Former U.S. Congressman Barney Frank used to mock those pretending not to be influenced by cash funneled into their pockets. "I can't be bought," Frank put it, "but I sure as hell can be rented."

These days, it's Performative Primary Politics 101 for Democrats, catering to a left-tilting base that swallows every accusation against Israel hook, line and sinker to denounce the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and to pledge hand over heart that they will have nothing more to do with it.

No different than umpteen other groups of Americans lobbying government in support of whatever position matters to them, AIPAC lobbies on behalf of the relationship between America and Israel. It does so on behalf of hundreds of thousands of American citizens who contribute to it, receive its emails or participate in its programming. This is called American participatory democracy, practiced by American citizens in accordance with the manner considered so foundational to our Constitution that the framers enshrined the rights to petition government, to speak, to publish and to assemble in that document's First Amendment.

What galls some, of course, is that what they petition for is the holding of the line against those who celebrated the mass slaughter of Israelis on Oct. 7, or who defend it, or enabled it, or who whitewash it or pretend that it never occurred.

Meanwhile, over in Qatar, the titanically wealthy Emirate run by an autocrat who most assuredly is not an American citizen, they must spend their days laughing uproariously, regarding Americans as chumps. With barely 300,000 citizens, Qatar's repressive regime, which hosts the Hamas leaders who organized Oct. 7, plows billions of dollars into the United States to influence American policy and public opinion on the Mideast. It's all about the cash — and no one, least of all those who fall over themselves declaring AIPAC the Great Satan, says a word about it.

According to a U.S. Department of Education report issued earlier this month, Qatar was the largest single foreign source of funding to American higher education in 2025, with gifts and contracts totaling $1.1 million in value. But that's a fraction of what Qatar has spent to influence Middle East studies, faculty appointments, lecture series and partnerships with Qatar. The Institute for the Study of Global Anti-Semitism reports that Qatar has invested $20 billion in American colleges and universities over the past two decades, more than three times the $6 billion previously estimated. That includes $1 billion to Georgetown University alone, as well as handsome sums to schools like Harvard, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon and Texas A&M.

At least 14 American universities have lucrative memorandums of understanding with Qatar or Qatar-affiliated entities. A growing number have campuses in Qatar, where faculty, students and administrators are contractually prohibited from criticizing the Qatari government. An executive of the Qatar Foundation, the principal instrument of the Emir's generosity strategy, recently emailed deans at American universities stating: "Finally, let there be no doubt about this ... (the Foundation) always has and always will stand with Palestine."

Think that American institutions wanting in on the action get the message?

Could be.

Qatari money is pouring into lobbying firms, think tanks and even providers of K-12 education. Over the last ten years, Qatar has spent an estimated $225 million lobbying Congress, journalists and other policy makers and influencers. It has employed dozens of registered foreign agents. It has lavishly funded think tanks like the Brookings Institution, the Stimson Center, the Middle East Institute and the Rand Corporation.

Qatar and its instrumentalities have spent billions of dollars purchasing American weapons systems and billions more buying up American real estate, all reinforcing its already considerable influence. It has recently announced that it intends to invest $500 billion in the United States over the next 10 years.

And let us not forget Al Jazeera, the media conglomerate founded in Qatar, headquartered in Qatar and funded by Qatar, which promotes a view of the Mideast conflict about which there is, say, room to differ. Just not room to differ in Qatar.

Panderers will pander. Demagogues will demagogue. But if you're looking for "dark money" and "dark influence," AIPAC is hardly where to look. You may want to take a gander at Qatar.

Jeff Robbins' latest book, "Notes From the Brink: A Collection of Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad," is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Google Play. Robbins, a former assistant United States attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment and a longtime columnist, he writes on politics, national security, human rights and the Middle East.

Photo credit: Alexandre Debiève at Unsplash