A letter leaked by a United Arab Emirates-backed hacking effort purports to show the Qatari government handing out about three million dollars to a notoriously anti-Israel non-governmental organization, Human Rights Watch. 

The letter is dated to January 2018. In it, the director of Qatar’s office of the prime minister, Abdullah Bin Khalaf Hattab al Ka’bi, addresses the finance minister, Ali Sharif al-Emadi, stating: “We are informing your Excellency that His Excellency the Prime Minister has agreed to provide monetary support of 3 million euros to the organization Human Rights Watch, under the Humanitarian Aid section.” Mr. al Ka’bi goes on to write that the money “should be distributed with the knowledge of the Embassy of Qatar in London so that it can be aware of it and take the necessary [steps] with regard to it.”

The letter was released by a think tank, the Middle East Media Research Institute. It states that the document was uncovered during a UAE-backed surveillance initiative called Project Raven that hacked the correspondence of governments, militants, and human rights activists.

Project Raven was a spy mission undertaken by the UAE to surveil potential threats to the oil-rich emirate across the Middle East. According to a Reuters investigation of Project Raven, the sheikdom used a contractor in Maryland to recruit former United States National Security Agency intelligence analysts for the project. 

According to the Reuters report, the UAE’s National Electronic Security Authority funded and directed the gathering of intelligence through hacking operations. The targets included a wide swath of groups from militants to human rights activists situated in Yemen, Iran, Qatar, and Turkey. 

In response to the disclosure that Qatar is funding Human Rights Watch, supporters of Israel urged further investigation into HRW’s links to Qatar, which is known for its ties to Hamas, ISIS, Al Qaeda, and Iran. The executive director of the organization United Nations Watch, Hillel Neuer, told an Israeli news outlet, I24 News: “These reports are very disturbing. They need to be fully investigated. There are strong reasons to fear that this may be true. We would need accountability. The money would have to be returned.”

Mr. Neuer’s organization serves as a watchdog that keeps tabs on the United Nations and many other non-governmental organizations that are hostile to Israel. In recent years, he has been outspoken against the anti-Israel stance taken by many human rights groups, including HRW. He is now pointing out the irony that a state with Qatar’s shabby human rights records would be funding a “human rights” organization.

“Qatar is a human rights abusing regime. They enslave migrant workers … causing thousands of them to die. They support the Taliban. They support Hamas. They support terrorism. They have an egregious human rights record,” Mr. Neuer added. 

During Qatar’s preparations to host the World Cup, dozens of migrant laborers died while building a stadium for the event. 

“If it’s true” that Human Rights Watch is taking money from Qatar, Mr. Neuer continued, “this would be shameful but not inconsistent with their [HRW] actions in the past. We have seen, because of their anti-Western ideology and anti-Israel ideology, that they will often cozy up to Islamist regimes, whether it’s Hamas or Hezbollah. There is a corrupt and twisted culture at Human Rights Watch and that needs to be fixed.” 

Despite stating that it does not accept money from governments, this would not be the first time the Human Rights Watch is accused of accepting money from sources tied to Middle Eastern countries. In 2020, the organization apologized after it was shown to have accepted a six-figure donation from a Saudi billionaire, Mohamed bin Issa al-Jaber, whose company had previously been investigated by the human rights group for labor abuse of its employees. 

The donation was personally coordinated by the organization’s director, Kenneth Roth, who was later pictured next to the billionaire at a 2013 ceremony to celebrate the donation. The conditions of the donation, documents uncovered by the Intercept purported to show, were that the gift could not be used for gay rights work in the Middle East. 

Neither Qatar’s embassy at Washington, D.C., nor Human Rights Watch have responded to the Sun’s requests for comment.

Despite the reports of Human Rights Watch accepting money from Middle Eastern sources, the group has been critiqued for its myopic focus on Israel. The late founder and former chairman of Human Rights Watch, Richard Bernstein, critiqued the organization he formerly led for its scrutiny of Israel, which, he pointed out, is the only truly Democratic state in the Middle East. 

Bernstein, who died in 2019, wrote in a New York Times opinion article that “Human Rights Watch has lost critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations that go after Israeli citizens and use their own people as human shields. These groups are supported by the government of Iran, which has openly declared its intention not just to destroy Israel but to murder Jews everywhere. This incitement to genocide is a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.”