Qatar has limitless money, the world’s largest gas reserves, and a long-term strategy to use those resources to advance a Muslim Brotherhood-style Islamic caliphate across the globe. That is the stark assessment of Sylvan Adams, the newly appointed president of World Jewish Congress–Israel.
Speaking on the ILTV Podcast, Adams said the warning signs became clear almost immediately after Hamas’s October 7 massacre.
“On October 8, before the IDF was even mobilized to respond in Gaza, there were demonstrations against Israel, against the victims,” he said.
“Latent antisemitism was right there and ready to be mobilized,” Adams added. “I believe it was mobilized by organized forces. They saw our weakness on October 7, they saw our military failures, and they started thinking they could finish us off once and for all.”
According to the mega-philanthropist, who has emerged as a prominent voice in Jewish diplomatic circles, Qatar planted the seeds for October 8 more than two decades ago with the launch of Al Jazeera. Since then, he said, the Gulf state has steadily infiltrated Western college campuses, shaping and radicalizing young, liberal minds.
“When the tent camps popped up on U.S. campuses, they popped up all at the same time,” Adams noted. “Interestingly, they all had the same tent supplier. So somebody was organizing this. Somebody was paying for this. They kept it on a slow burn. And after October 7, they just opened up the floodgates.”
He added that Qatar’s network is deeply embedded across the West.
“They have operatives in every single Western city, and they just instructed them to put their nefarious plans into practice,” Adams said. “This is what we’ve seen over the last two and a half years.”
Adams stressed that Qatar has not been acting alone, but rather has been “aided and abetted by their axis of evil, which includes the Iranians.” He said China and Russia have also joined the effort, not out of antisemitism or anti-Israel ideology, but as a strategic move to destabilize Western societies.
“Israel is the first line of defense for Western civilization,” Adams said. “And the West needs to wake up.”
He also criticized Israel’s Western allies for what he described as pandering to radical Muslims in the hope of appeasement.
“You can never appease terrorists,” Adams said.
“The Qataris are very smart,” he added. “They buy people on the right and on the left.”
As an example, Adams pointed to conservative media figure Tucker Carlson, whom he accused of being funded by Qatar, calling him both a “paid Qatari operative” and an “apologist.”
Over the past year, Carlson has increasingly made anti-Israel comments, marking a sharp shift from his earlier positions at Fox News and fueling debate within American conservative circles.
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Adams spent most of his life in Canada, where he built his wealth in real estate and became known for his generosity to the Jewish community. Still, he said, his dream was always to move to Israel.
He met his wife, Margaret, in 1983 while volunteering on a kibbutz during a visit to the country. Years later, Adams recalled coming home from work and asking her whether it was finally time to make aliyah.
“I always thought we would end up there,” Margaret Adams responded. “Let’s do it.”
In 2015, the family made the move.
“We’re Zionists, and there is no better expression of Zionism than with your feet,” Adams told ILTV.
After immigrating, Adams stepped away from business and took on what he describes as a new mission: professional, strategic philanthropy.
“I recognized that we were very bad at telling our story,” he said. “We are misunderstood around the world. So one of the ideas I had was to show the Israel that I know and love.”
That effort included high-profile international events that put Israel on global television screens, such as bringing the Giro d’Italia Big Start to Israel in 2018 and hosting the French soccer league’s curtain raiser in 2021.
Now, in his role with World Jewish Congress–Israel, Adams says he wants to convene the world’s most influential Jewish and pro-Israel thinkers to counter what he sees as a coordinated global campaign against the Jewish state.
“We could get the platforms, Mark Zuckerberg, the Ellisons, Elon Musk, the Google folks in a room,” Adams said, “and brainstorm how to deal with this problem. I think we need to get organized.”
Adams told ILTV that Jews are “so strong when we’re united,” and he believes that unity is still possible.
“We are on the side of good,” he concluded. “And good always wins over evil.”
Watch the full interview: