While their people languish in poverty and are treated as human shields, the leaders of Hamas live billionaire lifestyles.
The terror group’s three top leaders alone are worth a staggering $11 billion between them and enjoy a life of luxury in the sanctuary of the emirate of Qatar.
The emirate has long welcomed the leaders of the terror group and installed them in its luxury hotels and villas at the same time as hosting a vast American military presence.
Now Republican Tennessee Congressman Andy Ogles is co-sponsoring a bill that would strip Qatar of its status as a key US ally, The Post has learned, unless it kicks out the Hamas leadership.
The terrorist group, which is responsible for the antisemitic Oct. 7 massacre of more than 1,400 innocent civilians in southern Israel, continues to hold 200 hostages in Gaza.
Hamas runs an office in Qatar’s capital, Doha, and leaders Ismail Haniyeh, Moussa Abu Marzuk and Khaled Mashal live a luxurious lifestyle.
They have been seen at its diplomatic club, photographed on private jets and traveled widely. The leadership would have been there for the 2022 soccer World Cup.
In contrast, most of the population of more than two million in the Gaza Strip, which Hamas has ruled since 2007, live in abject poverty.
Haniyeh, 61, the head of Hamas’s politbureau, was prime minister of all of Palestine following elections in 2006 although he was booted from office a year later.
He continued to rule the Gaza Strip until 2017 before ending up in Qatar.
Haniyeh, a father of 13 who presides over one of the world’s wealthiest terrorist groups, is worth more than $4 billion.
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The presence of the Hamas leaders in Qatar has long been justified by the emirate as part of its support for tuning the terror group into “a responsible governing power,” according to a report from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
The country provides Hamas with between $120 million and $480 million per year, according to the October report by the Washington, DC-based non-profit that studies foreign policy.
“These funds benefit Hamas leaders directly through payroll and kickback schemes and indirectly through social services and government operations that help Hamas maintain political control over Gaza,” the report said.
Qatar is also home to the Al Jazeera news channel, which the report alleges, “spreads antisemitism, anti-Americanism and incitement to violence throughout the Arab world.”
“Qatar is Hamas and Hamas is Qatar,” said Yigal Carmon, president of the Washington DC-based Middle East Media Research Institute in an interview with The Post in Israel.
But moves to force action on Hamas are now stepping up in DC.
Rep. Ogles bill would strip Qatar of its special status in the top tier of America’s non-NATO allies alongside Israel and Taiwan and South Korea, Australia and Japan.
Ogles told The Post Tuesday, “As Hamas terrorists continue to wreak havoc on the lives of innocent Israeli civilians, the United States must ensure there is no ally supporting them. Sadly, the State of Qatar is still funding and supporting Hamas as its leadership enjoys political refuge in Doha.”
The country has had the special status since last year but Ogles’ move would force it to be conditional on removing Hamas.
Along with hosting Hamas, Qatar is also one of the most important military bases for the US in the Middle East.
It is home to US Central Command’s forward base in the Middle East at the giant Al Udeid air base, which itself is vital to Air Force operations in the Gulf.
Qatar is not the only source of Hamas’ cash. The group also took in nearly $400 million in the last two years from the UN, which does not recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency provided Hamas with $380 million since 2021, according to the FDD. Much of that cash came from the Biden Administration, which has provided $1 billion to the UNRWA since 2021.
“Since UNRWA has long insisted it has no political screen on its aid, and since Hamas is viewed as a political party, we know with near certainty that our taxpayer dollars have been delivered into the hands of Hamas,” the FDD said, adding that the Trump administration ended US contributions to UNRWA because of the Hamas connection.
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Paul Sperry: Hamas Ally CAIR Has Been Operating With Impunity Inside America for 30 Years
After Hamas massacred 1,400 men, women and children in Israel last month, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned that the terror group “and its allies” could inspire attacks on Americans “here on our own soil.” He also told the Senate that the FBI is conducting “multiple, ongoing investigations” into people affiliated with the U.S.-designated terrorist group.
What Wray didn’t say is that the FBI has been investigating Hamas’ biggest ally in America for the past 30 years – without filing any charges. Launched in 1994 as a secret front organization to support Hamas, according to declassified FBI wiretap transcripts and FBI testimony, the Council on American-Islamic Relations has, in the decades since, become an accepted member of Washington’s lobbying community. The New York Times and other influential newspapers routinely describe CAIR as a “Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization.”
Although it has not repudiated its support for Hamas – which is committed to the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people – CAIR was enlisted by the Biden administration in May to take part in a White House initiative to fight antisemitism.
On Oct. 7, the day Hamas terrorists butchered 1,400 Jews, including 33 Americans – raping many and abducting some 240 others to Gaza from southern Israel – CAIR’s national executive director, Nihad Awad, delivered an anti-Israel message in Arabic which seemed to justify what Hamas did. Translated into English, it read: “All Arab peoples must go out on Sunday, Oct. 8 – and every day – in demonstrations in support of the Palestinians and in rejection of normalization with the occupier and the apartheid regime [Israel].”
