Qatar’s Role in Gaza Crisis Complicates Hollywood, Media Investments

With a guest list made up of high-level venture capitalists and tech executives from the likes of Coatue Management and 500 Startups, the upcoming Web Summit Qatar was positioned as a kind of coming-out party for the nation as a business and entertainment force to be reckoned with. Now, weeks after the terrorist attack by Hamas against Israel, those plans are in jeopardy. Coatue and others abruptly canceled their plans earlier this month even though for now the Web Summit is still set for February of next year.

For years Qatar, a monarchy that borders Saudi Arabia, has sought to use its vast oil wealth to establish itself as a hub for media, culture and entertainment despite its minuscule size (population 2.7 million). Home to the influential Al-Jazeera network, Qatar is a major investor in Peter Chernin’s The North Road studio, Elon Musk’s Twitter, the majority owner of Miramax and also hosted the 2022 World Cup.

But the emirate’s new visibility as a haven for Hamas leaders might impact that strategic goal, even as Qatar has aided in mediating the hostage crisis.

Both Khaled Mashal, the former head of Hamas, and Ismail Haniyeh, the current chief, operate from Doha rather than Gaza. Both men are under U.S. sanctions, but the U.S. has thus far chosen not to raise the issue as Qatari leaders have been mediating for hostages.

TheWrap spoke to insiders and analysts about how, or if, the Israel-Gaza conflict would affect Qatar’s attempts to establish itself in the entertainment space. Most argued that “markets have no morals,” as Nobel laureates George Akerlof and Robert Shiller once said. Qatar’s oil wealth may speak louder than any indignation against hosting Hamas.

“The world may express outrage for human rights violations,” Elixirr Consulting partner Iliya Rybchin told TheWrap. “However, that outrage dissipates once they see their favorite athlete kicking a ball or in the case of Hollywood… their favorite actor beating up some villains.”

In other words, those with skin in the game say that any damage will be minimal and temporary.

A new potential Hollywood player

In the last 15 years, Qatar has begun seriously investing in the movie industry. The first feature-length film shot there, “Clockwise,” was produced in 2010 and from 2009 to 2012 the Doha Tribeca Film Festival partnered with the respected filmgoing event in New York City. In terms of Hollywood-specific wheeling and dealing, while the Qatar Investment Authority was part of the group that bought Miramax from the Walt Disney Company in 2016, they’ve only recently begun making more ambitious moves.

In the summer of 2021, the royal family hired former Universal Vice Chair Ron Meyer to advise the Doha Film Institute about entertainment-related investments. They ended 2022 by using their $475 billion sovereign wealth fund to help Elon Musk buy Twitter (now X) and in early 2023 invested $150 million into Peter Chernin’s The North Road Company. Industry veteran David Nevins was recently named to run Chernin’s studio.

Like its larger Saudi rival, Qatar is looking to entertainment and sports to help diversify its economy. With the world going greener and thus comparatively less dependent on an oil-driven economy, “Saudi Arabia is getting away from being known for just its oil,” said Ryan Harmon, president and chief commercial officer of Zeitgeist Design, who is an advisor for Riyadh Hub in Saudi Arabia and works extensively in the Middle East. So too is frankly almost every major player in the Gulf region.

Neither Meyer nor The North Road responded to requests for comment.

Saudi Arabia is in the lead

Saudi Arabia has been aggressively courting businesses associated with modern culture since at least 2018. Those industries include cinema, video games, media industry trades, professional golf, WWE, football and Formula 1 racing — which are all appealing to the kingdom’s younger, entertainment-craving population. That includes Saudi Arabia’s $64 billion investment, announced in 2018 and again in 2021, which was intended to build their previously non-existent in-country entertainment ecosystem from the ground up.

Ross Gerber, CEO of wealth and investment management company Gerber Kawasaki, echoed the notion that Saudi Arabia is throwing oil riches at non-oil-related investments. It’s partially about contrasting themselves from Iran, he said, and partially about projecting a different image of their nation worldwide while improving the standard of living for its citizens.

“Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund doesn’t care about losing money, as long as it’s buying influence in finance, transportation and entertainment positioning itself to better control the global narrative about its own dealings,” Gerber said. The fund recently bought the PGA golf tour, a prime example of what’s been called “sportswashing” in terms of investing oil money in more glamorous athletic pursuits.

While Qatar would like to catch up, the country seems to be trying a different approach.

Playing peacemaker

Since Hamas’s vicious attack on Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, Qatar has positioned itself as an intermediary in the ongoing conflict. Even while housing high-ranking Hamas leaders and funding the terrorist group, Qatari leaders have reportedly pressured Hamas to release hostages — especially women and children currently held in Gaza — even without Israeli concessions. The Israeli government called Qatar essential in procuring the release of the first four hostages freed during the crisis.

“I’m pleased to say that Qatar is becoming an essential party and stakeholder in the facilitation of humanitarian solutions,” Israel National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi posted on X. “Qatar’s diplomatic efforts are crucial at this time. However, Qatar’s current posture as a diplomatic peace broker will not erase its past history of funding and hosting Hamas leaders.

Statements like the one Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh made on Oct. 26 — when he declared that “we need the blood of women, children and the elderly of Gaza so as to awaken our revolutionary spirit” — are not likely to strengthen Qatar’s diplomatic position. (Haniyeh is believed to have made the statement, which was broadcast on Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen television, from Doha.)

The nation wants to play peacemaker, both to protect its financial progress and because they gain nothing if the situation devolves into global warfare. However, they will have to walk a delicate line to avoid appearing too partial or inflaming either side of the conflict.

“Qatar is a small state and physically more vulnerable than some of its peers, with little in the way of a military or defense,” said one industry insider with extensive experience working in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, Reuters reported on Friday that Qatar has told the U.S. it was open to reconsidering the presence of Hamas in its country once the current crisis is resolved, a senior U.S. official said on Friday.

Let bygones be bygones?

Whether Qatar’s front-and-center efforts make a difference in resolving the current crisis or enhance the nation’s reputation on the world stage, experts and those working within the industry and in the Middle East argue that the core variable in terms of their financial aspirations – including Hollywood – is simply time.

If the fighting continues unabated or expands globally, then Qatar’s entertainment and lifestyle aspirations will be the least of their concerns. However, if this becomes another periodic inflammation in an ongoing blood feud, with a brokered end to fighting leading to a return to the status quo, then Qatar need only wait out the current challenges.

In a statement echoed by others who spoke for this article, Olivier Chastan, who founded brand & rights management company Iconoclast, noted that the Gaza conflict is viewed by a large swath of the US and international public and medial outlets as less of a black-and-white morality play compared to — fo example — the 2018 murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. While that killing, at the hands of agents of the Saudi government, was seen as more of a clear-cut, unquestionable crime, the horrendous attack on Israelis on October 7th got wrapped in a broader, complex centuries-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And yet, despite initial concerns about working with or investing in companies entangled with the Saudi royal family, even that atrocity seems mostly forgotten.

In 2018, Gerard Butler canceled a promotional trip to Saudi Arabia out of sensitivity to the then-fresh outcry. Five years later, Butler shot and promoted “Kandahar,” an action drama shot almost entirely in Saudi Arabia.

“While the Gaza crisis might initially turn some studios and celebrities away,” said Rybchin, echoing most experts who spoke for this article, “both countries will likely not struggle to find celebrities happy to participate in local projects.” If money is to be made, he continued, “these economic interests tend to take precedence over political and ethical concerns.”

Qatar’s Hollywood ambitions may be on pause, but there is little historical precedent to indicate that the damage is permanent.

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