Father of murdered hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin pans ‘irony’ of Netanyahu complaining of Qatari influence

Jon Polin, whose son Hersh Goldberg-Polin was taken hostage by Hamas terrorists during the October 7, 2023, attack in Israel, and later murdered in a Gaza tunnel, blasts Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for complaining of alleged Qatari influence in the election.

“Whether true or false, the irony of the man and the party who partnered with Qatar to fund the terror that murdered thousands of Israelis, including my son, now complaining that Qatar may have influenced Israeli elections…..,” he writes on X.

“For the integrity and unity of the State of Israel, across the religious and political spectrum, can we agree that Qatar’s involvement in Israeli affairs should be examined thoroughly and all implicated as having been influenced by this foreign actor (enemy state?) or involved in working with Qatar in a manner that led to the murder of Israelis should be prosecuted?” he adds.

The posts, which were in both Hebrew and English, refer to Netanyahu’s facilitation of the transfer of billions of dollars to the Hamas government in Gaza over the course of several decades — and to ties between the Gulf state and officials in the Prime Minister’s Office, a scandal referred to in Israeli media as Qatargate.

Several of the premier’s top aides have reportedly admitted to being on the Qatari government’s payroll even after the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion that triggered the subsequent multifront war.

Some of the same aides were implicated in the Bild leaked documents affair, in which an internal Hamas memo was given to the German newspaper in the immediate aftermath of the murder of Goldberg-Polin and five other hostages in the summer of 2024. The document was leaked as Netanyahu came under backlash for failing to secure the captives’ release, and was reportedly distorted so as to downplay the terror group’s willingness to strike a deal.