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This Israeli village on the Lebanon border was isolated for decades. Now it’s a tourist hotspot.
GHAJAR, Israel (JTA) – A group of 40 tourists filed into Khateb Sweets on a recent Sunday afternoon, bringing chatter — and their cash and credit cards — to what had been a quiet cafe in this equally sedate village in the Golan Heights.
They left after consuming pastries and hot tea spiced with ginger, anise and cinnamon, whereupon an Israeli Jewish couple came in, then an Israeli Arab family and three Canadians.
The steady foot traffic typifies the wave of tourists that since last fall has hit this community of 2,900 people, nearly all Alawites, an Islamic sect.
Ghajar (pronounced RA-zhar) had for decades been unusually cut off from the rest of Israel. Residents could come and go, but outsiders could visit only through prior arrangement with the Israel Defense Forces, which considered the village within a closed military area where Lebanon and Israel’s Galilee and Golan Heights regions intersect.
The IDF’s lifting of the restriction without explanation on Sept. 8 led to an immediate rush of visitors eager to explore Ghajar.
How immediate? Ahmad Khateb, a pastry chef who owns the eponymous cafe, was working that day at his consultancy job at a hotel in the Galilee town of Tzfat, when his employee called to report an unusual stream of tourists entering the shop. The following morning, Khateb resigned to work at his café full time.
People enjoy a food truck in a plaza in Ghajar, Oct. 14, 2022. (Yossi Aloni/Flash90)
Approximately 4,000 people visited Ghajar the day the town opened, he said. Another 6,000 visited the following day — briefly tripling the number of people in town. For day three, a Saturday, Ghajar turned a soccer field into a parking lot.
“It’s like a gift that fell from the sky,” Khateb said of the village’s opening and his subsequent increase in sales. He’s now considering expansion to other locations.
Ghajar possesses a Forbidden City-like attraction for Israelis, who travel extensively inside their own country because it requires a flight to visit others.
“You know why we came here? Because there aren’t a lot of places [in Israel] we haven’t been,” said Shmuel Browns, a Jerusalem-based tour guide accompanying his brother and sister-in-law visiting from his native Toronto. “We wanted to get a sense of what makes this village unique.”
It is also notable as the only Israeli community of Alawites, a Syria-based ethnic minority best known as the group that the country’s dictatorial rulers for the past 52 years — current president Bashar al-Assad and his late father, Hafez — are descended from. Bilal Khatib, who is Ghajar’s accountant and spokesman, said Alawites tend to be secular people who value a person’s character and are respectful of other Muslim sects and different religions. Ghajar contains no mosques, since, except on holy days, people pray individually at home.
People gather in front of a shop in Ghajar, Oct. 14, 2022. (Yossi Aloni/Flash90)
“It’s a way of life,” Khatib said. “We respect people as people. Our religion is to be a good person, love everyone and hold no hatred against anyone, be they Druze, Jew, Christian or Circassian.”
But most unusual is Ghajar’s provenance, on which outsiders tend to stumble. “Ghajar was part of Lebanon, right?” the Israeli couple at the cafe asked Khateb.
No, he responded.
So began a short primer that residents are wont to recite to visitors — a timeline of a village of just one-fifth of a square mile. (The fields on Ghajar’s outskirts constitute an additional five square miles, on which the village plans to expand.)
Israel captured the Golan Heights, including Ghajar, from Syria during 1967’s Six-Day War and officially annexed it in 1981. After Israel ended its 18-year war in Lebanon in 2000, the United Nations certified the IDF’s withdrawal and established the two countries’ border going through, rather than around, Ghajar. Israel later announced plans to withdraw below the U.N. line. That would have split the village into northern and southern sections. Residents protested, preferring to remain under Israeli sovereignty rather than be divided. Ultimately, Israel didn’t erect a barrier inside the village.
A man drives a golf kart in Ghajar, Sept. 7, 2022. (Jalaa Marey/AFP via Getty Images)
“It’s a headache,” Jamal Khatib, a physical education teacher at the village’s lone high school, said of the chronology.
