Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, the mother of Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, praised slain Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in a post on X shortly after Sinwar was killed by Israeli forces operating in Gaza. 

“The name Yahya means the one who lives,” she wrote. “They thought him dead but he lives. Like his namesake, Yahya bin Zakariya, he will live on and they will be gone.”

Moza, who has frequently used her public platform to spread anti-Israel content, especially in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks last year, was in December described by Ariel Admoni, a Qatar expert at Bar-Ilan University, as the “public face of Qatar.”

The mother of the Qatari emir was born in Qatar but grew up in Kuwait, returning to Doha upon her marriage to Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, who abdicated the throne in 2013 and handed power to their son.

The Gulf nation has long hosted senior Hamas officials. Former Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh had been living in Doha — where on Oct. 7, 2023, he was filmed watching coverage of the terror attacks unfolding in Israel — until his death in July in an explosion in Tehran.

Following Haniyeh’s death, Sinwar assumed full control of Hamas, largely operating from the terror group’s underground tunnel system and through a system of messengers to evade Israeli surveillance. He was killed in a firefight with Israeli troops while in a residence in Rafah.