Qatar’s Deep Ties to the Muslim Brotherhood Are Highly Relevant in Alleged Meddling in Legal Actions Against the State of Israel
Craig Considine, Sydney Rodman at JNS June 18, 2026
The International
Criminal Court in The Hague is seeking the arrest of more Israeli leaders for
alleged crimes against Palestinians. The court’s specious claims against Israel
never made sense. Now, however, those claims are beginning to unravel because of
the ICC’s own problems. New evidence suggests that the ICC has ulterior motives
that go far beyond mere anti-Israel bias—and that its chief prosecutor, Karim
Khan, is likely acting as a pawn of even more sinister actors.
It now seems that the ICC’s actions form part of a Muslim Brotherhood-led
lawfare campaign, with Qatar pulling the strings. A shocking exposé published
last month seemingly blew the lid off
the ICC’s true motives. According to the report, which cites individuals who
worked on behalf of Qatar, the Qatari government promised to “look after” Khan
if he issued the arrest warrants against Israeli leaders. Khan, for his part,
has not denied the allegation. The report also claims that Qatar hired
investigators to discredit Khan’s critics, including a U.S. senator and a woman
who accused Khan of sexual misconduct.
The ICC has pursued an intense anti-Israel campaign, possibly at Qatar’s
behest. In November 2024, it issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over the war in
Gaza—a result of the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7,
2023—even though Israel’s operations produced one of the
lowest civilian-to-combatant casualty ratios of any modern urban conflict.
These ICC measures were not just symbolic, as some claim. Instead,
they produced immediate real-world consequences.
Fearing arrest, Netanyahu canceled several
diplomatic trips to Europe.
Sometimes, it is more convenient to accept a dysfunctional status quo
than to challenge it. Yet new allegations against the ICC’s top judge should
catalyze scrutiny of the entire court.
That Qatar was working behind the scenes with Khan to prosecute Israeli
leaders is a major revelation, and it may explain the ICC’s rush to prosecute
Israeli officials, at a speed that is unusual for the court. As one legal
expert observed, the ICC, which
was only established on July 1, 2002, is “the most inactive and procrastinating
court in the world—it dealt with a dozen cases only, over a period of more than
20 years.”
If the allegations are true (and the evidence strongly suggests they
are), then the ICC is effectively being directed by an international criminal
country. This would help explain why Khan issued arrest warrants for Israeli
leaders while largely sparing top Hamas officials.
After all, Hamas’s top leaders lived openly in Qatar, a leading state
sponsor of terrorism that has funneled billions to Hamas and enabled the
group’s operations for years. Nonetheless, none of these puppet masters has
been prosecuted. Instead, if the allegations are true, they appear to have been
manipulating the very prosecutor overseeing the case.
Yet the implications are more significant than meets the eye. The truth
is that Qatar’s lawfare against Israel goes well beyond the ICC situation.
The case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, also in
The Hague, follows a similar pattern. When South African President Cyril
Ramaphosa, whose country is a close partner of Qatar, first revealed that his
country would bring a war-crimes case against Israel before the ICJ, he did so
while visiting Qatar. Around the same time, senior Qatari official Mutlaq
al-Qahtani met directly with Khan and a senior ICC judge, potentially working on dual
tracks to indict Israel at both the ICC and the ICJ.
Qatar’s deep ties to the Muslim Brotherhood are highly relevant. Robert
Gates, a former CIA director and U.S. secretary of defense, once described the
relationship bluntly: “Qatar has long had the welcome mat out for the Muslim
Brotherhood.” It is an expensive welcome mat, with Qatar shelling out billions
for Muslim Brotherhood actors over the years, including Hamas,
whose leaders it also hosts.
Anti-Israel lawfare against Israel is straight out of the Muslim
Brotherhood’s playbook. The group’s own internal documents expose how it
deliberately uses legal tactics to advance its doctrine of tamkeen—the
strategy of employing seemingly legitimate tools to empower Islamist goals in
the West. Chief on that agenda for the Muslim Brotherhood, of course, is
demonization of Israel.
Khan presents himself as a follower of the Ahmadiyya variant of Islam,
a movement known for peace, interfaith dialogue and education. Yet he is
actively targeting Israel, a democratic country that stands for peace and
stability in the Middle East.
In addition, Khan has made several bizarre statements that amount to
apologetics for the radical ideology that both Qatar and Hamas adhere to. In a
2018 interview, he asked: “Why do we have
certain language that we do not see elsewhere? … Why ‘Islamic terror’? Why not
‘Buddhist terror’?” While most Muslims do not share the jihadist ideology, Khan
feigned ignorance on this matter, suggesting either willful blindness or outright
dishonesty.
Whatever Khan’s true motivations may be, this much is clear: The agenda
that he, and the court he oversees, is pursuing is not entirely his own. The
ICC is a farce—and a dangerous one at that.