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As Israel fights Hamas, activists on the right are calling to rebuild settlements in Gaza
NITZAN B, Israel (JTA) — Since Oct. 7, Benjamin Netanyahu has largely avoided face-to-face meetings with ordinary Israeli citizens. One exception occurred in mid-November, when the Israeli prime minister met with a group of Israelis evacuated from the Gaza border, including former Gaza Strip settlers who presented him with a request: to return to their uprooted homes once Israel’s war with Hamas was over.
“The Gaza Strip won’t let us rest, the land of Israel won’t let us rest until the people of Israel return to settle it, and only then will it flourish” one of the participants, Zehorit Cohen, told Netanyahu in a video clip that has since circulated online. Cohen is a former resident of the Gaza bloc of settlements, known as Gush Katif.
“It has nothing to do with strategy or security or economics or anything,” she said. “We need to go back there because it’s the land of Israel, and the land of Israel calls to us.”
Israel evacuated 8,000 settlers and all of its troops from Gaza in 2005, a withdrawal that split Israeli society and that, for the uprooted settlers, still festers as an open wound. Now, as the Israeli military reconquers broad swaths of the coastal territory in its campaign to destroy Hamas, former Gush Katif residents and other settler leaders are standing at the vanguard of mounting calls to rebuild the evacuated settlements.
“Today, after this thing, everyone understands that settlements equal security, and where there aren’t settlements, there’s terror, massacre and Holocaust,” Yossi Dagan, the head of the Samaria Regional Council of settlements in the northern West Bank, said in a recent interview on Israeli Channel 14, a right-wing station.
Jewish resettlement inside Gaza has no international support and is understood by even some right-wing lawmakers to be inadvisable. But Dagan, along with settler activist Daniella Weiss, is leading a coalition of right-wing groups using the current war as a springboard to intensify a push for a return to Gush Katif.
Their coalition recently held a conference that drew some 200 people and at least one lawmaker, according to Haaretz. The group has already drawn up a list of families who have committed to relocating to a future resettlement project in Gaza.
“The true victory over Hamas will be to take territory back and establish settlements,” Dagan said.
Politicians on the far right have long called for reestablishing Gush Katif, including an Israeli government minister who did so earlier this year. Now, the war has brought those demands squarely into the mainstream.
A mid-November poll of Israel’s Channel 12 News found that 44% of Israelis are in favor of resettling Gush Katif, with 39% opposed and 17% “unsure.” A Hebrew University poll in December found that enthusiasm had declined, with 33% in favor of settlement in Gaza while 55% are opposed.
In the international arena, however, and even among Israel’s right-wing leadership, the idea appears to be a non-starter. Netanyahu has denounced the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, called the disengagement, but he voted for it as a member of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government at the time. While he has said Israeli troops will remain in Gaza for the foreseeable future, he called the resettlement of Gush Katif “not a realistic objective” of the war against Hamas.
And President Joe Biden called a potential reoccupation of Gaza a “big mistake” in an October “60 Minutes” interview. In March, his administration rebuked Netanyahu’s government for repealing a portion of the 2005 disengagement law.
Former Israeli right-wing officials have also criticized the movement to return to Gush Katif. Yonatan Bashi, who was one of the leading officials overseeing the implementation of the 2005 Gaza withdrawal, said trying to settle several thousand Israelis in a territory inhabited by millions of Palestinians would be an error.
“From the beginning, the idea that we went to live in the Gaza Strip was a big mistake, not because of ideology but because there were 1.6 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip versus 7,000 or 8,000 Jews,” Bashi told Israel National News last month, estimating 2005 population figures. “Whoever thought our problem with the strip was geographical was wrong then and is wrong now.”
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who took a lead role in advocating for the disengagement plan and later became an outspoken advocate of territorial withdrawal, said the idea that settlements in Gaza provide security is “utter nonsense.”
“Had we remained in Gush Katif, we would have been in the kishkes of Gaza, and everything would have happened years ago,” he said, using the Yiddish word for guts. Instead, he blames the Oct. 7 attacks on reports that the army diverted troops from the Gaza border to the West Bank leading up to the attack.
“If our soldiers had stayed next to the border and were not … protecting the settlers so they can attack Palestinians in the West Bank and destroy their olive groves, what happened would not have occurred,” said Olmert.
