In 2011, Dr. Charles Asher Small – who had just been elected president of Yale University’s Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA) – received a rather shocking message. The university had decided to close the center, which was the first North American university-based center for the study of antisemitism, after just five years of activity. Yale’s official explanation for the decision was that the center was not meeting its academic expectations. In response, researchers from YIISA and Jewish organizations in the United States argued that the university had been put under political pressure – primarily from Islamic organizations and groups, which were unhappy with the center’s studies about antisemitism in the Muslim world.

After the center was closed, Small embarked on an independent study which he says provided the true answer to the reason Yale closed it. “One of the most senior and vocal opponents of the center’s activity within the university turned out to be virulently anti-Israel and had widespread contact with anti-Israel groups and organizations,” Small tells Shomrim in an interview.

What initially seemed like a local, internal university dispute later turned into a tsunami of revelations about the deep involvement of authoritarian regimes—chief among them, Qatar—in U.S. affairs, with a particular focus on academic institutions. For Dr. Small, a researcher and lecturer at several top universities in both the U.S. and Israel, the incident served as a catalyst for a broader investigation into the funding sources of Yale and other major universities.

His investigations uncovered hidden financial ties between Qatar and institutions across the United States, Europe, and of course, Israel.

“In a short time, we uncovered over $3 billion in donations to Yale and other universities that had not been properly disclosed, as required by law,” he explains. “As early as 2019, I presented these initial findings to senior officials in Washington, which triggered a federal investigation that exposed massive unreported foreign funding.”

Three years ago, Dr. Small teamed up with Brig. Gen. (Res.) Sima Vaknin-Gill, former Chief Censor of Israel and former Director General of the Ministry for Strategic Affairs. Along with ten additional researchers and an Israeli forensic accounting firm specializing in global financial investigations, they expanded their research and released a series of reports examining the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood and Qatari funding on academic content—specifically how it has been used to promote anti-democratic, anti-Israel, and even antisemitic narratives.

The group’s most recent report investigates another area of Qatari influence in educational material that may be even more surprising: the K-12 education system, from kindergarten through to Grade 12.

“This is a case of a foreign country advancing an ideology that is fundamentally anti-Western and anti-democratic – and it is being allowed to wield unimpeded influence over American children, teenagers, and students.”

Unseen Influence: How Qatari Money is Shaping American Minds

Small, who serves as executive director of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) in New York, uses the phrase “soft power” to describe Qatar’s strategy: a small but incredibly rich country using its wealth to get almost everything it wants, from vital infrastructure to positions of influence through lobbying companies, the academy, research bodies and media organizations. “The fact that Qatar a tiny country of less than 350,000 citizens is giving more money to American universities, civil society organizations and cultural institutions than any other country in the world is most alarming and its impact has been significant” he says. Small believes that ISGAP’s latest report strengthens the claim that Qatar has built channels of  influence directly into the institutions educating American youngsters. “What we uncovered is nothing short of stunning,” adds Vaknin-Gill, Managing Director and Vice President of Strategy and Development at ISGAP. “A Qatari body that is registered in the United States is helping to fund content that, in the end, reaches the American education system, including around 8,000 schools nationwide and millions of children.”

Vaknin-Gill and Small are particularly concerned about the Choices Program, which operates under the auspices of Brown University, a prestigious private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island. The Choices Program offers academic syllabuses, textbooks and video lessons and also provides subsidized training for teachers in the disciplines of history, international relations and human rights. According to ISGAP’s findings, Choices cooperated with an organization called the Qatar Foundation International (QFI), which is part of the Qatar Foundation (QF), which was established by Sheikha Moza bint Nasser Al-Missned, the mother of the current Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

The report highlights several instances of Qatari funding. For example, Choices invited teachers from across the United States to attend a special training session focusing on two issues – the Middle East and the history of Nigeria. The invitation included subsidies to cover the cost of registration and travel and made no secret of the fact that the QFI – along with the Wyoming Geographic Alliance – was sponsoring the event. Representatives of the QFI also attended the conference and they were allocated time to distribute their teaching materials.

