The author of a New York Times magazine cover story that blasted Israel works for a group that is funded by Qatar, the home base of the Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual leader and anti-Semite Yusuf al Qaradawi.
The revelation exposes a glaring bias in this journalist’s writings.
In his Sunday piece titled, “How the Battle Over Israel and Anti-Semitism Is Fracturing American Politics,” Nathan Thrall pens a scathing indictment of the Democratic Party’s supposed support for Israel, leading with his criticism of Hillary Clinton’s choice of a Jew, Robert Wexler, as her foreign policy expert, versus Bernie Sanders’ choice, James Zogby, an Arab-American.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, which first broke news of Thrall’s ties to Qatar, the author has a long history of writing anti-Israel pieces. The Beacon’s Adam Kredo wrote that Thrall, “who the Times presents as a disinterested expert, serves as director of the Arab-Israeli Project at the International Crisis Group, or ICG, a left-leaning advocacy organization that has received around $4 million from the Qatari government in the just the last year. Qatar’s donations represent around 23 percent of ICG’s total budget.” ICG has reportedly also raised $1 million in the past few years from the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation, which openly and enthusiastically funds the BDS movement in the United States.
Kredo notes that Qatar is not once mentioned in Thrall’s piece. (RELATED: Hamas, Israel Agree To Second Cease Fire In 10 Days)
Qatar is known to support Hamas and Qaradawi, who has called for a Muslim holocaust against Jews, prompting concern about the security of Israelis, Jews, Americans and other “non-believers” during the 2022 World Cup in Doha, Qatar.
In a 2015 interview with Cal State University, San Bernardino Professor Dany Doueiri said the “overwhelming majority of Muslims today in the Middle East” look to scholars like Qaradawi in Qatar for guidance. “There are scholars who really speak for the overwhelming majority of Muslims today in the Middle East like Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who lived in Qatar, or people in Egypt, Malaysia Saudi Arabia and many places who are really respected scholars,” Doueiri said. “And for the Muslims in the United States we do have many very learned scholars who make rulings every years. They meet, they talk about issues on cloning, Islamic banking on non-Islamic banking and trade.”
Qatar’s influence operations are also the subject of a new documentary that is quickly gaining traction among President Donald Trump’s base.
At one point during his Sunday piece, Thrall wrote: “Democrats and Republicans reported similar levels of sympathy for Israel from the late 1970s until the early 2000s. But in the past decade, a series of polls by the Pew Research Center show, a yawning gap has opened between the parties, with nearly three times as many Republicans as Democrats expressing more sympathy for Israel than for the Palestinians.”
He also repeats the false narrative that compares Israel to the South African model of apartheid writing, “The B.D.S. movement casts the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a struggle against apartheid.”
On Thursday, Thrall tweeted about his piece and noted that while it is “about BDS, Israel and the Democrats,” it is “also about Black-Palestinian solidarity and the increasing use of a racial justice prism to describe the situation today.”
For @NYTmag, I wrote a piece about BDS, Israel and the Democrats. It’s also about Black-Palestinian solidarity and the increasing use of a racial justice prism to describe the situation today.https://t.co/giHDgPGTsa
— Nathan Thrall (@NathanThrall) March 28, 2019
Also on Thursday, Thrall posted a link to an article he wrote in August 2018 for the Guardian promoting the staunchly anti-Semitic BDS movement as one of “non-violence” while juxtaposing it against “Israel’s response,” which he presents as non-peaceful. (RELATED: George Soros-Linked Money Used To Promote BDS Movement Against Israel)
The link between Thrall and Qatar had members of the Jewish and pro-Israel community reeling.
Josh Block, CEO and president of The Israel Project (TIP), told the Beacon that he found it to be “horrifying” that the Times did not disclose Thrall’s anti-Israel bias and the source of ICG’s funding.
Ironically, the Palestinians and Arabs are among the first to suffer as a result of the BDS movement, which also prevents the peace process from proceeding.
The BDS movement, in fact, is focused on Israeli-owned companies that operate in the territories of Judea and Samaria, or the West Bank, which are disputed.
When the BDS campaign targeted SodaStream in 2015, international pressure pushed the company to close down their primary manufacturing plant located in Ma’ale Adumim in the West Bank. Over 500 Palestinians lost their jobs as a result of this BDS campaign. The factory was relocated to Lehavim, located in Southern Israel. In August 2018, PepsiCo bought SodaStream for $3.2 billion.
According to Avi Zimmerman, Chairman of the Judea and Samaria Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Israeli companies employ approximately 30,000 Palestinians in the region. And Moshe Lev-ran, export manager of Twito Plast, said that if Palestinians get a job with the Palestinian Authority, they will make no more than $200 per month compared with $1,700 per month they receive working for an Israeli company.