Far-right Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu recently told Israel’s public broadcaster, “I want to return and establish settlements in the strip, but I’m not sure now is the time to do it.”
Many former Gush Katif residents and their ideological supporters feel themselves pulled back toward Gaza by trauma from a home that was lost — one that is connected to a historical right-wing Zionist mandate to control the entire land of Israel. For years after the disengagement, many of the evacuated settlers lived in temporary housing. Some communities have reconstituted themselves elsewhere. The former Gush Katif settlers generally refer to the withdrawal as an “expulsion.”
At the Gush Katif Heritage Center in Nitzan B, a southern Israeli town established to house evacuated settlers, there is a constant mourning over what was lost and an unfading desire for a return to Gush Katif.
“Here is a memorial — not a museum for something that was and is finished, but a memorial for what continues to live in our hearts” said Shimon Samson, a 71-year old guide at the center who lived in the small Gush Katif settlement of Gadid beginning in 1980, a decade after the Gaza settlements were founded.
Samson pointed to a historical Jewish presence in the ancient city of Gaza that dates back centuries, as exemplified by a replica mosaic of King David, on display by the center’s entrance, based on an original discovered in a fifth-century Gazan synagogue in 1965, shortly before Gaza was conquered by Israel from Egypt in the 1967 Six Day War.
According to Samson, approximately 40 of the Israelis killed in the Oct. 7 attack were family members of the first generation of Gush Katif settlers, who left their farms in the Gaza border region to receive government-sponsored land inside Gaza.
“At first there were no problems,” recalled Samson nostalgically of the initial period of Israeli settlement in Gaza. He recalled local rabbis permitting eating fresh fish on the beachfront in Gaza City and even dining at a halal falafel stand.
The situation deteriorated with the advent of the first intifada in 1987. As part of the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Palestinian Authority was given control over much of Gaza including the cities and refugee camps now seeing fierce battles. Violence escalated again during the second intifada two decades ago.
All told, the memorial center lists 42 civilians — not including soldiers — who were killed in terror attacks across Gush Katif’s history. Samson said another 40 community members died prematurely after the “expulsion” in 2005 from “depression, heart attack and other ailments caused by losing millions of dollars and their homes,” including two suicides. Israeli researchers found that former Gush Katif residents were at an increased risk of diabetes and hypertension.
A Haaretz report from 2005 found that 85 members of Israel’s security forces were killed in Gaza since the start of the second intifada in 2000, while 2,600 Palestinians were killed in total in the territory between 1967 and 2005. Many more Palestinians have been killed in the repeated rounds of fighting between Israel and Hamas, which took control of Gaza in 2007 after a brief civil war with a rival Palestinian faction.
Nadin Cohen, a 70-year old immigrant from France who was evacuated from Gush Katif, now has a home in Nitzan B lined with photos of seaside vistas from her old home. Samson and Cohen both say they are too old to consider uprooting themselves again, but they both consider their grandchildren among the “many youths who are interested in settling Gush Katif once again,” Cohen said.
While such a return may seem unrealistic, evacuated settlers still have faith that it can happen. Limor Son Har-Melech, a far-right lawmaker who was evacuated from a northern West Bank settlement as part of the 2005 withdrawal, quoted the Bible while expressing her belief that the residents of Gush Katif will yet return.
“We are a nation of God. This is the land that the creator of the world gave us,” she said in a video she posted to social media last week. “We just need to believe in this. If we just believe in this, God willing, we will win.”
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The post As Israel fights Hamas, activists on the right are calling to rebuild settlements in Gaza appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Trump Signs Major Deals With Qatar as New Report Reveals Doha’s $40 Billion Influence Network Across US
US President Donald Trump and Qatar’s Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani attend a signing ceremony in Doha, Qatar, May 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
As US President Donald Trump visited Qatar on Wednesday as part of his three-country tour of the Middle East, a new report exposed the extent of Qatar’s far-reaching financial entanglements within American institutions, shedding light on what experts describe as a coordinated effort to influence US policy making and public opinion in Doha’s favor.
According to the report, which was published by the Middle East Forum (MEF), a US-based think tank, Qatar has attempted to expand its soft power in the US by spending $33.4 billion on business and real estate projects, over $6 billion on universities, and $72 million on American lobbyists since 2012.
