Qatar UN envoy blamed Israel for 9/11, said LGBT don’t deserve rights, watchdog says
UN Watch says Hend Al-Muftah, nominated to chair world body’s human rights forum, has repeatedly espoused antisemitic views, anti-Western conspiracies in past decade
Qatar’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, who has been nominated to chair the world body’s human rights forum, has a history of antisemitism, holds bigoted beliefs against the LGBTQ+ community and has espoused anti-Western conspiracies, a watchdog group said.
The nonprofit group UN Watch documented dozens of instances of Qatar Ambassador Hend Al-Muftah expressing anti-Jewish and homophobic views online, and sent a letter Monday to UNHRC President Frederico Villegas to petition against her nomination to become chair of the UN Forum on Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law.
Al-Muftah posted dozens of discriminatory and conspiratorial tweets between 2011 and 2021, including blaming Israel for 9/11, calling Jews “enemies” and saying gay people did not deserve rights, UN Watch said.
“The Jews focused their investments in industry and the media, and that is why they dominated, tyrannized and ruled the world,” she tweeted in February 2012.
She later alleged Jews are responsible for “anti-Islam everywhere,” said Israel knew of an al-Qaeda terrorist attack in Sinai and that “Israeli hangs over every terrorist attack,” even suggesting Israel itself founded al-Qaeda.
According to UN Watch, Al-Muftah also encouraged “all young people” to read Mustafa Mahmoud’s Great Conspiracy that same year, which alleges Jews are “termites” of Western civilization and have planned “for a thousand years to destroy this world and dominate it.”
“Don’t be fooled!” she added.
Her views “stand in complete contravention to the principles and values of the UN forum which she seeks to lead, and of the founding charter of the Human Rights Council,” UN Watch said in the letter.
“Ambassador Hend Al-Muftah is a rabid antisemite who for well over a decade has been tweeting vile hate against Jews and gays, while spreading conspiracy theories and disinformation about Western countries,” Human Rights Watch executive director Hillel Neuer said. “She is the last person in the world who should head a UN forum on human rights, democracy and the rule of law.”
#فلسطين_لنا
فلا أذكر من طفولتي إلا نشيدنا الصباحي اليومي
فلسطين بلادنا
واليهود أعداءنا
وتحية العلم
عاشت #فلسطين حرة عربية
فستظل فلسطين لنا— د. هند المفتاح (@halmuftah) May 14, 2013
Al-Muftah’s views did not seem to have changed throughout the years.
She tweeted that “Jews are our enemies” in 2013, and from 2016-2017 posted multiple times pledging to “expel” Jews after liberating Palestine, and “trample the last corpse of a cursed Zionist in Gaza.”
She also reposted a video that claimed that the Mossad was behind the 9/11 attacks, according to UN Watch, and in 2021 tweeted a prayer asking God to “blind” Zionists and “paralyze their hands.”
Her tweets against LGBTQ+ individuals and their rights often included anti-Western sentiment.
“The West celebrates the lack of reason and religion,” she said of former American vice president Dick Cheney’s lesbian daughter’s wedding in 2012, condemning “the decay of his morals.”
“@Al_Jazirah: ديك تشيني مسرور بزفاف ابنته (المثلية)! http://t.co/KlPe8hX2”
عندمايحتفل الغرب بنقص العقل والدين
وانحلال اخلاقه،فلا حرج عليهم!— د. هند المفتاح (@halmuftah) June 23, 2012
“Fuck this cultural globalization that gave them rights they don’t deserve,” she said of gays and lesbians in 2012, UN Watch said.
“The ideas of secularism, liberalism, atheism and homosexuality have spread and are practiced under the pretext of respecting ‘human rights’ and ‘other opinion’!” she tweeted in 2019.
Al-Muftah had also claimed that “Western countries are malign, degenerate and racist.”
In 2016, she tweeted: “Terrorism is a term that the West has been unable to frame except within the limits of achieving their own agenda!”
She also frequently expressed anti-French sentiment, calling the country an “arrogant dictatorship…in the guise of democracy” in 2012, and accused the French “government and people” of racism against Muslims.
That same year, she said that the “end of America and others does not need any prophecy” as they were expressed in the Quran.
@NBMBF نهاية أمريكا وغيرها لا تحتاج لأي نبؤة… فقد أخبرنا بها رسولنا وقرأننا منذ ١٤٠٠ سنة وهي واقعة لا محالة..انما نجهل حكمة تأخير حدوثها
— د. هند المفتاح (@halmuftah) October 30, 2012
UN Watch also said that Al-Muftah accused France of “killing the freedom of innocent Muslims in Mali.”
In 2021, she blamed “the hegemony of Western culture” for the “deformation, deterioration and decay” of “morals and values,” which she said are presented under various pretexts, including “human rights.”
UN Watch also noted that her social media posts are a “sad comment” on the institutions in which she studied and taught, which include London University, SOAS, Exeter University in the UK, Qatar University and the Doha Institute for Graduate studies.
Al-Muftah was the first woman to be appointed to Qatar’s Shura Council, designated as Qatar’s most influential social media figure in 2016 and honored by the British Council in 2019.
