“I was inspired by the Palestinian intifada.”
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
“I was inspired by the Palestinian intifada,” Hady Amr wrote a year after September 11, discussing his work as the national coordinator of the anti-Israel Middle East Justice Network.
Biden has now chosen Amr as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israel-Palestine.
“I have news for every Israeli,” Amr ranted in one column written after Sheikh Salah Shahada, the head of Hamas’ Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, was taken out by an Israeli air strike.
Amr warned that Arabs “now have televisions, and they will never, never forget what the Israeli people, the Israeli military and Israeli democracy have done to Palestinian children. And there will be thousands who will seek to avenge these brutal murders of innocents.”
He also threatened Americans that “we too shouldn’t be shocked when our military assistance to Israel and our security council vetoes that keep on protecting Israel come back to haunt us”
The future State Department official was making these threats less than a year after 9/11.
Hady Amr had accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and coordinated an organization that had accused Israel of “apartheid” making his appointment, like that of Maher Bitar, an anti-Israel activist appointed as the Senior Director for Intelligence on the NSC, a statement about the Biden administration’s hostile relationship to the Jewish State.
Amr’s job offer from Biden isn’t surprising. The Beirut-born Amr who grew up in Saudi Arabia had dived into politics as the director of ethnic outreach for Al Gore’s failed presidential campaign. And the Biden campaign listed Amr as one of its bundlers who fueled it with cash.
Biden’s move puts Amr, who had repeatedly advocated for a deal with Hamas, and worked closely with a terror state that serves as a major backer of Hamas, in a key policy position.
But Amr isn’t just another foreign policy expert with a history of hostility to Israel.
“What’s exciting about this project is that it’s a joint project of Brookings and the Qatari Government,” Hady Amr had gushed about his old role as the director of the Brookings Doha Center, whose aim he said was to “inform the American public and American policy makers”.
In, “Foreign Powers Buy Influence at Think Tanks”, the New York Times had reported that Qatar, an ally of Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, was the single biggest foreign donor to the Brookings Institute.
“There was a no-go zone when it came to criticizing the Qatari government,” a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar in 2009 had told the Times.
Hady Amr had been the founding director of the Brookings Doha Center and had led it between 2006 and 2010. A Times report noted that the institution had forbade criticism of Qatar. Lawyers interviewed by the paper suggested that some of Brookings’ work with foreign governments merited “registration as foreign agents”. Brookings has not only not done so, its key personnel, like Amr, have gone on to work in important positions for the United States government.
Amr moved back and forth between Brookings and the United States Government, working for Brookings Doha and then the State Department, and returning to Brookings under the Trump Administration, before coming back to the State Department under Biden.
Qatar not only provided $14.8 million in funding for the Brookings Doha Center, but its advisory board was co-chaired by Qatar’s foreign prime minister and a member of its royal dynasty while its director had formerly worked for the second of the Qatari Emir’s three wives (and the only wife who also wasn’t a cousin) making it obvious that the organization was under Qatari control.
“The center will assume its role in reflecting the bright image of Qatar,” the Qatari Foreign Ministry had boasted.
Qatar is a major state sponsor of the Islamic terrorist group Hamas. It has been accused by US government officials of being utilized by Al Qaeda and the Taliban for fundraising purposes. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of September 11, operated out of Qatar. He fled after being warned by a member of the Qatari royal family that the Americans were on to him.
“The Qataris had a history of terrorist sympathies,” the NSC’s former chief counter-terrorism adviser wrote. “It has been true that Qatar has served as a sanctuary for leaders of groups that the U.S. or other countries deem to be terrorist organizations.”
Hady Amr’s backing for Islamists mirrored the support for Islamists by the Qatari regime.
At Brookings Doha, Amr had urged that the “Muslim brotherhood organizations across the Muslim World should be engaged”. Then he wondered, “in Lebanese and Palestinian society, the faith-based organizations are seen as the least corrupt… Hamas and Hezbollah are often cited by their populations as being non-corrupt. This needs more analysis. Is this the case?”
Over the past few years, Amr has repeatedly urged negotiations with Hamas. When the Trump administration unveiled its proposed peace deal, Amr co-wrote an article declaring that it should be scrapped in favor of focusing on a deal with Hamas. The article provides some insight into the policies that Amr may advance as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israel-Palestine.
“By laying out the terms of a three-way Hamas-Israel-PA/PLO deal now, and building an international consensus around it, the United States could create a pathway toward resolution,” the article had argued. That would potentially not only restart Obama’s attempt to impose a plan on Israel, but would do so not only on behalf of the PLO, but also on behalf of Hamas.
The troubling connections between Qatar, an Islamic terrorist state that is allied with Iran, is a major sponsor of the Muslim Brotherhood and its terrorist arm, Hamas, and the influential Brookings Institute think-tank makes Amr’s appointment all the more problematic.
“Our business is to influence policy,” Martin Indyk admitted. “To be policy-relevant, we need to engage policy makers.”
Indyk, a key anti-Israel figure in the Democrat foreign policy establishment, who had worked for Clinton and Obama, had partnered with the Qatari government to set up Brookings in Doha.
