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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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Pakistan, Indonesia Closing in on Jets and Drones Defense Deal, Sources Say
A JF-17 Thunder fighter jet of the Pakistan Air Force takes off from Mushaf base in Sargodha, north Pakistan, June 7, 2013. Photo: REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra
Indonesia‘s defense minister met Pakistan‘s air force chief in Islamabad to discuss a potential deal that includes the sale of combat jets and killer drones to Jakarta, three security officials with knowledge of the meeting on Monday said.
The talks come as Pakistan‘s defense industry moves forward with a series of defense procurement negotiations, including deals with Libya’s National Army and Sudan’s army, and looks to establish itself as a sizable regional player.
One source said the talks revolved around the sale of JF-17 jets, a multi-role combat aircraft jointly developed by Pakistan and China, and drones designed for surveillance and striking targets. The other two sources said the talks were in an advanced stage and involved more than 40 JF-17 jets. One of them said Indonesia was also interested in Pakistan‘s Shahpar drones.
The sources did not share any discussions about delivery timelines and the number of years a proposed deal would span.
Both Indonesia‘s Defense Ministry and Pakistan‘s military confirmed the meeting between Indonesian Defense Minister Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin and Pakistan‘s Air Chief Marshal Zaheer Ahmed Baber Sidhu.
“The meeting focused on discussing general defense cooperation relations, including strategic dialogue, strengthening communication between defense institutions, and opportunities for mutually beneficial cooperation in various fields in the long term,” defense ministry spokesperson Brigadier General Rico Ricardo Sirait told Reuters, adding the talks had not yet led to concrete decisions.
The Pakistani military confirmed the meeting in a statement and also said the defense minister met army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir for talks that “focused on matters of mutual interest, evolving regional and global security dynamics, and exploration of avenues for enhancing bilateral defense cooperation.”
INDONESIA REPLACING AGEING AIR FORCE FLEET
One additional security source with knowledge of military procurement talks said Pakistan was discussing the sale of JF-17 Thunder jets, air defense systems, training for junior, mid-level, and senior Indonesian air force officials, and engineering staff.
“The Indonesia deal is in the pipeline,” retired Air Marshal Asim Suleiman, who remains briefed on air force deals, told Reuters, adding that the number of JF-17 jets involved was close to 40.
Indonesia‘s President Prabowo Subianto was in Pakistan last month for a two-day visit for talks on improving bilateral ties, including defense.
Indonesia has put in a slew of orders for jets in the past few years, including 42 French Rafale jets worth $8.1 billion in 2022 and 48 KAAN fighter jets from Turkey last year to strengthen its air force and replace its ageing air force fleet.
Jakarta has also considered buying China’s J-10 fighter jets and is in talks to purchase US-made F-15EX jets.
PAKISTAN‘S RISING DEFENCE INDUSTRY
Interest in the Pakistani military’s weapons development program has surged since its jets were deployed in a short conflict with India last year.
The JF-17s have been at the center of that growing attention, figuring in a deal with Azerbaijan and the $4 billion weapons pact with the Libyan National Army.
Pakistan is also eyeing a defense pact with Bangladesh that could include the Super Mushshak training jets and JF-17s, as ties improve with Dhaka.
Reuters has also reported that Islamabad was in talks with Riyadh for a defense deal that could be worth between $2 billion and $4 billion and involves the conversion of Saudi loans into military supplies.
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When a Synagogue Burns in Mississippi, the Jewish Community Is on Trial
Illustrative: The remains of the Adas Israel synagogue in Duluth Minnesota after it was destroyed by fire, September 9, 2019. Photo: screenshot.
It happened again.
On January 10, 2026, the Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, Mississippi — the only synagogue in the state capital — was deliberately set ablaze. Torah scrolls were destroyed. Offices and sacred spaces were gutted. Services were suspended indefinitely. This was not an accident. This was antisemitism in action. This was an attack on our people, our heritage, and our community.
Beth Israel has stood for more than 160 years as a pillar of Jewish life in Mississippi. Founded in 1860, it became the first synagogue in the state, and the spiritual home of generations of Jewish families in Jackson.
In 1967, during a period of intense resistance to civil rights, members of the Ku Klux Klan bombed the synagogue’s offices and damaged part of its library because its rabbi, Perry Nussbaum, spoke out against racism and stood in solidarity with the broader struggle for justice. Two months later, the same white supremacists bombed Rabbi Nussbaum’s home. The congregation rebuilt, continued its mission of social engagement, and became an enduring symbol of resilience and moral courage. And yet, decades later, Beth Israel faces another deliberate attack — a reminder that anti-Jewish hatred, while once carried out by the KKK, has found a new, resurgent justification in today’s surge of antisemitism.
As Jews and Zionists, we know this is not an isolated incident. It is part of a national epidemic of Jew-hatred that will not be solved by polite statements or fleeting news coverage.
