Ilhan Omar’s Excellent Adventure In Qatar

Ilhan Omar (D-Mogadishu) has always been greatly exercised about pro-Israel groups contributing money to help elect people who share those groups’ sympathies. But that’s a universal practice: the Coal Miners’ Union, the American Teachers’ Federation, the computer industry, the American dairy farmers, and ten thousand other groups, all spend money in Washington to support those lawmakers who support them, and to defeat those who do not. Nothing necessarily wrong with that.

Ilhan Omar cannot grasp that many people support Israel out of deep conviction, and that it is not unreasonable for pro-Israel advocates to want to help elect or reelect such people. For her, support for Israel is only about getting money from the Israel lobby; she famously said, in discussing AIPAC (which, in fact, does not make political contributions), that support for Israel “is all about the benjamins.” It turns out that she has been on the receiving end of “benjamins” herself, from tiny, rich Qatar, that has done quite a bit of spending all over official Washington in order to bolster its influence and standing, and to take the pressure off the country for being a supporter of Hamas and a friend to Iran.

Robert Spencer wrote about this briefly here, and on Omar’s all-expenses paid trip to Qatar to see the World Cup finals, in great luxury. can be found here: “For Ilhan Omar, not all foreign influence spending is bad,” by Matthew Kassel, Jewish Insider, August 16, 2023:

During her time in Congress, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has frequently voiced concern over the influence of foreign interests on American politics — most controversially with regard to the pro-Israel community in the U.S.

But when she visited Qatar last November to watch the World Cup, it was unclear who had paid for the trip, which the progressive lawmaker neglected to clarify. Her office did not answer questions from The New York Times in December about the funding source after she had returned.

Omar, a quick learner, now stonewalls with the best of them, in refusing to answer questions about her “funding source” for her Qatar trip. Didn’t the New York Times think to probe further, to find exactly who had paid for that trip by consulting her financial disclosure report to the government, to see what was revealed and what left out? Why did the Times prove so incurious? Is it because it didn’t want to cause any trouble for its cosseted congresswoman, Ilhan Omar?

It turns out that the trip was funded by the Qatari government, according to an annual House financial disclosure filed in May [2023]. The new statement, which has not previously been reported, shows Qatar paid for the four-day visit to Doha that overlapped with the U.S. men’s team’s opening match against Wales. Both “food” and “lodging” were covered by the Gulf nation, the disclosure indicates.[along with VIP tickets for four days of World Cup matches, and the round-trip first class tickets Washington-Doha-Washington].

The Qatari Embassy in Washington, D.C., confirmed it had paid for Omar’s visit to the Gulf kingdom last year. The congresswoman “accepted an invitation from the Embassy of Qatar to attend events in Doha in November 2022,” a spokesperson told Jewish Insider last week, “as part of a program authorized under the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act,” or MECEA, which allows House members to take trips funded by foreign governments provided that the travel is later disclosed in their annual financial statements.

The embassy did not share an exact figure for the cost of the trip, which was not listed in Omar’s financial report….

It’s understandable that Qatar did not “share an exact figure” for the cost of her trip, or that Omar did not reveal that trip in her initial financial report for 2022. The sum must have been very large. She would, of course, been given VIP tickets to all the World Cup games, from the Opening Matches to the Finals, over four days. As a visiting congresswoman, he would have been put up in the best hotel in Qatar. Her roundtrip tickets would have been first-class. My rough estimate is that the roundtrip first-class tickets would have cost about $4,000. Her VIP tickets to the World Cup for four days, giving her the best seats in the stadium — right next to David Beckham, apparently — would have cost another $4,000. Finally, her luxury hotel room would have cost $1,500 for each of four nights, or $6,000. She would have been taken by her eager-to-please Qatari hosts to the best restaurants in Doha. It’s not far-fetched — surely Omar can fill us in — that her hosts might have provided a small token of their esteem for Congresswoman Omar, perhaps some gift reminding the recipient of Qatar’s history as a center for pearl diving — say, a modest strand of pearls provided by Qatar’s last pearl diver, Saad Ismail Jassim. The value of all that she received from the government of Qatar would have been, in my calculation, at least $15,000, a not inconsiderable sum, and one she carefully refrained from including when she finally noted the trip on her annual financial statement filed in May. And, of course, one wonders if her husband and political consultant, who has received close to a million dollars in business from his wife’s campaigns, Tim Mynett, may have accompanied Omar to Doha, with his trip similarly paid for by the Qatari government. Someone should ask the Congresswoman about this.