In another case, during the COVID-19 pandemic—when the demand for digital teaching materials was at its peak—choices posted a fellowship opportunity on its Facebook page, funded by the Qatari Foundation (QFI), aimed at developing curriculum materials for middle and high school teachers (grades 7–12). As part of the fellowship, teachers were to receive free instructional content about the Middle East. The program’s digital info sheets, distributed by choices, included a direct link to the QFI website. Although the link has since been removed, ISGAP’s report preserves the original version as it appeared on the QFI site.

“Over time, the program – which started as a relatively balanced program when it came to the issue of the Middle East – has become more extreme and has adopted a blatantly anti-Israel narrative, including negating the right of Israel to exist as a state,” Vaknin-Gill asserts. “From omitting historical details, such as the Balfour Declaration on the one hand or the Abraham Accords on the other, to downplaying the connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel and erasing Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel. The examples are endless. And the gatekeepers are totally unaware that any of this is happening.”

Vaknin-Gill adds that the Qatari infiltration into K-12 schools in the United States is a critical moment, not only in the Israeli context. “This is a case of a foreign country advancing an ideology that is fundamentally anti-Western and anti-democratic – and it is being allowed to wield unimpeded influence over American children, teenagers, and students, with no supervision and no system of checks and balances.”

In December 2023, Brown University published a lengthy response to the criticism that had been leveled against the Choices Program. The The response does not clarify where the addressed claims were published, and attempts to locate them were unsuccessful. Either way, the university rejected all complaints about the Choices Program – but what was even more interesting was its comments on the program’s funding. According to the response, QFI did not fund the program, but merely “purchased and distributed a selection of existing Choices curriculum units to 75 teachers whose districts didn’t have funding to buy them.” The statement also asserts that “Qatar Foundation International (QFI), a U.S.-based educational nonprofit organization not affiliated with the government of Qatar, has never contributed money to the Choices Program.”

This response sheds light on Qatar’s efforts to operate under the radar. QFI was initially registered in the United States as a nonprofit organization, which is required to file public financial disclosures. But not long after, it changed its legal status and became a private company registered in Delaware—a state known for offering near-total corporate secrecy. As a result, publicly available information about QFI is extremely limited.

“Just like in the case of QFI, we’ve seen other instances where the Qatari government—through various arms—has made significant efforts to conceal the true sources of funding for American and European institutions,” says Vaknin-Gil. “These efforts often remain technically within the bounds of the law, exploiting legal loopholes in Western systems. But once you trace the money, the real picture becomes clear.”

QFI is also involved in the direct funding of programs which teach the Arabic language and Arab culture in public schools in several states of the U.S. and in the United Kingdom.

In recent years, and against the backdrop of growing international criticism, the Qataris have been cautious about openly identifying with these activities. Previously, they seemed quite proud of them. For example, in 2012 the QFI website published a report about a visit by the foundation’s chairperson to a school in the New York borough of Harlem. “Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, chairman of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, yesterday visited a primary school in Harlem, the first public primary school in New York City to offer a program to study Arabic that benefits more than two hundred pupils and students from preschool to fifth grade.” After her visit, Sheikha Moza said that “I enjoyed hearing the children speak in Arabic so enthusiastically and it was lovely to see that most of them are not of Arab origin, which means the language reaches families and communities who have not been exposed to our culture previously.” Some time later, the report was removed from the QFI website.

What exactly is Qatar looking for in primary schools? “One of the first things you learn as an intelligence officer is that sometimes, in order to identify the missing details, the patterns of activity, the anomalies – or to understand the existing information in a different way – you need to look at the overall picture and only then to dive back down into the details and put the various pieces you have collected into the overall puzzle,” says Vaknin-Gill, a veteran of the IDF intelligence division. “This is exactly the big puzzle: when your goal is to exert soft influence and to integrate your ideology and narrative within the target audience – in this case, it’s Western countries – you have to select the right places to infiltrate.

