishers are already disproportionately rejecting manuscripts by Jewish authors.
Nevertheless, there may be more to the story.
Two hundred years ago, Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, a disciple of the Vilna Gaon, predicted that America would be the last stop for the Torah world before the geulah (final redemption).
Writing at Israel 365 News, Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz cites Torah blogger Yeranen Yaakov (https://yeranenyaakov.blogspot.com/) who contends that aspects of NYC Mayor-Elect Mamdani’s platform resemble the conditions for the coming of Mashiach outlined in Sanhedrin 97a. Moreover, in a series of articles in multiple publications, Rabbi Josh Wander, “Redemption Expeditor” for the Geula Movement, asserts that in our present situation, Hashem is giving us a push to make aliyah, just as historically whenever Jews become too comfortable in exile, our host countries turn against us.
And writing at aish.com, Rabbi Raphael Shore agrees: “For three generations, American Jews lived in what may have been one of the most blessed exiles in our history.” Then October 7 and the election of Mamdani shattered our illusions. Quoting Micah Danzig, Rabbi Shore reminds us that “in cities that were once a third Jewish – Warsaw, Minsk, Baghdad, Tripoli – the process was always the same: what was unspeakable became debatable; what was debatable became respectable; what became respectable very quickly became policy. We are not there but we are much farther along than we were ten years ago.”
Our dilemma is exacerbated by social forces: civic illiteracy; woke ideology portraying Jews as villains; social media promoting lies; mobilization of young hard-left activists and Islamists; “horseshoe” politics in which the far left, the far right, and Islamists all find reasons to hate us; and “useful Jews” supporting our enemies. Rabbi Shore concludes: “The golden door that opened after the Holocaust was a Divine gift. It is not guaranteed forever. If its hinges are now creaking, maybe that is also a sign from G-d, a nudge to remember who you are, where you ultimately belong, and the role you play in the unfolding destiny of the Jewish People.”
That being said, one question remains for me: What about the high cost of housing in Israel, which will surely rise due to increased demand if many Americans make aliyah? Many of us can’t afford 2-3 million NIS (about $650,000 to $1 million), which is the lowest advertised price range I’ve seen, and it is unlikely that the U.S. would allow massive building in Area C of Judea and Samaria.
Does anyone out there have any ideas?