In a statement to JI [Jewish Insider], Jeremy Slevin, a spokesperson for Omar, defended the congresswoman’s decision to accept the junket to Doha. “Rep. Omar attended the World Cup on a delegation with several elected officials, including Democrats and Republicans,” Slevin said. “As a lifelong soccer fan, she was proud to support Team USA. She remains committed to upholding human rights and the rule of law around the world, including FIFA’s mistreatment of migrant workers, and she shared these concerns during her trip.”…

Slevin deliberately chooses to avoid responding to the obvious questions. Why did Omar neglect to list the trip on her original financial disclosure statement? When she finally did list the trip, why did she not provide an estimate of its value? And what does Omar think of Qatar’s free-spending ways to buy influence in Washington?

“You can call for accountability, you can ask for justice, but you can also just enjoy the beauty of the game,” Omar explained to Business Insider shortly after she returned from Qatar, emphasizing that “there are no perfect countries that have a perfect record.”

No, there are no “perfect countries” that “have a perfect record” on how they treat foreign workers, but Qatar is not just “not perfect,” but is among the worst offenders in the world in its treatment of such workers. Ilhan Omar is not about to mention that; she’s determined to protect her generous host from too much scrutiny.

At least two other House members — Reps. David Valadao (R-CA) and Lou Correa (D-CA) — accepted invitations to attend the World Cup in Doha but failed to disclose the travel on their financial statements, their offices confirmed to JI on Tuesday.

She isn’t the only one guilty of a failure to disclose their Qatari-paid trips to view the World Cup, but the tu-quoque argument does not exculpate Ilhan Omar.

The Qatari Embassy did not respond to requests for comment on its outreach to other House members, nor would it share a full list of lawmakers who accepted funding to attend the World Cup last year….

Of course Qatar doesn’t want the American public to find out just how much money Qatar is spreading around official Washington. It’s going to keep the list of Congressmen who accepted its largesse to itself for as long as possible. Qatar can’t stop those lawmakers from reporting their receipt of Qatari gifts — such as these all-expenses paid trips to see the World Cup — but it sees no reason to make the task of investigative journalists any easier.

Months before the World Cup, Omar, for her part, also traveled to Pakistan, where she made a controversial visit to a disputed part of Kashmir that drew criticism from India. The six-day trip, which took place in April 2022, was funded by Pakistan’s government, according to her financial disclosure.

Another trip funded by a foreign government that Ilhan Omar took was to Kashmir, a part of India where local Muslims have driven out 350,000 Hindus through terror, including ghoulish murders of helpless Hindu civilians, with eyes gouged out, genitals cut off, and pregnant women eviscerated. Her trip was supported by Pakistan, that has provided financial and weapons support to the Muslims in Kashmir. No doubt she came away with a new “understanding” of the situation that puts her squarely on the side of the Pakistanis and their claims to still more of Kashmir, and against America’s ally, India, now governed by Narendra Modi. It would be fascinating to know if Omar has been speechifying since her visit, offering support of Pakistan’s claim on Kashmir, or calling for more weapons to be sold to Pakistan, or expressing doubts about Modi’s government. And how many Pakistani-American political action groups and individuals will now be contributing to Omar’s reelection campaign? When it comes to Ilhan Omar, there’s always a lot to investigate.