Israel-Hating Qatar Funded Films Made By Mamdani’s Anti-Israel Mother

The sister to the ruling emir of Qatar — a country which has funded the terrorist group Hamas and hosted its leaders at the time of the October 7, 2023 massacre — has been a prime funder and career-maker for socialist Zohran Mamdani’s filmmaker mother, Mira Nair, who hates Israel.

Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad Al-Thani has backed Mamdani’s mother since at least 2009, The New York Post reported.

In addition,  Sheikha Al-Thani has “taken to promoting Mamdani’s mayoral candidacy on social media, boosting news of favorable polling on Instagram and posting fire emojis under a TikTok video of him embracing Nair,” the Post noted.

As far back as July 2013, Nair refused to serve as guest of honor at the Haifa International Film Festival, referring to Israel’s “occupation” of the land and its “apartheid,” adding, “I stand w/ Palestine for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) & the larger BDS Mov’t.”

In September 2024, roughly one year after the Hamas massacre of over 1200 Israelis, Sheikha Al-Thani stated, “Qatar has a special commitment to the Palestinian cause. While some Arab countries have shifted their stance, Qatar remains steadfast in its support. We recognize our vital role and maintain a clear, dedicated policy toward this issue.”

The Post delineated some of the ways the sheikha has helped Nair: the Doha Film Institute, which she founded, funded a “bootcamp” between 2010 and 2014 to train students at Nair’s Maisha Film Labs in East Africa and in Doha; the same institute paid the entire $15 million budget of Nair’s 2012 film “The Reluctant Fundamentalist,” which revolves around a Pakistani immigrant who supposedly was mistreated by U.S. authorities after 9/11, and the Qatar National Museum, which Sheikha Al-Thani chairs, made the first film it commissioned Nair’s film “Nafa.”

“The country’s most high-profile support for the auteur came in 2022, when state-owned Qatar Airways and Qatar Creates — another of the sheikha’s pet projects boosting the country as a cultural destination — produced an extravagant Nair-directed stage adaptation of her Golden Globe-nominated film “Monsoon Wedding” as part of the World Cup festivities,” the Post pointed out.

Sheikha Al-Thani’s mother, Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, wrote on social media that the Jews would disappear from Israel as she praised Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas terrorist who masterminded the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre, “The name Yahya means the one who lives. They thought him dead, but he lives… He will live on. And they will be gone.”

Sheikha Moza also chairs the Qatar Foundation, which has poured billions of dollars into Western institutions. In 2009, the Qatar Foundation’s Faculty of Islamic Studies opened an academic center named after Sheikh Yusuf al‑Qaradawi, who stated, “O Allah, take your enemies, the Jews… do not spare a single one of them… kill them, down to the very last one.”

“In January 2008, he said on Al-Jazeera TV that Allah had imposed Hitler upon the Jews to punish them, and called for a second Holocaust, saying, ‘Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers’ – i.e. the Muslims,” MEMRI reported.