Americans saw firsthand over the past two years that whatever Israel’s conspiratorial detractors accuse the Jewish state of doing, Qatar is almost surely doing exactly that on behalf of the world’s America-hating regimes.
One such example arose this week: the legend of the super-secret spies scouring the earth for Israel-critics to ruin.
This belief in a global hasbara strike force is, like other imagined schemes, a matter of projection. Case in point: the new report that Qatar has bankrolled a private intelligence operation targeting the woman who has accused International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan of sexual assault.
Before we get to the details, let’s review the case. In 2023, according to the victim, Khan assaulted her on several trips abroad as well as in Khan’s wife’s home in The Hague, where the ICC is based. She was new to Khan’s team but not to the ICC, where she’d worked for six years previously.
According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story in May, Khan canceled a fact-finding trip intended to gather evidence to help him determine whether or not to seek a warrant for the arrest of Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for war crimes. The ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel, so Khan was already gambling with whatever was left of the institution’s credibility.
Khan reportedly canceled those trips once he was made aware of the rape allegations. He soon after issued the warrants. As the Journal explained: “The warrant shored up support for Khan among anti-Israel ICC nations that would likely back Khan if the allegations ever became public, according to court officials. The warrant also discouraged his accuser for a time from pushing her allegations, officials said, because she strongly supported the investigation of Israeli leaders.”
Khan reportedly tried to guilt his accuser into keeping quiet about the allegations, telling her that going public would hurt Gazans because it could derail his case against Netanyahu. His accuser took it to heart, requesting a transfer instead of an investigation into Khan. “I held on for as long as I could because I didn’t want to f*** up the Palestinian arrest warrants,” she testified.
Although some extremist figures, such as incoming New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, still back the arrest warrant, the case against Netanyahu at the court is obviously and entirely illegitimate. Even worse, it was issued apparently in an attempt to let the prosecutor get away with rape. Khan took a leave of absence from the case, but the ICC requires thorough reform or disbanding.
As if all that wasn’t bad enough, now we’ve got the reported Qatari involvement—a story broken by the ICC’s staunch ally against Israel, the UK Guardian, which reports:
“The private intelligence operation that has targeted the woman at the centre of the UN inquiry is said to have commenced earlier this year, when Highgate was commissioned by Qataris.
“A small group of senior Highgate employees was made aware the ultimate client for the project was the Qatari unit, according to evidence reviewed by the Guardian. The funding was regarded as highly sensitive. Executives involved in the project were careful to refer to its client as the ‘client country’ or ‘Q country’.
“A document seen by the Guardian suggests that at one stage during the operation Highgate sought information that would link the alleged victim and her family members with Israel or its intelligence agencies.”
According to the Journal, Khan had suggested his accuser might be part of a plot to bring down the ICC. This was a way to casually plant the idea that his victim was actually an Israeli agent. The Guardian notes that he actually then met with the intelligence team assigned to tar his accuser. The intelligence firm followed this line of investigation, but to no avail: As is usually the case, Israel haters were lying.
The intelligence firm apparently went so far as to hack into her private communications, but still found nothing. No amount of Qatari money can change the fact that Khan, his ICC enablers, the countries and politicians supporting his actions—and of course Qatar itself—are the bad guys here. The public should keep in mind for the future that extraordinary accusations against Israel are often themselves admissions of guilt.