“Qatar, a tiny Gulf emirate with just 300,000 citizens, has deployed nearly $40 billion across our nation’s institutions since 2012. This is not mere investment. It is calculated influence,” MEF executive director Gregg Roman wrote in the report’s foreword. “The pattern is clear: Qatar targets critical infrastructure, including our energy grid. It bankrolls academic departments that foment campus unrest, buys Manhattan skyscrapers, and infiltrates Silicon Valley. Its capital flows to Washington insiders who shape Middle East policy.”
The report, written by the MEF’s Benjamin Baird, came amid mounting scrutiny over Trump’s announcement that he plans to accept a $400 million luxury private jet from Qatar as a gift. It was also published as Trump was in the Middle East this week visiting Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates to speak with regional leaders and strike several economic deals.
On Wednesday, when Trump was in Qatar, he signed what the White House touted as a sweeping “economic exchange” worth at least $1.2 trillion with the Qatari government.
The agreement will likely fuel criticism from experts and lawmakers who have warned about Qatar’s long-standing support for Islamist terrorist organizations such as Hamas and extensive investments in the US.
In 2015, for example, the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), the country’s sovereign wealth fund, announced plans to invest $45 billion in the US over five years. According to MEF’s analysis, that target has likely been met — or exceeded — amid the continued growth of QIA’s global asset base.
Of the $39.8 billion in Qatari money traced by MEF, an estimated $33.43 billion went into commercial ventures like real estate, private equity, and hedge funds. The QIA acquired stakes in the Empire State Building and the Plaza Hotel, with QIA’s Manhattan real estate investments alone totaling at least $6.2 billion.
Qatar has also invested deeply in US critical infrastructure, including the power grid, liquified natural gas production, oil pipelines, and plastics manufacturing, raising concerns among national security experts.
The report also revealed that Qatar has emerged as the largest foreign donor to American higher education, giving US universities a staggering $6.25 billion since 2012. Between January 2023 and October 2024, Qatari contributions totaled roughly $980 million.
Qatar’s financial ties to American universities have come under intensifying scrutiny following the surge in pro-Hamas, anti-Israel Israel campus protests in the aftermath of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel. Observers argue that foreign actors, including Qatar, have used generous donations to encourage universities to hire radical academics and startup anti-Israel academic programs.
A 2023 from the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy found that concealed donations from foreign governments, especially Qatar, to US educational institutions have been associated with an increase in antisemitic incidents on campus and the erosion of liberal norms.
Despite the prevalence of what MEF described as Qatar’s “influence network” in the US, Trump on Sunday announced that the Department of Defense would receive a luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet as a “gift, free of charge” from Qatar. According to Trump, the jet will serve as a replacement to “the 40-year-old Air Force One.” It will be considered property of the US federal government until the end of Trump’s term in office, after which ownership of the aircraft will be transferred to the Trump presidential library foundation.
On Monday, Trump defended his controversial decision to accept the $400 million luxury jet.
“I think it’s a great gesture from Qatar. I appreciate it very much,” he said while speaking to reporters in the Oval Office. “I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer. I mean, I could be a stupid person and say, ‘No, we don’t want a free, very expensive airplane.’ But it was — I thought it was a great gesture.”
The US president argued that the Qatari government gifted him the jet because he has “helped them a lot over the years in terms of security and safety.”
Trump’s plan to accept the splashy airliner set off a firestorm of criticism among foreign policy experts and some lawmakers, especially Democrats, with skeptics accusing the president of violating the Emoluments Clause of the US Constitution, which prohibits federal officials from accepting gifts from foreign countries without the consent of Congress. Others expressed concern that Doha could use the gift as leverage to influence US policy in the Middle East.
Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer (NY) suggested that the gift from Qatar is an attempt to bribe Trump and gain “influence” in the US government.
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) also lambasted Trump’s announcement and called for a probe into Qatar’s gift. In a letter addressed to the Government Accountability Office comptroller general, the Defense Department acting inspector general, and the Office of Government Ethics acting director, Torres suggested that the gift likely runs afoul of the Emoluments Clause.
“With an estimated value of $400 million, the aerial palace would constitute the most valuable gift ever conferred on a [resident by a foreign government,” Torres posted on X/Twitter. “Just as troubling as the gift itself is the identity of the benefactor. Qatar is not a neutral party on the world stage. It has a deeply troubling history of financing a barbaric terrorist organization that has the blood of Americans on its hands.”