Orna Mizrahi, an analyst at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies, agrees with that characterization. As a member of the National Security Council, she briefed then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Ghajar at what proved to be his last Cabinet meeting hours before he suffered a debilitating and ultimately fatal stroke in 2006.
As to why the IDF recently opened the town, Mizrahi cited the completion of a security fence around Ghajar, along with the lessened threat of cross-border attacks by the Hezbollah terrorist organization, due in large part to the recent maritime border agreement between Israel and Lebanon that incentivizes the government in Beirut to restrain Hezbollah.
“The security considerations are different. The situation in Lebanon is different,” she said.
Exactly why the United Nations associated the town with Lebanon, even though most of its residents are from a Syrian sect, is a point of confusion for many who visit. A 1965 Syrian map that Bilal Khatib printed offers an explanation: It shows Ghajar as an enclave completely inside Lebanon except for a narrow sliver connecting it to Syria proper.
Bilal Khatib (he, Jamal Khatib and Ahmad Khateb are unrelated) lives in the northern section and said he would not want his sister, who lives south of the U.N.’s 2000 demarcation, to be inaccessible.
The U.N.’s dividing point, known as the Blue Line, would be “splitting families,” he said. “We have to be united.” In practice, this line exists only on maps and has no impact on the life of Ghajar residents, who are fully under Israeli rule.
Ghajar residents tend to see themselves as Syrians holding Israeli citizenship. It’s a high-achieving population: According to Jamal Khatib, 400 Ghajar residents hold a college degree, making the town far more educated, on average, than Israeli Arabs overall. He said there are 50 physicians, 30 lawyers, 27 dentists and two professors, most commuting to jobs in the Galilee. Until Syria’s civil war began in 2011, Ghajar residents legally crossed at nearby Kuneitra to attend Syrian universities, he said.
An Israeli soldier secures a checkpoint at the entrance of Ghajar, Sept. 7, 2022. (Jalaa Marey/AFP via Getty Images)
“There’s no profession in Israel that’s not represented here,” he said.
Politically, Ghajar stands out for supporting mostly Jewish-majority parties. In the recent election, Benny Gantz’s centrist party got 24% of the 555 citizens who went to the polls in the village. The Arab party Raam got only 14% of the votes and the rest went to other Jewish lists, including the haredi Orthodox Shas party.
Ghajar puts a premium on livability. Fountains, parks and outdoor sculptures abound, landscaping and building façades are colorful and nary a speck of litter is evident. Homes are large and well-kept, on par with other upscale areas in Israel. Motorcycles and the honking of vehicles’ horns are prohibited. Visitors may not enter between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m., Jamal Khatib said, adding that Ghajar has long banned hotels and bed-and-breakfast inns and does not plan to change the rules in response to the flood of visitors.
Some visitors have littered and urinated in public, even entered residents’ homes without knocking, he said.
“A year ago, you wouldn’t have seen that,” said his son, Ryad, who works as Ghajar’s coordinator of volunteers, including handling traffic control on days when tourists abound.
Unlike many small towns in Israel, Ghajar operates its own sanitation service rather than linking up with other municipalities through a regional council. Doing so is an unusual expenditure, but it’s one that means visitors to the town may see Ghajar’s name on a garbage truck — a potentially powerful symbol.
Tourists explore the streets of Ghajar, Oct. 14, 2022. (Yossi Aloni/Flash90)
“We’re doing it not for you, but for ourselves,” Jamal Khatib said of the village’s quality-of-life values. “I like that people come, but they should respect the rules, respect our privacy.”
For its part, Ghajar projects respect for the wider society. Street signs and storefronts appear in Hebrew and Arabic. The Park of Peace includes a statue of the Virgin Mary, a sculpture of an open Koran, an Alawite sword symbol and a menorah.
“You and I believe in one God,” Jamal Khatib said. “Your deeds speak as to who you are.”
