The koshering of Qatar by supposedly pro-Israel Jews is getting attention. PM Netanyahu has rebuked Jewish leaders, including Klein, who have been seduced into a meeting with Qatar.

Read Yigal Carmon’s criticism here. Save the ZOA is also posting below an excerpt from a column in Ha’aretz by Steve Rabinovitz, a friend of Mort, asking: “What Really Turned ZOA’s Mort Klein From a Preacher Against Qatar to Its Propagandist?”

So, how is it that just two months later a former Qatari diplomat and current head of Qatar Investments would attend ZOA’s big fundraising dinner (“Anyone who pays $700 comes to the dinner,” Mort said) and two months after that, Mort would visit Doha on an all-expense-paid trip? 

Surely, Mort can’t be bought with free airfare and lodging, along with some pyjamas, “the softest I ever felt.”

Mort, of course, insists that he accepted the trip to gather information and to speak truth to power. “When an Arab leader asks the head of a Jewish organization to come make a case for what we would like to see happen, it’s really my mission, and it’s ZOA’s mission, to fight for the Jewish people,” he said, noting he distributed to those he met copies of a 50-page report demanding changes from Qatar.

That’s all well and good, but what Mort really did was set himself up as a poster child for the Qataris. And since his trip, all the Qataris and their paid agents in the West have done is hold Mort up as an example of someone who’s for them who used to be against them.

But they haven’t stopped funding Hamas. They haven’t stopped funding the Muslim Brotherhood or the Al Nusra Front. They haven’t deported all those Hamas terrorists living comfortably in exile in Qatar.

That other Jewish leaders were similarly seduced into giving Qatar legitimacy does not spare Klein from similarly criticism. Perhaps next he will go meet with Ayatollah Khameini on a trip paid for by Iran and help improve that country’s image. Save the ZOA strongly suspects that both Mort received special compensation in addition to the free trip, but it will be impossible to prove. In any event, it is sickening.