David M. Weinberg 
David M. Weinberg 
World leaders are terribly upset about Israel’s strike this week on Hamas chieftains in Qatar. Why? Because the airstrike “violated” the emirate of Qatar’s “sovereignty.”
This would be funny if it were not so outrageous and asinine.
None of the countries condemning Israel and rushing to the defense of Qatar’s apparently sacrosanct sovereignty had anything to say over the past decades, and especially over the past two years, as Qatar repeatedly and constantly violated Israeli sovereignty.
That jihadist-in-chief emirate “violated” Israel’s sovereignty by paying for Hamas operations against Israel, including missile bombardments and the October 7 rape-pillage-and-mass-murder assault on Israel.
None of the countries condemning Israel and rushing to the defense of Qatar’s oh-so-very holy sovereignty bothered to mention that the emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, has for years harbored Hamas terrorist leaders in his luxury hotels and lavish villas. He pampered them, promoted them, advised them, and broadcast their blood-curdling battle calls on his evil global television network.
None of the countries condemning Israel and rushing to the defense of the emir could acknowledge that Israel was “violating” the sovereignty of Qatar no more than the US “violated” the sovereignty of Pakistan when American Navy SEALs assassinated 9/11 terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden, not far from Islamabad. Back then, nobody wailed about a blow to the “inviolable sovereignty” and “territorial integrity” of Pakistan.
Israel strike on Qatar slammed by the West
Apparently, despicably, Israel has less right than the US to target its sworn enemies in their hideouts. How haughty and nasty! Such utter hypocrisy toward Israel.
Listen to the pablum pouring out of Western leaders, as if they were all reading off the same Al Jazeera press release:
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer: Israel’s military strike was “a flagrant violation of Qatar’s sovereignty.” He offered heartfelt, sniveling condolences for a Qatari security officer killed in the attack.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock barked that the strike is “unacceptable.” It “not only violates Qatar’s territorial sovereignty but also threatens collective efforts to release the hostages” – as if Germany were more concerned about our hostages than the Israeli people and government.
Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares: The attack is “a violation of Qatari territorial sovereignty and a flagrant violation of international law.” Albares knows a thing or two about “flagrant,” as he has flagrantly, brazenly, and reprehensibly led the effort to kill the EU’s trade and other cooperation agreements with Israel.
In his grand, loquacious, and pompous way, French President Emmanuel Macron said something similar. The attack, he said, was “unacceptable, whatever the reason.” Of course, he made no reference to the reason, as if Hamas – an arm of Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood, which seek the destruction of Israel and are engaged in a world war against the West – did not exist.
Then, to be sure that the peace-seeking and grift-grabbing Qatari emir was certain of Macron’s love, he added his “solidarity” with Sheikh Tamim Al Thani.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned Israel’s strike in Qatar as an “unprovoked” attack and an “intolerable expansion of violence and an affront to Qatar’s sovereignty.” Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand added a riff about Israel’s need “to uphold international law.”
Unprovoked?! How ridiculous, in the context of Qatar’s unceasing support for the battering of Israel’s territorial integrity and its disregard of international law. Did somebody say “violation”?
Anand went on to sing a love poem to Qatar’s “vital mediating role in efforts to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza, the release of Israeli hostages, and scaled-up flows of life-saving assistance for Palestinian civilians. Canada fully supports Qatar’s leadership in these efforts.”
Nothing about Canada “fully” expecting Qatar to expel or arrest the Hamas terrorist chieftains to whom it has given luxurious sanctuary, never mind truly pressing them to release all Israeli hostages. Thanks to sycophantic prattle from Westerners like Anand, Qatar has bamboozled the West and hung Israel out to dry for two full years of the hostage crisis.
THIS IS a classic example of Western flunkiness: buying into the myth that Qatar is a reasonable and credible actor in regional diplomacy, instead of recognizing its leading role in financing and arming Nazi-like Islamism that threatens Arabs, Jews, and Westerners alike. They subscribe to the canard that Israel is the regional rogue, instead of pointing to Qatar for supporting Iran and radical Islamist revolution across the region and around the world.
