— Feature, Musings —09.09.2025 11:05 AM
Ex-Brit Army commander: Qatar had it coming
Richard Kemp is a retired soldier, but he still talks like one in active service.
Speaking to a crowd of attentive listeners at the Toronto home of former Canadian Senator Linda Frum this week, Kemp foretold Israel’s precision strikes in Qatar, just hours before they happened.
“One pressure point is Qatar,” said Kemp, who knows a thing or two about war, having served in many for the United Kingdom. “Qatar hasn’t been exploited yet – to undermine Hamas.”
Qatar is the puny oil-rich Arab nation that, among other things, hosts and funds Hamas. Directly or indirectly, Qatar has funded al-Qaeda, Syria’s al-Nusra Front, ISIS, and their philosophical nexus, the Muslim Brotherhood. It has supplied Hamas, in particular, with tens of millions to fund its terror war against Israel and the West.
(Oh, and Qatar is sponsoring and funding seven (7) films at the Toronto International Film Festival, which recently attracted some negative headlines for its hastily-recanted decision to cancel a documentary about an Israeli family on October 7. That was produced by, you know, a Jew. But we digress.)
While Richard Kemp does not explicitly advocate for Israel to take out Hamas targets in Qatar – as they attempted to do on Monday night – he says that Israel must take forceful steps if it is to win its war against Hamas. “It’s all simply a question of destroying Hamas,” he says. Something that he says is inevitable, in the near or long term.
“And,” he adds,”please don’t think I don’t have sympathy for the Palestinian people. I don’t want to see the suffering of innocent children or women or the elderly. But I believe Israel must defeat Hamas.”
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Warren,
Paramilitary forces are always hard to root out. Israel never managed that with the PLO and I expect the same this time with Hamas. Terrorists are experts at reconstitution and survival.
How ironic that neither Israel nor Hamas genuinely wants peace and two states side by side. So the war continues indefinitely. The IDFs track record in Lebanon and Gaza isn’t good.
One of the major Anglo-US news org podcasts had a feature on Qatar not too long ago — I can’t remember if it was NYT, Economist, WSJ or whatever. But in any event, it was shocking and damning. And covered some of the things that Warren mentions above. It’s incredible what Qatar has been able to pull off, while in bed with some of the scummiest, most murderous entities on the planet.
And basically very few people or news organizations have been willing to shine a light on it. Part of it is just apathy and ignorance among the general population. And the fact that the US has that base there — that’s huge, and partly explains why a lot of news organizations have been mute on this.
Note similarity between Qatar and the Taliban circa 9/11: Taliban hosts and shelters the leadership of Al Qaeda, a terrorist organization, the US goes in and smashes Al Qaeda.
Qatar hosts and shelters the leadership of Hamas, a terrorist organization. And the US does dick.
Unless, of course, they green lit this.
That does not appear to be what the evidence discloses.
But possible, that’s true.
I think the more important issue though is the slimy double game Qatar has (expertly) played, where they get away with stuff that other people (e.g., Afghanistan under the Taliban) get punished or even militarily attacked for.
I get that there’s a thing called realpolitik, but often climbing into bed with snakes like this ultimately results in trouble and tears for the US. Like the double game the Pakistani intelligence services played for years vis a vis the Taliban and Al Qaeda, which resulted in the US being “allies” with people who are funding people who are killing US soldiers and citizens.
With all due respect, this support-Israel-no-matter-what-they-do approach is no longer appropriate – or, quite frankly, ethical.
With this blind loyalty, presumably Netanyahu could bomb an office building in a Western European country under the pretext of “We are pretty sure Hamas is hiding there”. And “we all know there are Hamas sympathizers” in (insert country here).
Heck, with this rationale, if Israel had intercontinental missiles, they could attack McGill University because hey – lots of pro-Palestinian protests occurring there. They must also be hiding Hamas!
Netanyahu will continue to indiscriminately bomb and starve people under the Hamas Boogeyman pretext, until the world – and in particular the U.S. – tells him to stop.
Gotcha. You condemned us and the Americans killing bin Laden in Pakistan then, too, right?
I think it is apples and oranges. A targeted raid, with highly-trained special ops forces, to kill a single person. Versus a bomb sent from hundreds of miles away, smashing an entire building.
In addition, quite frankly, the proof is in the pudding. The U.S. had specific intelligence, and got bin Laden. Israel, on the other hand, claimed it “knew” where Hamas leaders were – but oopsie daisy, not so much. Maybe it was true, maybe it wasn’t.
As I noted, this is the Israeli schtick for months / years now. Claim that Hamas is somewhere (including hospitals, etc…), then bomb the crap out of that alleged location. And often, the story ends up being malarky.
Steve,
It’s my understanding that Hamas’ leaders were on site when the building was attacked.
But removing the Hamas leadership is a mug’s game. You could wipe them out ten times in a row, and they would still come up with competent leadership.
They’re like rats on the farm – shoot them, poison them, have the dogs hunt them but they won’t go away until they run out of food.
If the hamas leadership really cares about Palestinians they’d lay down their arms and allow for a two state solution – Hamas is the problem and the idiot running Israel doesn’t help – he’s a fool like them.
Curious,
That idiot, a former Hamas enabler, just said there will never be a Palestinian state. His position hasn’t changed in twenty years. So, as long as that guy is in power, a comprehensive peace will never come in the region.
I don’t know where you got the impression that my view is that we should support Israel no matter what. That’s not my view. There’s plenty of blame to go around for the way things are in that area is the world. But Hamas is and always has been a terrorist organization that is and always has officially advocated for the utter destruction of Israel.
What I want to know is why Trump is infuriated and why he says it won’t happen again.
Who exactly is Trump fronting for?