From his back porch a few moments later, a donkey’s braying could be clearly heard, hundreds of sheep observed and calls to prayer drifted over from a mosque – all in Aarab el Louaizeh, a village in Lebanon perhaps 100 yards away.
In a ravine below, soldiers of the United Nations and the Lebanese army in their separate posts walked outside. The U.N. soldiers entered two vehicles and began their twice-daily patrol of the border. Alongside the border road is the Hatzbani River, where Khatib fished as a young man. At his property line, a separate fence on Ghajar’s northern perimeter is nearly complete.
But the fence wasn’t erected to divide people or demarcate boundaries: It’s to keep boars, jackals and porcupines from scaling the slope and entering the village, Khatib said. He soon received an alert on his phone.
“The notification says there are cows on the road,” he explained. “It’s dark. Be careful.”
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Joe Kent Suggests Israel Behind Charlie Kirk Assassination, Controls US Foreign Policy in Tucker Carlson Interview
National Counterterrorism Center Director Joseph Kent attends a House Homeland Security hearing entitled “Worldwide Threats to the Homeland,” on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, US, Dec. 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
After Joe Kent, director of the US National Counterterrorism Center, resigned in protest of President Donald Trump’s military campaign against Iran, he appeared on Tucker Carlson’s podcast on Wednesday.
While on the podcast, Kent, who resigned from his position on Tuesday, argued that Israel dragged the US into the war against the Iranian regime, suggested that Israel may have been involved in the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, claimed that Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States, and said that Iran was not pursuing a nuclear weapon.
Themes of Israel controlling US policy and conspiracy theories about Kirk’s assassination have become commonplace on Carlson’s podcast in recent months.
“We don’t know what happened with Charlie Kirk. I’m not saying the Israelis did this — I’m saying there are a lot of unanswered questions there, and there’s enough data to say there’s a good chance that President Trump feels he is under threat,” Kent said.
“The last time I saw Charlie Kirk on this earth was in June, in the West Wing stairway,” Kent said on Carlson’s podcast. “And he said very loudly to me … ‘Joe, stop us from getting into a war with Iran.’ Very loudly. He was single-minded.”
“So, when one of President Trump’s closest advisers who was vocally advocating against a war with Iran is suddenly publicly assassinated, and we’re not allowed to ask questions about that — it’s a data point. A data point that we need to look into,” Kent said, suggesting that Israel may have something to do with the assassination.
There has been no evidence to support claims of Israeli involvement in Kirk’s assassination. Tyler Robinson, 22, has been charged for murdering Kirk and potentially faces the death penalty. He was romantically involved with his transgender roommate, and prosecutors have reportedly argued that Kirk’s anti-trans rhetoric was a key factor that allegedly led him to shoot the Turning Point USA founder.
Kent also argued that the US is not really in charge of its own foreign policy: “Who is in charge of our policy in the Middle East? Who is in charge of when we decide to go to war or not?” he asked.
Ther former counterterrorism chief argued that Israel forced Washington’s hand by saying it would attack Iran and that the US would be forced to be caught up in Iran’s inevitable retaliation.
“The Israelis felt emboldened that no matter what they did, no matter what situation they put us in, they could go ahead and take this action, and we would just have to react. That speaks to the relationship — but also it just shows there was a lobby pushing for us to go to war,” Kent said.
In addition to claiming Israel was driving US foreign policy, he also claimed Iran was not close to achieving, or even pursuing, a nuclear-weapons capability. “No, they weren’t [on the verge of getting a nuclear weapon] — not three weeks ago when this started, and not in June [2025] either,” Kent said, referring to last year’s 12-day war between Iran and Israel
“The Iranians have had a religious ruling — a fatwa — against actually developing a nuclear weapon since 2004. That’s been in place since 2004. That’s available in the public sphere. But we also had no intelligence to indicate that that fatwa was being disobeyed or was on the cusp of being lifted,” Kent added.
