Meet Redi Tlhabi: Qatar's Woman in Washington

A Qatari-funded Al Jazeera host with 700,000 followers spreads antisemitic conspiracies to Americans daily while living in Washington on a visa — and faces none of the scrutiny her platform deserves.

It’s been another rough week for the media with no shortage of egregious examples of bias when it comes to Israel. Rachel Campos-Duffy of Fox and Friends went on air and blamed Israel for rising antisemitism because “Jewish people” allegedly said so. Shortly after, Spain won the World Cup, and Zeteo’s Mehdi Hasan sat down with notorious anti-Israel fanatic Javier Bardem, and the two spent the entire segment recasting a World Cup final as a political statement on Gaza.

But there’s someone doing the same things almost every single day to a massive audience, with none of the scrutiny, because most Americans have never even heard her name: Redi Tlhabi.

Tlhabi is a South African journalist living in Washington, D.C., as a guest of the country, on the payroll of a Qatari state network. She hosts UpFront for Al Jazeera, and has close to 700,000 followers on X. But her platform alone isnt the problem. What she’s done with it is.

The FARA double standard

Al Jazeera network was created by the state of Qatar and has run on Qatari money ever since. It is not impartial and it’s been used for decades a a propaganda mouthpiece for Islamic propaganda, radicalising entire generations of young Muslims, particularly through Al Jazeera Arabic. Al Jazeera has been periodically banned even by other Arab Muslim states for the incitement to violence and support for terrorism it broadcasts, yet it operates freely across the Western world.

Back in 2020 the DOJ ordered Al Jazeera’s American digital arm, AJ+, to register as a foreign agent under FARA, since it found the outlet was operating at Qatar’s direction. AJ+ ignored the order and never registered. Meanwhile, Tlhabi cashes a paycheck from that same network. Ironically, she’s also the one publicly insisting AIPAC, an American lobbying group funded entirely by Americans, ought to register as a foreign agent. Transparency for thee, not for me.

What she actually posts

There’s a documented pattern in her own feed: she recites an antisemitic canard, names it as a canard, then affirms it as if asking it in the form of a question initially makes it acceptable.

In March she asked followers whether “the Israeli lobby uses money and power to control the US” and then she herself answered yes. In June she wrote that Israel “controls the whole world,” then added “I thought this was an antisemitic trope”, insinuating of course that it may indeed be a trope, but that it is true.

She routinely alleges grandiose antisemitic conspiracies related to Israel and repeats textbook talking points from known disinformation campaigns such as the myth that “Israel forced the U.S. into a war with Iran.”

She’s described a Jewish commentator’s writing as proof that “money is donated as a form of control.” When Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein declined to condemn Israel, she called him divisive and hateful and accused him of manufacturing Jewish fear.

Her preferred words for Israel are “terrorist state” (seven times in four months), “savages,” “murderers in the grip of some psychosis,” and “filth,” amongst other choice words.

Ironically, she’s never once reached for that vocabulary with Qatar, whose labor practices are a form of modern day slavery, or Iran, whose regime has killed over 40,000 of its own protesters.

The Albanese connection

In May, Tlhabi handed U.S.-sanctioned UN rapporteur Francesca Albanese a full hour to claim Israeli officials widely support a “right to rape” Palestinians and that the Knesset debated it. That never happened. Albanese’s evidence was around 300 testimonies, mostly secondhand, mostly unseen by anyone. Tlhabi didn’t ask for a single name or date. Compare that to how she treats Israeli guests: she’s grilled former minister Danny Ayalon over Israel’s strikes on Iran, and dismissed October 7th sexual-violence testimony for lacking forensic proof. Prior to Thlabi’s interview with Albanese, she had also publicly defended Albanese over the issue of U.S. sanctions.

A Pretoria connection

Within twelve months, Tlhabi has personally moderated all three top officials at South Africa’s foreign ministry, every one of them hostile to Israel and warm toward Tehran. She sat with former DIRCO minister Naledi Pandor alongside Albanese at the Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture last October. Pandor has explicitly supported “armed resistance” and after an October 7th held a call with Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh congratulating him on the Palestinian “resistance.” Thlabi also hosted Zane Dangor, the architect of South Africa’s ICJ genocide case against Israel, and this July she moderated Deputy Minister Alvin Botes at a New York forum where Zohran Mamdani gave the keynote. Thlabi is supposed to be journalist yet her activities function in accordance with the obsessive and backwards agenda of the South African government when it comes to Israel.

A conflict nobody disclosed

One of the most concerning aspects of Thlabi’s actions is her (undisclosed) connection to MTN, Africa’s biggest mobile carrier. MTN also happens to owns 49% of MTN Irancell, Iran’s second-largest network — a network that serves the IRGC and was used to cut Iranians off from the internet during protest crackdowns. Tlhabi used to work as an MTN brand ambassador. She later wrote a piece defending MTN-adjacent interests for a newsletter run by a publisher who does business with MTN himself. Neither conflict of interest was disclosed and of course she pushed the piece out to her 700,000 followers anyway.

A guest with harsh words for her host

Tlhabi lives in the U.S. on a visa while telling her audience, on camera, that ICE is “killing innocent people” and that America is complicit in genocide. That’s a striking claim coming from a citizen of a country that has averaged roughly 27,000 murders a year for two decades, thousands of them report rat the hands of its own police.

All of this begs the question, if Redi Thlabi despises America so much, why is she still in it? The State Department has already proven they have no problem revoking visas from dangerous provocateurs who use their status to work against American interests. Why would an Qatari paid propagandist be permitted to continue her work undisclosed while bashing the United States and fomenting hatred against it? The State Department would do well to reconsider her status.