Meanwhile, Trump on Wednesday signed a series of agreements totaling at least $1.2 trillion with Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in Doha.
The deal includes a $96 billion order of Boeing jets and GE Aerospace engines. Beyond aircrafts, the deals encompass over $243.5 billion in trade and infrastructure agreements with companies such as McDermott and Parsons, and a $1 billion joint venture in quantum technologies.
Alongside commercial investments, the US signed major defense deals with Qatar, including nearly $3 billion for advanced drone systems and counter-drone technology from Raytheon and General Atomics. A broader $38 billion framework agreement for military cooperation, including potential expansion at Al Udeid Air Base, further cements Qatar’s strategic influence in US defense planning.
The post Trump Signs Major Deals With Qatar as New Report Reveals Doha’s $40 Billion Influence Network Across US first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Canadian Man Sentenced to Jail for Antisemitic Assault on Jewish Couple After Synagogue Visit
People attend Canada’s Rally for the Jewish People at Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, in December 2023. Photo: Shawn Goldberg via Reuters Connect
A Canadian man has been sentenced to one year in jail and two years of probation after being convicted of assault in an antisemitic attack on a Jewish couple walking home from synagogue last year.
On Monday, the Ontario Court of Justice sentenced 36-year-old Kenneth Jeewan Gobin after his March conviction on two counts of assault and one count of breaching probation.
According to court evidence, Gobin — who has an extensive criminal record and was on probation for a previous crime at the time of the attack — deliberately planned the assault against the Jewish couple, driven by antisemitic hatred.
The incident took place on Jan. 6, 2024, when Gobin, riding an electric bicycle, approached four Jewish adults returning home from synagogue and deliberately mounted the curb to target them. He then began assaulting the two couples, hurling antisemitic slurs during the attack.
As he continued hitting the victims, he performed a Nazi salute and shouted antisemitic insults, including “Hitler should have killed you all” and “You should have died in the Holocaust,” striking one of the women in the process.
The sentencing came after a months-long trial, during which the court heard multiple victim and community impact statements.
Among several testimonies submitted to the court, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC) — a nonprofit human rights organization dedicated to Holocaust education and antisemitism programs — described Gobin’s attack as an “unprovoked, hate-motivated assault.”
“When expressions of hate are paired with physical acts of aggression, they pose a grave threat to public safety and social cohesion,” Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, FSWC’s senior director of policy and advocacy, said in a statement. “History has repeatedly shown that when this kind of hatred is ignored or minimized, it paves the way to more widespread and dangerous violence.”
“These acts are not isolated incidents — they’re part of a deeply troubling historical pattern whose gravity must be taken seriously,” Kirzner-Roberts continued. “Today’s sentence sends a strong and necessary message: hate-fueled violence cannot and will not go unpunished.”
As several other countries around the world, Canada has witnessed a surge in antisemitic incidents following the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
In 2024, the country recorded a record-breaking 6,219 anti-Jewish incidents, according to B’nai Brith Canada, up from 5,791 the previous year. Although members of the Jewish community make up less than 1 percent of the country’s population, they were targeted in one-fifth of all hate crimes.
The post Canadian Man Sentenced to Jail for Antisemitic Assault on Jewish Couple After Synagogue Visit first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Yale University Leaves Pro-Hamas Hunger Strikers Hanging After Refusing Meeting
A Palestinian flag hangs over the doors of the Schwartzman Center with stickers covering Woolsey Hall during a demonstration at Yale University. Photo: Derek French/Sopa Images via Reuters Connect.
A pro-Hamas student group at Yale University has launched another disruptive protest to cap off the final weeks of the academic year, choosing this time to starve themselves inside an administrative building in lieu of establishing an illegal encampment.
“Hunger strikers have consumed nothing but water since Saturday,” Yalies4Palestine said in a press release explaining the action. “They have become hypoglycemic, are experiencing dizziness, faintness, extreme fatigue, inability to regulate their temperatures and concerningly low blood pressure, in addition to immense psychological pressure and stress.”
Yale administrators are refusing to meet with the students for a discussion of their demands that the university’s endowment be divested of any ties to Israel, as well as companies that do business with it, according to the Yale Daily News. On Tuesday, the fourth day of the demonstration, Yale student affairs dean Melanie Boyd briefly approached the students at the site of their demonstration, Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall, advising them to leave the space because “the administration does not intend to hold any additional meetings.”
