“I’ve known Mort Klein , the Zionist Organization of America’s longtime national president, for at least 25 years, dating to my days on the Bill Clinton White House communications team. Throughout the years, we have disagreed much more often than not, but always had a friendly relationship” said Steve Rabinowitz in his article to Haaretz.

I can say confidently and respectfully that Mort was always ideologically honest - and to an ideology I rarely held. He consistently held firm to his conservative positions on Israel and what he perceived as threats by the Palestinians , Hamas , Hezbollah and Middle Eastern countries that he believed support terrorism, sometimes standing alone on the far right.

Among those countries he has been particularly tough on over the years is Qatar. In 2014, the ZOA blasted the Brookings Institution for accepting funding from the Persian Gulf nation, with Mort calling Qatar "a leading supporter of radical Islamic organizations, not least Hamas."

He went on to say: "When a radical Islamic regime like Qatar gives millions of dollars to a Washington think tank, it doesn’t do so out of a laudable dedication to advance scholarly research and inform the American public about the dangers of radical Islam, it does so to help influence U.S. foreign policy in a direction favorable to the radical Islamic orientation of Qatar. This is surely obvious." (Yes, Mort, it is.)

Later that year, ZOA urged the State Department to designate Qatar as a state sponsor of terrorism, with Mort saying it sponsored, funded and promoted "Nazi-like organizations that want to kill every Jew."

Mort’s criticisms of Qatar continued. Last June, ZOA urged the Trump administration to cancel Qatar Airways’ license to fly into the United States because of Qatar’s support for terrorism. In September, ZOA issued a press release saying that Mort would decline an invitation to a "highly confidential" meeting in New York with Qatar’s emir and crown prince. Stating the reasons for his refusal, he cited "Qatar’s support for Hamas and Islamic terrorism and its TV station Al Jazeera for promoting hatred and violence against Jews and Israel."

Qatar, he continued, "may be trying to create the optical illusion of Jewish support to moderate their image by hiring a well-connected PR firm and by having "secret" meetings with Jewish leaders - which of course won’t be a secret, as the whole reason for the meetings may be for the Qataris to point to them as evidence that the "Jews" (and thus Israel) don’t view them as enemies."

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.