On Saturday afternoon, CAIR helped rally more than 100,000 Muslims in D.C. to instead condemn Israel for supposedly carrying out “genocide” in Gaza in response to the Oct. 7 attacks. Multiple speakers called for the destruction of Israel – and, by implication, the Jewish people there – by demanding Palestinians take all the lands “from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea.”
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CAIR did not respond to requests for comment, but without addressing specifics, it has previously argued it “is not a ‘front group for Hamas.’” The FBI and White House declined to comment.
While CAIR is now a mainstay of American politics – headquartered just three blocks from the U.S. Capitol, with 35 offices across the country – its history reveals its close connections with terror groups such as Hamas, as detailed in the 2009 book this reporter co-authored with counterterrorism expert P. David Gaubatz, “Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld that’s Conspiring to Islamize America.”
The story began in the Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan in the 1960s, where Awad and a co-founder of CAIR, Omar Ahmad, were born. Both men eventually came to the United States for university studies. By 1992, Awad was a key member of the so-called Palestine Committee in America, which helped finance Hamas. According to a 1992 letter from the Gaza Strip, Hamas asked the Committee for money to buy “weapons, weapons, our brothers.” The letter continued: “The meaning of killing a Jew for the liberation of Palestine cannot be compared to any jihad on earth.”
Around the same time, the FBI was eavesdropping on several Hamas leaders in connection with terrorist activities, which produced tapes documenting the incarnation of CAIR in 1993. At a secret meeting that October, Omar Ahmad called to order the Hamas summit in Philly at a Courtyard by Marriott hotel in Philadelphia to discuss the formation of a new front organization to support their “movement” in America. Awad also attended the meeting.
According to court testimony by FBI agent Lara Burns, who runs a major counterterrorism program for the bureau, Ahmad, Awad, and the other leaders who gathered there hatched a scheme to disguise overseas payments to Hamas terrorists and their families as charity. FBI wiretaps also recorded them stating the need to deceive Americans about the true aims of their planned American front group as Hamas launched a campaign of terror attacks on Israel known as the “Intifada.”
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Senators probe Fauci-run virus lab in Montana where US scientists were infecting bats with Covid-like viruses shipped in from WUHAN in 2018 – years before the pandemic
Senators are demanding answers about a laboratory in Montana where US taxpayer money was used to manipulate coronaviruses before the pandemic.
DailyMail.com revealed last week how government-sponsored researchers infected bats with a ‘SARS-like’ virus in 2018 as part of a collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is at the center of the Covid cover-up scandal.
Republican Senators Joni Ernst, from Iowa, and Eric Schmitt, from Missouri, will today send a letter to the National Institutes of Health demanding ‘to learn more about potentially risky research’ carried out at Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML).
The senators’ letter, seen by DailyMail.com, reads: ‘There is no room for error and no excuse for carelessness, since even a minor mishap can be catastrophic when dealing with dangerous biological agents, especially those with pandemic potential.’
The letter lays out 10 questions, including how many live bats are currently being housed at the lab and future planned experiments.
Questions include: ‘Will the renovated RML conduct gain-of-function research or any other type of experimentation enhancing the pathogenicity of infectious agents or creating chimeric versions?’
‘Should any biosafety incidents at RML occur, how will Congress and the public be notified?’
‘Where are RML’s lab animals sourced from? Are bats or other animals being imported from foreign nations?’
The senators’ letter highlighted the lab had previously reported a number of protocol breaches, including a mouse infected with an Ebola-like virus escaping its cage and roaming free for a day and unauthorized individuals, including a child, found wandering near the lab’s primate facility.
The CDC was not alerted immediately about the breaches because, the letter states, lab officials ‘did not believe they needed to report the escaped rodent but later did when instructed to by CDC officials.’
The revelation last week was met with anger among politicians who said it revealed eerie ties between the NIH, which was under Dr Anthony Fauci’s leadership at the time, and the Chinese lab feared to have sparked the global Covid-19 pandemic.
It also exposed the controversial research tactics being funded by American taxpayer dollars.
The 2018 collaboration saw Rocky Mountain researchers infect 12 Egyptian fruit bats that had been acquired from a shady, ‘roadside’ Maryland zoo.
The animals were infected with a ‘SARS-like’ virus called WIV1-coronavirus to study the virus’ behavior and transmissibility. The virus had been shipped from the Wuhan lab the FBI believes caused the Covid pandemic, though the research determined the novel virus could not cause a ‘robust infection.’
Rocky Mountain Laboratories was constructed in 1928 in Hamilton, Montana, and is a ‘state-of-the-art biomedical research facility,’ the NIH said. A key component of the facility is its research into vector-borne diseases, such as Rocky Mountain spotted fever and Lyme disease, as well as coronaviruses and antibiotic-resistant diseases.
Now, the lab is spending $125 million in Covid-19 funds to construct a new biosafety level 2 lab that will support animal breeding, holding and experiment programs, as well as quarantine for animals classified as biosafety levels 3 and 4.
The new facility will also expand RML’s capabilities for studies involving exotic species, including bats.
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