Jared Kushner Spearheads Saudi Investments in Israel

In another sign of Israel’s deepening business and security ties with Arab states, Saudi Arabia has committed $2 billion in public funds to Jared Kushner’s new private-equity group, Affinity Partners. As Dion Nissenbaum and Rory Jones note, this “marks the first known instance that the Saudi public investment fund’s cash will be directed to Israel, a sign of the kingdom’s increasing willingness to do business with the country, even though they have no diplomatic relations.” Drawing on interviews with Kushner and others close to the deal, Nissenbaum and Jones examine Kushner’s broader strategy, as well as responses by lawmakers in both the Middle East and the U.S.

[Saudi Arabia’s public investment fund] is tasked with transforming the domestic Saudi economy via investments in new industries and sprawling real-estate developments, such as a $500 billion futuristic city-state called Neom. Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman has told advisers and diplomats he hopes Israelis will play a big part in developing Neom, with potential investments in biotechnology and cybersecurity. In November 2020, the prince met at Neom with then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a sign Saudi Arabia could join the Abraham Accords. But new administrations in the U.S. and Israel slowed momentum.

After securing Saudi investment, Mr. Kushner and his team traveled in March to Israel to meet with dozens of Israeli companies looking for financial support from Affinity, according to those involved in the meetings. Mr. Kushner held meetings with Israeli startups working on everything from healthcare and agriculture to software and cyber, they said.

Saudi Arabia isn’t the only country without diplomatic relations with Israel that Mr. Kushner is wooing. Affinity is also looking to bring Israeli technology to Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, according to people familiar with the discussions. Before leaving the White House, Mr. Kushner and his team were working to secure a normalization deal with Indonesia and Israel, but the deal didn’t come together before President Biden took office.

Read more at Wall Street Journal

More about: Israel-Arab relations, Jared Kushner, Saudi Arabia

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society