Experts on Iran have widely dismissed the Iranian regime’s so-called fatwa against having nuclear weapons, noting Tehran has repeatedly lied about and tried to hide aspects of its nuclear program.
The interview occurred one day after Kent resigned from his senior intelligence position, saying he could not support the war and arguing Tehran posed “no imminent threat” to the United States. But it was Kent’s broader assertion, that pressure from Israel and pro-Israel voices influenced the decision to go to war, that especially drew swift pushback from the White House and national security experts.
In his resignation, Kent also drew parallels to the Iraq War, suggesting that similar dynamics shaped both conflicts by arguing that Israel pushed the US into the war.
“Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” Kent wrote in his resignation letter.
The Trump administration forcefully disputed Kent’s claims, maintaining that the decision to strike Iran was based on credible intelligence about threats to US forces and interests in the region. Trump dismissed Kent as “weak on security,” defending the operation as necessary to deter Iranian aggression and protect American personnel and allies.
“When I read the statement, I realized that it’s a good thing that he’s out, because he said that Iran was not a threat,” Trump said. “Iran was a threat.”
Kent himself previously described Iran as a major threat that needed to be addressed.
In a September 2024 post on X, for example, he wrote that “Iran has been after Trump since January of 2020 after he ordered the targeted killing of the terrorist Qasem Soleimani. This isn’t a new threat.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt lambasted Kent’s resignation letter as inaccurate.
“The absurd allegation that President Trump made this decision based on the influence of others, even foreign countries, is both insulting and laughable. President Trump has been remarkably consistent and has said for DECADES that Iran can NEVER possess a nuclear weapon,” she posted on social media.
Kent previously faced scrutiny during his US congressional runs in Washington state over links to far-right, antisemitic, and white nationalist figures, including Nick Fuentes.
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Brandeis Center Reaches Settlement With UC Berkeley in Antisemitism Lawsuit
Students attend a protest encampment in support of Palestinians at University of California, Berkeley during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Berkeley, US, April 23, 2024. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect
The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law has reached a major agreement to settle a lawsuit it filed against the University of California, Berkeley in 2023 over its allegedly failing to address a series of incidents of campus antisemitism which culminated in anti-Zionist students establishing “Jewish-free zones” where pro-Israel advocates were barred from speaking.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the complaint provided several examples of alleged antisemitic harassment and exclusion on campus, including a bylaw banning Zionists speakers that 23 Berkeley Law groups adopted in September 2021, campus groups Women of Berkeley Law and the Queer Caucus requiring support for the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel to join its ranks, and the Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law, and Justice banning Zionists from submitting articles and speaking at its events.
The campus environment worsened after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, onslaught across southern Israel, in which the Palestinian terrorist group murdered over 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took more than 250 hostages to Gaza, according to the complaint. Indeed, the suit alleged that hate mail and death threats have been sent to Jewish students, that Jewish students have opted not to attend class because walking through campus risked encountering angry pro-Palestinian supporters, and that an anti-Israel demonstrator bashed a Jewish student draped in an Israeli flag over the head with a metal water bottle.
“As a UC Berkeley alumnus, I am glad that we can finally resolve this long battle with a victory for Jewish American students and for all Americans who care about free speech and fairness,” Kenneth Marcus, chairman of the Brandeis Center and former US assistant secretary of education for civil rights, said in a statement on Thursday. “What began as a ban on Zionist Jewish voices, regardless of the subjects they wished to address, and mushroomed into a widespread hostile environment will no longer be tolerated.”
He continued, “What happened at Berkeley is a cautionary tale. Universities, corporations, and political parties cannot create an anti-Zionist exception to their conduct codes. They cannot silence Jewish Americans on the pretext of advancing their own political agendas.”
The details of the settlement are disclosed. They call for Berkeley’s using the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism as a reference tool, stating a “reaffirmation” of antisemitism as a violation of the code of conduct, conducting an annual survey of the Jewish student body, and appointing an official to manage the school’s compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination at universities receiving taxpayer money to fund research and other operations. UC Berkeley will also pay the Brandeis Center $1 million as reimbursement for “outside attorneys’ fees and costs incurred” during litigation of the suit.