A member of the Yale Corporation, the university’s board of trustees, previously met with a group of anti-Zionist students last September, to discuss their demands for the school to disclose and divest from any Israel-linked entities and military weapons manufacturers.
Now, however, Yale has no intention of holding another such meeting. School officials said that the latest hunger strike is being held in “violation of university policy,” noting that Yalie4Palestine was stripped of its recognized-organization-status due to similar, past transgressions — including an aborted attempt to camp out on the grounds of Beinecke Plaza in April.
In that case, the students eventually abandoned the demonstration after Yale’s assistant vice president for university life, Pilar Montalvo, walked through the area distributing cards containing a message which implored students to “Please stop your current action immediately. If you do not, you may risk university disciplinary action and/or arrest” and a QR code for a webpage which explains Yale’s policies on expression and free assembly.
The cards triggered a paranoiac fit, the News reported. Upon receiving them, the students became suspicious that the QR code could be used to track and identify those who participated in the unauthorized protest. “Do not scan the QR code!” they chanted in response. They decamped moments later, the paper added, clearing the way for public safety officers to photograph and remove the tents they had attempted to pitch.
This time, the students say they will not budge and are imploring their supporters to flood the phone lines of high-level Yale officials with calls demanding that they meet with the students.
Yalie4Palestine have provided the would-be callers a script. It says: “It is unconscionable that Yale administrators are more concerned about nonsensical university policies than the basic welfare of their own students and their complicity in the ongoing famine in Gaza. Yale must divest from military weapons companies aiding Israel’s genocide, end partnerships that normalize apartheid and occupation, and protect student protest rights.”
Yale University’s Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility (ACIR) has before ruled against divesting from armaments manufacturers, saying in April 2024 that “it does not believe that such activity meets the criteria for divestment” because “this manufacturing supports socially necessary uses, such as law enforcement and national security.” The decision set off a raging protest which resulted in the assault of a Jewish student and the arrest of some 47 students who had trespassed Beinecke Plaza, where they vowed to abstain from food, as they are now, unless the university acceded to their demands.
The campus has seen a heightening of anti-Zionist and antisemitic behavior since Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Less than a month after the onslaught, the Yale Daily News came under fire for removing what it called “unsubstantiated claims” of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas raping and beheading Israelis on Oct. 7 from an article written by Sahar Tartak. Published on Oct. 12, the column — which lambasted Yalies4Palestine for defending and seemingly applauding Hamas’s atrocities — was at some point afterward censored to no longer include a portion describing reports and eyewitness accounts of Hamas raping and beheading Israeli civilians. The paper later apologized.
Additionally, on the day of the massacre, Zareena Grewal — an associate professor of American Studies, Ethnicity, Race & Migration, and Religious Studies at Yale who describes herself as a “radical Muslim” — defended Hamas, saying it had “every right to resist through armed struggle” while denouncing Israel as a “murderous, genocidal settler state.”
In another incident, a pro-Hamas activist spat in the direction of Jewish students, a group which included Jewish civil rights activist and Yale student Sahar Tartak.
In December, Yale University students voted in favor of a referendum calling for the school’s divestment from Israel — a core tenet of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement.
“The referendum, proposed and written by the pro-Palestine Sumud Coalition, asked three questions. The first two ask whether Yale should disclose and divest from its holdings in military weapons manufacturers, ‘including those arming Israel,’ and the third asks whether Yale should ‘act on its commitment to education by investing in Palestinian scholars and students,’” the Yale Daily News reported at the time, noting that while each item received overwhelming “yes votes,” they equaled just over one-third of the student body.
The low threshold is, however, sufficient for the referendum questions being codified and passed as a resolution by the Yale College Council (YCC), which facilitated the referendum and spoke positively of it before students cast their votes. It also rings loudly to the school’s Jewish community, senior Netanel Crispe told The Algemeiner during an interview at the time, explaining that some 2,500 students voted for a policy aimed at compromising Israel’s national security to precipitate its destruction.
Yale University told The Algemeiner it will continue to foster intellectual diversity and a robust Jewish student life without discussing the merits, or lack thereof, of the referendum.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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