Amr’s career was fueled by his work with Indyk and after Brookings, he went to work for the State Department and eventually became the Deputy to the Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations for Economics and Gaza under Obama. Now, after acting as a big money bundler for Biden, the anti-Israel figure has been rewarded with a major foreign policy role.
Hady Amr is not the only Brookings Doha alumnus to end up in a top policy position. Amr’s appointment may be an opportunity to scrutinize whether employees of an organization that effectively functioned as an arm of a foreign government should be allowed to hold such roles.
Through Al Jazeera and organizations like Brookings Doha, Qatar has worked to support and normalize Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood. Brookings Doha’s leadership made no secret of the fact that its goal was to influence policymakers. But, even more troublingly, the veterans of Brookings Doha, like Amr, are becoming policymakers in their own right.
Should foreign governments like Qatar be able to exercise such an influence over America?
gravenimage says
Biden’s New Asst Sec of State Worked for Islamic Terror State That Funds Hamas
……………….
The more we hear about Biden’s cabinet the worse it is.
Not only is this thug Hady Amr being imposed on the Israelis, but he has also *threatened America*.
Savvy Kafir says
Yep. And my friends and family couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t vote for Biden.
Check Burry says
From UK it looks like its breeding season for Trojan Horses.
Wellington says
Biden by the day, gravenimage, is proving to be a disaster. This article serves as a case in point.
And something else: I am angry at all those who ACTUALLY voted for Biden, never mind all the fraudulent votes in his “election,” examples demonstrating this contention being EVERY non-polling metric favoring Trump easily so, Pennsylvania discounting 30 times fewer mail-in ballots in 2020 than in 2016, and video evidence of “boxes for Biden” being pulled out in the early hours of November 4th in Georgia.
At least 50 (more like 80) solid pieces of evidence exist that the election was stolen from Trump. And who is averring otherwise? Why, the very party, the Democratic Party, aided by its de facto arm, the MSM, which asserted for literally years and with no evidence that the 2016 Trump campaign colluded with Russia.
Not a single person upon penalty of perjury maintained that the 2016 Trump campaign colluded with Russia. Now, hundreds upon hundreds of affidavits upon penalty of perjury have been filed asserting that massive fraud occurred in the 2020 election and yet we are being told that there is nothing to see here. Time to move on. Etc.
Well, who is asserting this rubbish? It is Democrats, RINOS, a highly compromised MSM and an American judiciary which is an absolute disgrace, for instance the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that on its own, ignoring the statute passed by the PA legislature that ALL votes must be in by 8:00 P.M. on November 3rd, 2020, moving the date deadline to three days later.
I am no conspiracy theorist (e.g., Oswald acted alone in the killing of JFK), but I am at least 90% certain (which is the beyond a reasonable doubt standard required in criminal cases) that the 2020 Presidential election was stolen from Trump. Now such people as me are being gaslighted—all part of a larger (and despicable) agenda. So disgusted.
mortimer says
Another case of bad judgement by Biden’s puppeteers.
James Lincoln says
Wellington,
To your many valid points, a great article from RedState:
“2020 Presidential Election Lawsuits — the Facts”
https://redstate.com/stu-in-sd/2021/02/03/2020-presidential-election-lawsuits-the-facts-n320913
gravenimage says
Grimly true.
maria says
biden is even worse than obama. He is ta racist and pro nazi-muslim
somehistory says
Like a union of fathers putting Ted Bundy in charge of their young daughters’ entertainment and Jeffrey Dahmer as counselor for their sons.
No good will come of it..
Donovan Nuera says
I would rather have a “Bitter Clinger” in charge of government than a “Bitar/Hady”. Ah ha ha. Time to fax this great and important article (and the one on Schiff’s Bitar Bro) to every synagogue and church or place pamphlet style on windshields in parking lots at these places and school.
gravenimage says
Hady Amr is not just terrible on Israel, “Palestine”, and the Middle East–he is also downplaying the threat of Jihad terror here in the US, while claiming that the right is the real threat:
“What the post-9/11 war on terror can teach us about responding to domestic terrorism today”
“Although the body count is smaller than 9/11, a domestic ‘war on terror’ is urgently needed.”
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2019/08/06/what-the-post-9-11-war-on-terror-can-teach-us-about-responding-to-domestic-terrorism-today/
Note also his saying that he tried to prevent more Jihad violence against us after 9/11 by giving the worst Jihad states buckets of cash:
“…and focusing our foreign assistance on the most susceptible countries. And in particular, I called for bringing together the whole of the federal bureaucracy to focus on this effort.”
Fred van de Bunt says
In the article Hady Amr presents himself as a truth prophet of peace…
He only wants a war against “White supremacists”, basically meaning a war on infidels.
gravenimage says
Agreed, Fred.
OLD GUY says
Biden is so stupid or such a traitor that I can’t tell the difference. This administration will hurt the American people financially, loss of freedom and lives both in our military and general population. Biden and the elite wealthy don’t care about the working class Americans, they see us as just a cheap tool that they use and will throw away when they no longer have a use for us. Let’s face the facts those in power want to stay in power at all cost. If they can keep the working class fighting amongst them selves by setting economic and racial classes we won’t pay attention to what they are doing and they are able to maintain their control and political power. I feel for my children and grand children’s future.