UC Berkeley saw some of the most shocking antisemitic incidents in recent memory in the months which followed the Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, as previously reported by The Algemeiner.
In February 2024, a mob of hundreds of pro-Palestinian students and non-students shut down an event at UC Berkeley featuring an Israeli soldier, forcing Jewish students to flee to a secret safe room as the protesters overwhelmed campus police.
Footage of the incident showed a frenzied mass of anti-Zionist agitators banging on the doors of Zellerbach Hall while an event featuring Israeli reservist Ran Bar-Yoshafat — who visited the university to discuss his military service during Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion — took place inside. The mob then stormed the building — breaking glass windows in the process, according to reports in the Daily Wire — and precipitated school officials’ decision to evacuate the area.
During the infiltration of Zellerbach, a member of the mob — which was recruited by Bears for Palestine, which had earlier proclaimed its intention to cancel the event — spit on a Jewish student and called him a “Jew,” pejoratively.
“You know what I was screamed at? ‘Jew, you Jew, you Jew,’ literally right to my face,” the student who was attacked said to a friend. “Some woman — then she spit at me.”
In July, the chancellor of UC Berkeley described a professor who cheered Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities as a “fine scholar” during a congressional hearing held at Capitol Hill.
Richard Lyons, who assumed the chancellorship in July 2024, issued the unmitigated praise while being questioned by members of the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which summoned him and the chief administrators of two other major universities to interrogate their handling of the campus antisemitism crisis.
Lyons stumbled into the statement while being questioned by Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI), who asked the chancellor to describe the extent of his relationship and correspondence with Professor Ussama Makdisi, who tweeted in February 2024 that he “could have been one of those who broke through the siege on Oct. 7.”
In Thursday’s statement, Marcus implored the Jewish community to be unrelenting in its fight against antisemitism.
“As we have now seen time and time again, if left unaddressed, antisemitic bigotry, whether or not masked as anti-Zionism, only continues to expand. We will fight this bigotry wherever and whenever we find it, and we will win.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Ukraine Leverages Drone Defense Expertise to Aid Gulf, Strengthen Strategic Role Amid Iran War
Fire ignited at the impact site following an Iranian missile strike, amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, in central Israel, March 13, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Gideon Markowicz
As the US-Israeli war with Iran reshapes regional security dynamics, Ukraine is leveraging its battlefield-honed drone defense expertise to assist US allies in the Gulf, potentially strengthening its diplomatic standing and shifting the balance of power, experts say.
Earlier this week, a team of around 200 Ukrainian military experts arrived in the Middle East to provide both “expertise” and “practical support” in countering Iranian drones.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed that specialized units have already been deployed in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, with additional personnel en route to Kuwait, as Kyiv strengthens coordination with countries across the region.
Since the start of the war last month, Ukraine has actively offered its technology and personnel to Middle Eastern partners to assist the United States and its allies in countering Iranian drones, positioning itself as a key strategic player amid conflict and shifting diplomatic alliances.
Zelenskyy stressed that he had instructed government officials “to present options for assisting the relevant countries” in a way that safeguards Ukraine’s own critical defense needs amid the ongoing war with Russia and its relentless missile and drone attacks.
“Ukrainian experts will operate on-site, and teams are already coordinating these efforts,” Zelenskyy said in a statement.
Among a delegation of military, intelligence, and defense officials traveling to the Gulf was National Security and Defense Council Secretary Rustem Umerov, as the group worked to finalize what was described as “concrete agreements.”
“Ukraine has the greatest experience in the world in countering attack drones,” Zelensky said. “Without our experience, it will be very difficult for the Gulf region, the entire Middle East, and partners in Europe and America to build strong protection.”
