Why is the head of the OU Kashrut Department in Qatar?
NEW YORK – Despite growing tension between the United States, Israel and Qatar, a small group of Jewish leaders is currently visiting the Gulf state in what appears to be an attempt to open a dialogue aimed at advancing a possible prisoner swap between Israel and Hamas, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
The senior rabbinic figure on the delegation is Menachem Genack, an Orthodox rabbi and the head of the Orthodox Union’s Kashrut Division. The trip was organized by Nick Muzin, a prominent Jewish Republican operative who is on retainer by the Persian Gulf nation to establish ties with the American Jewish community. The group is scheduled to meet with the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.
Allen Fagin, the OU’s executive vice president, said Genack’s visit was private and was not connected to his work with the Jewish organization.
“Rabbi Genack is traveling in his personal capacity as a private individual and this trip is not under the auspices of the OU,” Fagin told the Post.
Genack made news during last year’s presidential election when he came out against Donald Trump and openly supported Hillary Clinton.
The Post has also learned that the delegation’s trip to Qatar this week comes on the heels of a visit by Prince Mohammed,
the Emir’s brother, to New York last month during which he also tried to meet with influential Jews.
Muzin is reportedly being paid $50,000 a month for the outreach work that appears to be aimed at deflecting calls to isolate the country due to its ties with Iran and support of radical Islamic groups.
While Qatar is officially a US ally and home to an American air base, it is locked in a tug of war with Sunni states. Al Jazeera, which is owned and financed by Qatar, was recently banned from broadcasting in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
An observant Jew, Muzin is seen as an up-and-coming star in the Republican Party and has worked in the past as a senior adviser to Senators Ted Cruz and Tim Scott.
On Friday, before leaving the US, the Post asked Genack about the trip. “I don’t want to comment on anything related to Qatar,” he said by phone.
In a separate phone conversation, Muzin asked the Post to submit its questions about the trip in an email but he did not reply to the two emails sent to him.
Although there are no official diplomatic relations between Israel and Qatar, as is the case with most Arab countries, the two have held unofficial contacts. However, even those ties have been on the rocks in recent years over the country’s open support for Hamas. In 2007, for example, then-Palestinian Authority prime minister Salam Fayyad told the US Treasury’s under secretary for terrorism that Qatar provides “more support to fundamentalists than Kuwait or Saudi Arabia.” Until recently, Qatar also was home to Hamas’s top leadership, including its leader, Khaled Mashaal.
In recent months, there have been reports that Qatar is trying to mediate a deal between Israel and Hamas that would lead to the return of the bodies of IDF soldiers Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin – captured by Hamas during the Gaza War of 2014 - as well as Israeli civilians Avraham Abera Mengistu and Juma Ibrahim Abu Anima who strayed into Gaza in 2014 and 2016, respectively.
The head of a prominent Jewish organization in the US familiar with Genack’s visit to Qatar said Muzin had invited leaders of Jewish organizations to a meeting with the Emir of Qatar when he was in New York for the United Nations General Assembly in September, but that the leaders had declined.
“There were serious concerns at the time about holding the meeting due to the ties of Qatar and Hamas,” the leader said.
Another executive of a Jewish organization, who knew of the trip, defended Genack’s visit and said that, in contrast to the meeting in September which would have been an “official meeting,” this was a private visit with “no official recognition.” •