Upon discovery that a luxury hotel in Beverly Hills was owned by Qatari royals, Rabbi Pini Dunner began his fight against the Arab country, claiming that the hotel’s owners were associated with the Oct. 7, 2023, attack in Israel.
British lawyer Natasha Hausdorff has publicly opposed the International Criminal Court and its ongoing investigation relative to Israel.
Both Dunner and Hausdorff, who were in Washington, D.C., for conferences, met with local reporters from Jewish publications, including Washington Jewish Week, to discuss their efforts.
Dunner, of Beverly Hills California Synagogue, found that the popular Maybourne Beverly Hills hotel is owned by Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani and Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani — known respectively as HBJ and HBK.
“Qatar is the largest funder of Hamas,” Dunner told reporters. “They claim that the money they gave to Hamas was with the permission and encouragement of the Israeli government. To a certain degree, it’s true; the Israeli government did facilitate them to do that, but the reason they did it was so that they would keep the peace, not to pay for tunnels and weapons and bullets.”
According to CNN and The New York Times, the Qatari government has sent an estimated $30 million per month into the Gaza Strip, aiding the Hamas government there. Israeli news reports and analysts claim that Qatar has transferred more than one billion dollars to Hamas over the past decade.
A Qatari official said the money is intended to “help the Palestinian people, not Hamas,” according to NPR. For many years, Israel has accused Qatar of funding Hamas.
Dunner has led dozens of protests, gathering hundreds outside the Maybourne Beverly Hills calling for the return of the hostages and demanding that HBJ “go back to Qatar.” He sent a letter to the Beverly Hills City Council expressing concern that the “owners of Maybourne Hotel are associated with Oct. 7.”
Another concern is that HBJ allegedly brought members of Hamas to Doha, the Qatari capital, Dunner said: “They should’ve expelled Hamas from Doha. The fact they didn’t do that speaks volumes.”
A country that housed and financially supported Hamas should not be involved in brokering cease-fire deals between Israel and Hamas, Dunner said.
“They are bound up with the terrorism that was perpetrated by Hamas on Oct. 7,” Dunner said. “Since that time, their strategy has been to paint themselves as the only party that can negotiate a settlement between Hamas and Israel.”
Dunner came to D.C. to emphasize the importance of the fight against Qatar: “If we hurt Qatar, every hostage is coming out in 24 hours.”
Hausdorff, the legal director of the UK Lawyers for Israel charitable trust, is grappling with the ICC, which holds accountable the “worst possible war criminals.” The court is currently investigating the “ongoing allegations and emerging evidence of international crimes” committed in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank as of November 2023.
“My primary focus has been looking at the weaponization of international law, primarily against Israel,” Hausdorff said. “There are three main problems with what the ICC has done, specifically the arrest warrants that have been issued against [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu.”
Because Israel is not a member of the ICC, the court lacks jurisdiction over Israeli territory, she said.
“Palestine doesn’t exist as a state of international law, so it cannot join,” Hausdorff explained. “It’s inconsistent with the basic principles of statehood.”
The criteria for statehood includes defined territorial borders, a permanent population, a government and the ability to enter into agreements with other states, according to Britannica. As of November 2024, 146 countries of the United Nations recognize the State of Palestine as a sovereign state.
Palestine has been a nonmember observer state in the U.N. General Assembly since 2012 largely because the United States has used its veto power or threatened to do so to block Palestine’s full U.N. membership, according to the U.N.
The second issue Hausdorff takes with the ICC is its lack of complementarity; the court is intended to complement domestic jurisdictions, not replace them.
“The court should allow any state that is willing and able to investigate and prosecute credible crimes to do so,” Hausdorff said. “Not in Israel’s case, because the day that officials from the court were meant to sit down with officials from Israel and discuss the court’s concerns was the same day — the 20th of May, 2024 — that [ICC prosecutor] Karim Khan issued his application for arrest warrants.”
Hausdorff said she and fellow members of UK Lawyers for Israel parsed Khan’s summary and “demonstrated that every phrase of every sentence was false on the basis of publicly available information.”
Khan’s main issue with the arrest warrant against Netanyahu is its claim of “intentional starvation” of Gazans.
“We all know there’s no famine in Gaza,” Hausdorff said. “We all know the level of aid that went in through [Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories] statistics, which far exceeds the [UK’s National Health Service] guidelines on an individual basis.”
Hunger has affected Gaza’s population of more than 2 million throughout the war, with some aid experts warning of possible famine, according to ABC News. UN experts decried Israel for its restriction of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Statistics from the global Integrated Food Security Phase Classification initiative show that 133,000 people — six percent of Gaza’s population — are experiencing “catastrophic” food insecurity. In June 2024, the Famine Review Committee deemed “not plausible” the claim that northern Gaza had entered a state of famine: “It was based only on partial information,” Hausdorff said.
“How many people are even aware of the three points she’s just made?” Dunner asked. “These are two hugely important stories that are just not getting the kind of mainstream coverage that they need to get.”