“We are ready to help those who help us,” the Ukrainian leader continued. “The regimes in Russia and Iran are brothers in hatred and that is why they are brothers in weapons. And we want regimes built on hatred, to never, never win in anything. And we want no such regime to threaten Europe or our partners.”
According to John Hardie, deputy director of the Russia Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington, DC-based think tank, Ukraine has “unmatched experience” in developing and scaling cost-effective systems that can detect and neutralize the one-way attack drones widely used by Iran.
The Iranian regime has been supplying Russia with drones throughout the war in Ukraine, and Moscoe has been reportedly supplying Tehran with intelligence, satellite imagery, and drone technology to target US forces.
“With Russia working to help Iran kill American servicemembers, that’s all the reason for the United States and its Middle East allies to take advantage of Ukraine’s hard-won expertise,” Hardie told The Algemeiner.
“Replicating Ukrainian solutions at scale won’t happen overnight, but Ukrainian deployments to the Middle East could offer a taste of some of the Ukrainian technology, namely interceptor drone systems,” he continued.
Hardie argued that this expertise could help Ukraine “cultivate closer security cooperation” with the United States and its Arab allies, while also opening opportunities for Kyiv to expand its defense industry exports and strengthen its role as a key security partner in the region.
When the United States and Israel launched coordinated airstrikes on Iran on Feb. 28, Tehran struck back quickly, firing missiles and long‑range drones at military and civilian targets in neighboring countries — repeatedly hitting infrastructure and population centers even as it claimed to be focusing solely on US military assets.
In just the first few days of the conflict, Iran launched more than 500 ballistic missiles and over 2,000 unmanned aerial systems (UAS) — remotely operated or autonomous aircraft commonly used for surveillance and strike missions.
Even though the regime’s ballistic missile launches have dropped sharply since then due to US and Israeli strikes on its launchers and broader missile program, its drone attacks are, while also down significantly, proving more difficult to stop with air defenses, threatening key military targets as well as civilian areas.
Some regional countries struggle to defend against Iranian drones because these low-cost systems consistently evade fighter jets and conventional air defenses. They have struck a wide range of targets — from diplomatic and economic sites to residential areas — including Dubai International Airport and Saudi oil facilities.
According to Jason Campbell, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, a Washington, DC-based think tank, Ukraine has revolutionized counter-drone warfare over the past three years through cost-effective, easily reproducible technologies and adaptive battlefield tactics.
“The Gulf states have invested heavily in high-end and highly capable missile defenses, but the Iran war has demonstrated the need for solutions that can better confront their comparatively inexpensive and easily reproduceable Shahed drones,” Campbell told The Algemeiner, referring to the Iranian-made drones.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the Islamist regime in Iran began supplying drones to Moscow, providing a relatively inexpensive way to expand its long-range strike capabilities, which Russia later advanced by producing modified variants domestically and in greater quantities.
Over more than four years of war, Ukraine has dramatically improved its counter-drone strategy, increasingly relying on interceptor drones — low-cost unmanned aerial systems that detect, track, and destroy incoming drones identified by radar — offering a highly effective and economically sustainable alternative to traditional air defenses.
“I would say that this capability has already elevated Ukraine’s (and Ukrainian companies’) status throughout the Gulf,” Campbell told The Algemeiner.
According to multiple media reports, Saudi Arabia is planning a major contract with Ukrainian companies to purchase interceptor drones.
Zelenskyy has also suggested that Ukraine could “exchange” interceptor drones for Patriot air defense missiles, a US-made system designed to detect, track, and intercept incoming ballistic missiles, aircraft, and drones.
“Russia probably is not very excited about the prospect of Ukraine bolstering its air defenses and demonstrating its utility to an array of deep-pocketed clients,” Campbell explained.
“This is a win for US interests and could provide more impetus behind efforts to provide necessary assistance to help Ukraine in its ongoing war with Russia,” he continued. “One thing to watch, however, will be the near-term availability of higher end air defenses which remain in high demand now in multiple theaters.”