The second nefarious theme that ran through the mournful responses to the long-overdue Israeli hit on Hamas in Qatar is the charge that Israel is disturbing the peace of the critical international trading hub in uber-wealthy Doha and that it is upsetting the US alliance with well-meaning Gulf nations. The New York Times, for example, bemoaned the fact that Gulf countries can no longer rely on America to protect them from run-amok Israel, from dangerous Israel.
The woke newspaper gleefully quotes a former State Department Arabist who proclaims that it is time for “US partners and US policymakers to come to the late realization that Israel’s militant mindset is a threat to the entire region. Time to realize that working with Israel is bad for business.”
In this distorted telling, duplicitous Qatar is a dependable Western ally. Israel is the unreliable – even a wild and increasingly destructive – ally.
After all, fighting terrorism against its citizens and defending the world from radical Islam is not a worthy and necessary thing. Doing business with the Qataris is far more important.
THIS BRINGS us to the core of Western antipathy toward Israel in the post-October 7 era. The old-guard denizens of traditional, feeble diplomacy cannot stomach an extraordinarily strong Israel. They cannot bear an Israel that keeps its enemies off base with beeper blasts and bunker-busting airstrikes and that acts proactively to assert dominance along its borders and strategic ascendancy against threats farther away.
This, in fact, is the entire point of the ugly exercise by France, Britain, Canada, and others to recognize a faux Palestinian state. The purpose of the grandstanding is to weaken Israel and prevent it from growing too strong, too “hegemonic” in its ambitions, too aggressive in its military actions, too dominant in resetting the regional strategic situation, too successful in defending itself, including the prevention of runaway, risky, and undeserved Palestinian statehood.
In short, in their eyes, Israel must not be allowed to win so much – its game-changing, successful strike on Iran’s nuclear bomb program be damned. Instead, Israel needs to be constrained, hemmed in, humbled, and dictated to.
What such critics-from-afar don’t understand or can’t accept is that Israel is operating on an updated strategic prism that stems from a realistic understanding of the region. Israelis and their leaders understand that the set of rules by which the worst actors in the Middle East operate is ideological, attritional, and genocidal – not accommodational or transactional.
Thus, Israel can no longer accept policies that emphasize “quiet for quiet” and prioritize “restraint” because this allows the enemy to develop attack capabilities under the cover of diplomatic breathing time, what some Western officials mistakenly call periods of “stability.”
In this new era, Israel intends to project its strength to neutralize adversaries long before they develop strategic offensive capabilities, to do so in any corner of the region, and to do so publicly and openly. (No more anonymous, mysterious hits on Iranian nuclear scientists, for example.)
Israel is no longer afraid of long wars on multiple fronts simultaneously, difficult as this may be. It will not fritter away strategic assets like Judea and Samaria and the “Crown” of the Hermon Mountain range (formerly known as the Syrian Golan) in exchange for flimsy and transient diplomatic accords.
It will welcome normalization of relations with more Arab countries on the Abraham Accords model, but not in exchange for wild fantasies (such as the establishment of a “democratic and peaceful” Palestinian state). Israel seeks to truly stabilize the region, but not through reliance on hackneyed diplomatic templates and failed formulas that broadcast weakness.
To its fair-weather friends in the West, Israel says: You can condemn Israel, boycott and blackball it, babble blood libels about genocide, declare phantom states at Israel’s expense, wrap yourselves in keffiyehs and bang bongo drums with slogans against Israel in your parliaments, and even attack Jews in your streets. You can cozy up to Qatar or cater to Iran.
None of this will stop Israel from doing the necessary and the right: steadfastly striking at the agents of chaos and genocidal jihad wherever they may be, for its own security and for that of the world.
Published in The Jerusalem Post, September 12, 2025.