As Israel investigates where Qatari funds were directed via the Prime Minister’s Office and how they were funneled into Gaza, the Jewish Diaspora is already drawing sobering conclusions. In the United States, Qatari money poured into academic institutions has done more than fund education – it has helped bankroll a campaign of hatred and incitement.
The same dollars that supported prestigious programs also planted deep roots of antisemitism, enabling antisemitic displays and anti-Israel protests that erupted just hours after the Simchat Torah massacre on October 7.
American Jews have found themselves asking how, in a country built on liberal democratic values, a massacre of Israeli civilians could be met not with condemnation but with protests supporting the terrorist perpetrators, rapists, murderers, and kidnappers. How did campuses – meant to be bastions of critical thinking – become epicenters of anti-Israel vitriol and thinly veiled antisemitism?
A new documentary by Wendy Sachs, October 8, shines a powerful light on this disturbing phenomenon. The film traces the explosion of pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses less than 24 hours after Hamas’s barbaric attack on Israeli civilians. It shows how, in the words of its creators, anti-Israel sentiment quickly metastasized into explicit antisemitism. The film also highlights the destructive role of social media, which amplified incitement, spread disinformation, and targeted Jews and Israelis whose identities are known or visible.
The documentary identifies Students for Justice in Palestine as one of the main drivers behind these campus protests, often organizing demonstrations that veered into harassment, intimidation, and violence. But behind these student groups looms a larger question: Who’s funding all of this?
Qatari funding in US higher education
According to a 2022 report from the National Association of Scholars, Qatar invested a staggering $4.7 billion in US higher education between 2001 and 2021. Cornell University alone received $1.8 billion, Georgetown University $760 million, and many other institutions benefited from Qatar’s generosity. But what exactly was being bought?
In universities where Qatar gained a foothold, scholarships were disproportionately awarded to students from specific backgrounds. Research grants were steered toward projects with predetermined narratives. Activist student groups pushing anti-Israel agendas were often given tacit, if not explicit, support.
This was not a coincidence. It was a long game – one that Israel and the Jewish community were too slow to recognize.
While the Israeli government, the Diaspora Affairs Ministry, the Jewish Agency for Israel, and other organizations made only modest investments in campus outreach and education, Qatar was shaping hearts and minds – laying a strong foundation and implementing groundwork for a generation of students to view Israel as a pariah state. Year after year, Israel’s legitimacy eroded in the eyes of tens of thousands of students. And Israel, tragically, failed to grasp the magnitude of the threat.
On a recent trip to the US, I saw that even many American Jews didn’t initially understand the danger. But they do now. Today, they are seeking remedies through legal action and working with a more responsive White House to push back against this wave of antisemitism disguised as anti-Zionism.
Now, it’s Israel’s turn.
Israel's role in challenging Qatari influence
The Jewish state must expose, unequivocally and unapologetically, the sources of funding behind the hatred festering on college campuses. It must challenge Qatar’s influence publicly and diplomatically. It must support American Jews in their fight – legally, financially, and morally – and urge the Trump administration to take firm action against this new form of antisemitism masquerading as progressive activism.
Qatari money has cast a rather opaque fog over campuses – obscuring facts, distorting truth, and clouding the moral clarity that should have been instinctive in the face of a terrorist massacre. That fog must be lifted.
We must stand in unwavering solidarity with our brothers and sisters across the ocean. We must cry out for them. Fight for them. It is time to reclaim with them the moral high ground that has been so cynically undermined.
Together, we can transform this moment of crisis into a moment of unity – into a shining example of Jews from Israel and around the world rising together to confront the darkness unleashed by foreign influence and unchallenged hate.
The writer is CEO of ANU – Museum of the Jewish People.