Qatar has been subjected to false allegations and a disinformation campaign that has been mainly driven by Western and Israeli officials, especially since its crucial mediation role between Israel and Hamas.

Qatar has called out false allegations over its funding of American campuses that were raised during an Oversight Subcommittee Hearing on Fueling Chaos by the Ways and Means Committee in the United States.

The hearing on Tuesday was over “Tracing the Flow of Tax-Exempt Dollars to Antisemitism”, where Charles Asher Small, Executive Director Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (SGAP) gave his testimony.

Small, a vocal critic of Qatar, alleged that American universities receiving money from the Gulf state have had “a 300 percent increase in antisemitism in their campuses and their classrooms.”

Responding to Small at the hearing, representative Randy Feenstra said, “That’s a clue.”

In a statement on Wednesday, Qatar’s embassy in Washington called out the allegations made against it, noting “the serious work” of the Ways and Means Committee “was trivialised” by Small’s testimony.

The statement noted that Small, who it said “holds an ulterior agenda” against the country, gave a “misleading testimony”.

“This misleading testimony is contrary to recent statements by the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, who testified before the Senate on May 2 and stated Qatar played no role in the recent campus protests,” the Qatari embassy said on X.

The Gulf state stressed that its partnerships with American universities solely focus on providing “world-class education in Doha”.

“We cherish these partnerships. That is why American universities have been teaching our students at campuses in Qatar for over 20 years. That is what our money funds,” the statement added.

The false allegations were made despite Qatar’s role, alongside Egypt, that resulted in a truce deal that lasted between November 24 and December 1. The truce led to the release of at least 109 captives from Hamas in Gaza, before Israel intensified its war.

Qatar is still playing a critical role in hopes of reaching a captives release deal and a ceasefire in Gaza.

In April, media reports alleged that Qatar supported the major U.S. college campus protests, which erupted in response to Israel’s ongoing assault, also known as genocidal war, in the Gaza Strip, where occupation forces killed more than 39,000 people—mainly women and children.

At the time, Sheikh Meshal bin Hamad Al-Thani, Doha’s ambassador to Washington, vehemently rejected the reports.

“The Qatar Foundation pays the costs for six U.S. universities to maintain faculty and operate campuses in Qatar, educating and awarding degrees to women and men from Qatar and others who wish to study there. These are not donations,” he said in a statement on X on April 28.

The U.S. universities in Education City currently include Northwestern University, Texas A&M, Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts, Georgetown University, Weill Cornell Medicine, and Carnegie Mellon University.

Texas A&M University’s Board of Regents in February decided to close its campus in Doha by the year 2028, citing “heightened instability in the Middle East” following an assessment of the regional situation in late 2023.

However, an earlier report by the Texas Tribune said that the decision came after Washington-based think tank ISGAP questioned the partnership between QF and Texas A&M in light of the ongoing war in Gaza.

The board of ISGAP has numerous staunch Israel supporters and those who repeatedly published baseless accusations over Qatar. This includes Small, who wrote multiple opinion pieces criticisng Qatar.

In one article, penned for The Times of Israel on January 29, Small alleged Qatar is “the current prime backer of antisemitic education across the world”.

ISGAP’s board also involves Gregg M. Mashberg, one of ISGAP’s advisors, who called for boycotting Qatar. 

“Perhaps the campus social justice warriors (students and faculty) taking aim at Israel might want to inquire how much $ their institutions are taking in from Qatar.  If they need a country to boycott, look no further,” Mashberg said in a post on X on June 10, 2023.

Earlier this month, AFP and disinformation experts uncovered a major campaign targeting Qatar with the goal of vilifying it for its central mediating role between Israel and Hamas.

The campaign was specifically identified in the U.S., the United Kingdom and across the European Union.

Sohan Dsouza, a London-based researcher formerly with the MIT Media Lab, told AFP that a likely goal is to make any “institutional relationship with Qatar radioactive” and could be taking advantage of the ongoing war in Gaza to “advance a latent anti-Qatar agenda.”