“The academy in general – and the schools that are known as K-12 in the United States, where future citizens are being educated – are the classic ground for obtaining long-term influence. Otherwise, we really do have to ask the question: what are they doing there? What interest does a small Middle Eastern country have in investing in the education of children in the United States? If they were driven by economic logic, they would not have gone there; but if the idea is ‘I want to instill my worldview from an early age, to prepare the ground in order to more naturally achieve the kind of influence I am aiming for at a later stage,’ then K-12 sounds perfectly logical.

“When you understand the strategy, it makes sense that Qatar would take television stations like Al Jazeera and beIN Sports (which is actually a sports channel) and use them to spread anti-Israel messages – as does the decision to enter the world of healthcare or powerful unions, along with all the other centers of power that Qatar has entered. It all makes sense and we at ISGAP are trying to prove it – and we’re being quite successful.”

Brown University and the Choices Program told Shomrim in response: “Brown is committed to preventing discrimination and harassment based on shared ancestry, including antisemitism and islamophobia, in all of its activities. We are also committed to academic freedom as fundamentally important to our mission of education and research — in accordance with that commitment, we actively seek a diverse range of perspectives and viewpoints, and our faculty and students are free to study, examine and debate subjects of their choosing. Qatar Foundation International had no role in developing or reviewing content for any of the curricular units offered by the Choices Program. For any foreign gifts and contracts related to the University's work on campus, Brown submits accurate and comprehensive disclosures in compliance with applicable requirements of the law.

Brown University and the Choices Program: "Qatar Foundation International had no role in developing or reviewing content for any of the curricular units offered by the Choices Program."

Doha-London-Israel

The Israeli education system is also “vulnerable” to Qatari money and, like in the United States, here, too, efforts have been made to obfuscate the source of the funding. This was the case, for example, with the Galilee Foundation, which is registered in London. According to the foundation’s website, its goals include “empowering underprivileged Palestinian youth in Palestine/Israel by giving them the tools and skills needed to become change-makers.” Ninety percent of the Galilee Foundation grants are given directly to NGOs in Israel, including in the form of scholarships to students and teaching programs for schools in the Arab sector.

According to its own reports, one of the significant donors to the Galilee Foundation is none other than the Emir of Qatar himself, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, who donated £2.4 million. The Galilee Foundation deposited this donation in an interest-bearing account more than a decade ago and the annual interest funds scholarships for students in Israel. The Emir’s mother – Sheikha Moza – and her foundation, signed a 10-year agreement whereby the QFI would give the Galilee Foundation several hundred thousand dollars every year. In addition to members of the royal family, there are two other Qatari institutions that donate money to the Galilee Foundation: the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Doha and the Qatari-owned, London-based Al-Araby Al-Jadeed newspaper. Both of these have direct links with former Israeli Knesset member Azmi Bishara (Balad), who fled to Qatar after being accused of spying for Hezbollah. Bishara is very close to the Qatari Emir, while his brother, Dr. Marwan Bishara, who lives in the United Kingdom, is head of the Galilee Foundation’s board of directors.

Why does the funding flow to Israel through London and not directly from Azmi Bishara or the Qatari Foundation? “They are using the same methods as money launderers; not in the illicit, illegal sense of the word, but in the sense of trying to conceal the source of the money. This is concealment – not total, but concealment nonetheless,” argues Vaknin-Gill.

Among the associations that receive money from the Galilee Foundation are the Yaffa al-Mustaqbal, which, among its many activities, helps young Arabs from Jaffa to pass the psychometric exam; Mada al-Carmel, which focuses primarily on academic studies into Palestinian nationalism; and Baladna, the Association for Arab Youth, which, inter alia, prepares students for the high school matriculation and psychometric exams. In addition to spearheading a campaign against violence in Arab society, Baladna also once ran a campaign encouraging young Arab citizens of Israel not to do National Service.

