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Jared Kushner says American Jews are safer in SAUDI ARABIA than on US college campuses

October 30, 2023 | | Print Article

Former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner called out the irony of American Jews being safer in Saudi Arabia than on college campuses across the nation.

Kushner, who is Jewish and married to Ivanka Trump, made his observation Sunday on Fox News in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel earlier this month and as clashes between pro-Israel and pro-Palestine groups have erupted in cities and campuses.

Just back from a trip to Saudi Arabia where he spoke at a conference last week, Kushner remarked that they “allowed me to speak freely,” during an interview on “Sunday Morning Futures.”

“It was a very interesting time to be over there,” he said.

“One of the ironies is that as an American Jew, you’re safer in Saudi Arabia right now than you are on a college campus like Columbia University,” he told host Maria Bartiromo.

With raw tensions escalating across colleges, Columbia University in New York was also the scene of demonstrations and a professor praising Hams for its attack on Israel. The latest incidents caused billionaire donor, Leon Cooperman to threaten withholding donations to his alma mater.

Kushner claimed the Saudis felt a sense of “disgust” over the Hamas attack that left over 1,400 dead in Israel.

“What I sensed there was there’s obviously a big disgust with what happened” with the terrorist attack by Hamas, he told Bartiromo, claiming the Saudi Arabians “have a lot of care for Palestinian civilians.”

‘They’d like to see Israel accomplish the mission to make sure that the Hamas could be eliminated. They’re against terrorism in the region in general,’ Kushner added.

“They’re against terrorism in the region in general. And, quite frankly, there’s a lot of enthusiasm to continue the trajectory that was set under the Trump administration — and that the Biden administration has embraced — to try and bring Israel and Saudi Arabia together,” he said.

While serving as an adviser in the Trump administration, Kushner played an integral part in helping facilitate the 2020 Abraham Accords which sought to normalize relations in the Middle East between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan. Now, Kushner noted, Saudi Arabia wants in as well.

“I believe they would like to move forward with the deal with America and with Israel,” he told Bartiromo.

“The deal that’s being discussed isn’t just a partnership with Israel. It’s also deepening their ties with America, which is very important,” he added.

“We have to keep in mind that, if America is not close to Saudi Arabia, then they will go in the other direction to China,” Kushner warned. “And so I think that the topic is being discussed.”

Kushner scored a $2 billion investment by the Saudi government in his private equity fund a few months after he departed the Trump White House.

The idea that Saudi Arabia would be safer for Jews than American college campuses raised some eyebrows on social media amid the reports of demonstrations getting violent and Jewish students expressing fear for their safety.

“Saudi Arabia has a long-established practice of barring people with Israeli passports or stamps from visiting their country – and the media there attacks Jews and claims the religious group is conspiring to take over the world,” Daily Mail noted.

President Joe Biden and his administration have been urging Saudi Arabia to normalize its ties with Israel, building on Trump’s Abraham Accords.

“Saudi Arabia opened its airspace to Israeli airlines for the first time last year but has insisted that no normalization will occur before a Palestinian state is established,” CNN reported earlier this year. “Normalization continues to be a taboo among Arab publics. An opinion poll conducted last year by the Arab Center Washington DC found that 84% of Arabs surveyed disapprove of their countries’ recognition of Israel. In Saudi Arabia, support for normalization stood at 5%.”

Frieda Powers
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