After he was interviewed on Jewish far-right commentator Laura Loomer’s show, Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) told JNS that he received a letter from the Qatari ambassador to Washington stating that his “observations about Qatar” are inaccurate.
“You said that Qatar ‘funds most of the institutions that are damaging’ the United States, adding that Qatar is ‘responsible for’ protests on U.S. college campuses,” Meshal Al Thani wrote in the letter, dated Oct. 22.
“Qatar condemns antisemitism and all forms of religious and ethnic intolerance,” the envoy wrote. “Qatar had no role in the recent unrest on U.S. college campuses, and there is no evidence to the contrary.”
“I do not expect everyone to be ‘a fan of Qatar,’ as you put it,” the ambassador wrote. “We expect only to be judged on the basis of accurate information.”
Fine told JNS that “the Qataris have come after me for years, and I think that their efforts to fund all of these organizations that have come after me have not worked.”
“I guess they decided to try to engage me directly,” said the Florida Republican, who is Jewish.
The Qatari envoy also responded to the congressman’s statement that it is dangerous to let Qatari fighter pilots train on U.S. soil. “I assume you did not intend your remarks to be understood as a categorical fear of Muslims,” Al Thani wrote. He added that many Muslims live in Florida, including in Fine’s district.
Fine told JNS that his staff believes that the Qatari embassy has invited him to prior events. “I’m not aware of any previous contact to me directly,” he said. “I’ve had two death threats from Muslims that are inspired by much of the stuff that the Qataris pay for.”
Fine told JNS that he stands by his statements.
“Fear of Islam is rational. Islamophobia is a lie, as phobia implies irrational fear,” he said. “If you speak to anyone with half a brain and they hear someone yelling ‘Allahu akbar’ on the street, they’re going to look for somewhere to hide.”
Fine said that Qatar funds the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has attacked him, and that Josh Weil, his Democratic opponent in March’s special election for a vacant House seat, accepted Qatari funding through the ActBlue platform.
“Look at my Democrat opponent when I ran for office, who came up with $15 million—an unheard of amount. No one can figure out where the money came from,” Fine said. “Where do you think it came from? I know where I think it came from.”
No evidence has been published suggesting that Doha funded Fine’s political opponents.
Qatar has been routinely accused of supporting terrorism, including by its Arab neighbors. The Al Jazeera television network, which the Qatari government owns and controls, has a documented history of disseminating Jew-hatred and of glorifying terrorists and employing Hamas operatives, who have posed as journalists.
Israel and several Arab countries have banned the network.
The Qatari defense minister once stated that “we are all Hamas,” and the Qatari government has long harbored Hamas leaders in luxury hotels in Doha.
Hamad Al-Muftah, Qatar’s deputy chief of mission in Washington, has pushed back aggressively on criticism of Qatar. In recent days, he accused Wall Street Journal editorial board member Elliot Kaufman, an Orthodox Jew, of accepting money from the Israeli government for criticizing Al-Muftah’s defense of a Harvard University fellow accused of supporting terrorism.
Al-Muftah cited a debunked report that Israel pays influencers $7,000 per social media post to back the Jewish state.
Fine told JNS that Al-Muftah’s claim about Kaufman left him “sort of stunned.”
“For a Qatari diplomat to trot that out, I mean, that’s just made up,” the congressman said.