The most interesting organization that receives funding from the Galilee Foundation, however, is the Arab Culture Association, which was set up more than 20 years ago by Azmi Bishara himself. Bishara’s late sister served as head of the association, as did many Balad party officials and Knesset members. The Arab Culture Association provides grants for students who work as teaching assistants in local schools. The Galilee Foundation’s website states that hundreds of students have received these grants and that thousands of K-12 students benefit from the recipients’ commitment to the program. In 2019, Yishai Friedman published an investigation in Makor Rishon in which it was alleged that the Arab Culture Association had received tens of millions of shekels from Qatar – including $6 million to purchase a property in Haifa.

Vaknin-Gill believes that – as is the case with strategic infrastructure – there can be no tolerance toward Qatari influence in the education system. “In the end, someone who is getting money that has been tainted by ideology, even if no one is willing to admit it out loud, will act in a way that he thinks is expected of him.”

“There is no other country which invests such huge resources to gain soft power in the United States and Europe. Qatar is playing a long-term chess game – using soft power to achieve its goals.”

What Does Qatar Want?

Using the various pieces of the puzzle that they have collected, Small and Vaknin-Gill are trying to answer the fundamental question that everyone, including Israel, is asking: What do the Qataris actually want? “The Qatari royal family acts in accordance with religious edicts and fatwas issued by the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood ideology is obligated to Islamic Sharia Law, to the establishment of an Islamic state and to the destruction of the State of Israel and Jews across the world. Moreover, it is dedicated to fighting the West.”

Asked whether this approach is not conspirative and hyperbolized, he refers to previously seized policy documents, written by senior Muslim Brotherhood officials, especially the so-called Explanatory Memorandum from 1991, which includes detailed explanations of the organization’s strategy vis-à-vis the United States and Canada.

Why not view all of Qatar’s investments as a legitimate effort by a small but wealthy country to improve its global image and to bolster its international standing?

“There is no other country which invests such huge resources to gain soft power in the United States and Europe. Qatar is playing a long-term chess game – using soft power (investments, donations, treaties, connections) to achieve its goals. These billions of dollars coming from a country that is supporting terrorism and extreme ideology is not legitimate and meant to achieve specific goals.”

According to Small, the most significant and surprising finding to come from the work of the institute he heads is how deeply Qatar has penetrated the academy. “Our research has found tens of billions of dollars and undocumented money which has played a significant role in influencing education and campus politics, pushing antidemocratic, as well as anti-Israel and antisemitic agendas.”

The most discussed ISGAP study, which was published in November 2023, revealed an agreement between Qatar and the prestigious Texas A&M University, which set up a branch in the Qatari capital Doha – alongside other American universities like Georgetown, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Northwestern, and Virginia Commonwealth. ISGAP researchers revealed that more than $1 billion was funneled from QF to Texas A&M, which funded 500 research projects in scientific fields – including research in sensitive nuclear projects. The exposé was widely covered in the United States and Texas A&M was pressured to close its Doha campus.

Small and Vaknin-Gill say that, according to reports compiled under the auspices of ISGAP, academic institutions that received Qatari funding experienced on average 300 percent more antisemitic incidents than those that did not. Students at Qatari-funded institutions reported increased exposure to anti-Israel rhetoric, pushbacks against freedom of expression, suspensions, investigations, censorship and even the dismissal of faculty and researchers.

“The Qataris are implementing a very clever strategy,” says Vaknin-Gill. “They are focusing their activity on the academy, since they understand that this is the best way to reach and influence future generations. But even within the academy, there is a focus on areas of interest that are, in turn, agents of influence – campuses that are identified with very advanced technology, campuses that specialize in media studies, healthcare, politics and policy and so on.”

Shomrim asked the Qatar Foundation, the Qatar Foundation International and the Galilee Foundation in London – as well as all of the Israeli organizations mentioned in the article – for their response. By publication time, none of them had submitted a response. If and when responses are forthcoming, they will be added to this article.