An educational nonprofit that provides curriculums and lesson plans to teachers throughout the United States has erased from its website all references to a Qatari charity that had previously funded its biased agenda regarding the Middle East . The organization, Primary Source, headquartered in Watertown, Massachusetts, will not reveal why it has erased all references to Qatar Foundation International (QFI), whose name used to appear in numerous places on its website. The scrubbing, however, took place sometime after Focus on Western Islamism (FWI) documented the ties between Primary Source and QFI, one of the kingdom’s influence operations in the West.
Primary source should stop peddling anti-Israel propaganda as educational material. - Karen Hurvitz
Apparently, the organization, which boasts of “partnering” with more than 50 Massachusetts school districts comprising more than 55 percent of the state’s student population, and which has provided materials to teachers in more than 30 other states, no longer wants to be associated with the increasingly controversial kingdom.
Qatari fingerprints were all over a dozen or so podcasts produced by Primary Source in 2017, which aimed to inform teachers and students about events in the Middle East. Predictably, the podcasts featured commentators who routinely placed blame for the problems facing Muslims in the modern world on Westerners—aligning perfectly with what Qatari officials expect from their grantees.
The organization had previously ignored criticism from Steve Stotsky, a senior analyst at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting (CAMERA), who criticized Primary Source in a letter he sent to the organization in 2021. Stotsky chided the organization for producing biased materials about the conflict that left “students with the mistaken impression that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the most pressing matter in the region.” He also condemned the organization for failing to address human rights concerns elsewhere in the region.
Primary Source also ignored complaints from Karen Hurvitz, a Massachusetts lawyer who brought the ties between the two charities to light in 2021 while serving on the Governing Council of the Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC), which provided grants to the organization. Hurvitz told the MCC that Primary Source’s “ahistorical, and horribly biased perspective […] paid for by Qatar” stoked hostility toward Israel and American Jews.
While anti-Israel and anti-American bias is still evident on other pages devoted to the Middle East on the organization’s site, the podcasts—and all references to QFI—have simply disappeared since the publication of an FWI article about the material in February 2024.
Evidence of the connection between the two organizations remains present on the internet, however. Recent queries on Google’s advanced search function for the words “Qatar” and “Qatar Foundation International” on Primary Source’s website reveal the following text: “Special thanks to Qatar Foundation International, which provided the seed funding and support to develop and launch this podcast and to produce this episode.” Clicking on the links provided by Google, however, results in the display of “That page cannot be found” messages.
The erasure of Primary Source’s ties to Qatari funding has taken place not because the organization’s leaders have had a change of heart, warns Hurvitz. Instead, it is a response to increased suspicion toward Qatar, which has been a vital supporter of Hamas terrorism, on the part of the American people in the aftermath of the October 7 massacre. “The public is becoming aware of Qatar’s stance in world politics and that it is aligned with Hamas,” she said. “They’re hiding Qatar’s sponsorship of their materials.” (Primary Source’s executive director, Jennifer Boyle Nigro, did not respond to email and phone queries from FWI.)
Recent queries of the site on Google Advanced search reveal no references to the October 7 massacre. Nor is there any reference to the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests that have taken place since the murder of Mahsa Amini in Iran in 2022. Hurvitz concurs that Primary Source is still promoting a biased view of the Israel-Palestine conflict and of the region in general.
“Primary source should stop peddling anti-Israel propaganda as educational material,” she said.
Nevertheless, Stotsky is pleased that Primary Source has eliminated any reference to QFI on its site.
“Parents should be thankful for the Middle East Forum’s unrelenting efforts to finally convince Primary Source to remove biased Qatari-funded material from its Middle Eastern units,” Stotsky told FWI. “This successful outcome serves as an example for others who are contesting the injection of anti-Israel material in schools from supplemental curriculum providers.”