In 2024, the FBI recorded the highest number of hate crimes ever against Jewish Americans — representing nearly 70 percent of all religion-based hate crimes, despite Jews comprising only 2 percent of the population. The Anti-Defamation League documented 9,354 antisemitic incidents nationwide, averaging more than 25 anti-Jewish acts per day — harassment, vandalism, assault, bomb threats, and terroristic intimidation.
These attacks are not abstract. They are assaults on our schools, synagogues, community centers, and public events. In New York City alone, 57 percent of recorded hate crimes were antisemitic, even though Jews make up only 12 percent of the population. These incidents are warnings, not anomalies. They are a call to action for every Jew, every Zionist, every supporter of Jewish life and democratic society.
Too often, violence against Jews is excused, minimized, or reframed as political debate. Let me be clear: anti-Jewish hatred has no justification — not as political protest, not as critique of government policy, and certainly not as legitimate discourse. Calling for the destruction of Jews, attacking Jewish institutions, or celebrating violence against Jews is not activism. It is bigotry. It is terror. And when these acts are treated as “one-offs” by the media and authorities, society begins to normalize Jew-hatred.
Our safety is our responsibility. We cannot wait for others to defend us. As a community, we must rise visibly, vocally, and strategically: speak out against antisemitism; demand law enforcement rigorously enforce hate crime laws; protect our institutions with security and moral support; and refuse to let incidents fade from memory. This is not optional. Silence now is complicity.
History and current events show us the stakes. From attacks on synagogues in France, Germany, and the US, to bomb threats and vandalism across campuses and community centers, Jew-hatred is often excused or rationalized — sometimes internationally, sometimes domestically. We have seen how quickly tolerance for attacks on Jews can lead to broader attacks on democracy itself. When Jewish life is threatened, American society is threatened.
What begins with Jews does not end with Jews. Attacks on Jews are a symptom of democratic decay. We, the inheritors of a legacy of survival, resilience, and moral courage, must respond with strength, unity, and action.
To Jewish Americans: stand unapologetically and visibly.
To Zionists: turn moral outrage into organized action and communal defense.
To all defenders of democracy: recognize that antisemitism is not an isolated problem; it is a crisis of values — and act accordingly.
The fire in Mississippi is not just a warning flare. We will not let it be a signal of defeat. We will rise. We will resist. We will protect. And we will fight forward — unapologetically, visibly, and together. Jewish life, and the principles we defend, depend on it.
Yuval David is an Emmy Award–winning journalist, filmmaker, and actor. An internationally recognized advocate for Jewish and LGBT rights, he is a strategic advisor to diplomatic missions and NGOs, and a contributor to global news outlets in broadcast and print news. He focuses on combating antisemitism, extremism, and promoting democratic values and human dignity. Learn more at YuvalDavid.com, instagram.com/Yuval_David_, x.com/yuvaldavid, youtube.com/yuvaldavid, and across social media.
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From Kanye, to Nick Fuentes and Megyn Kelly: Why J.D. Vance’s Silence Matters Now
US Vice President JD Vance delivers remarks at the Wilshire Federal Building in Los Angeles, California, U.S., June 20, 2025. Phone: REUTERS/Daniel Cole/File Photo
In moments of political stress, the most revealing test of leadership is not rhetoric but refusal: what a leader will not tolerate, what he or she will not excuse, and what they will not leave unnamed.
That is why Vice President J.D. Vance’s persistent failure to confront antisemitism on the populist right must be treated as a primary concern, not a side issue.
In a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly spoke approvingly of Nick Fuentes — an openly antisemitic extremist who has praised Hitler, embraced totalitarianism, and argued that Jews should be excluded from American civic life.
Kelly described Fuentes as “very smart” and suggested his ideas had value for the country. Carlson appeared to agree. Within 24 hours of that exchange, Candace Owens reposted Kanye West’s infamous “Death Con 3 on Jewish people” tweet and called it a “vibe.”
This is not fringe behavior leaking into the mainstream. It is the mainstream.
And it is happening inside the political ecosystem that Vice President Vance now helps lead.
Vance’s ties to Carlson are not incidental. Carlson is not merely adjacent to Vance’s politics; he is a close ally, and Vance even employs Carlson’s son. Carlson’s reach — tens of millions of people each week across podcasts, clips, and social platforms — is enormous. That influence now includes the normalization of figures and ideas that were once considered politically radioactive.
That is the context in which Vance’s silence must be judged.
A growing cohort of influential right-wing pundits has adopted a conspiratorial style long associated with antisemitic politics. With Candace Owens as a notable exception, most avoid naming “the Jews” directly, relying instead on euphemisms — “globalists,” shadowy elites, cultural engineers, disloyal insiders. The vocabulary is coded; the architecture is unmistakable.
Carlson has popularized this conspiratorial worldview for millions. Owens has given it its most explicit voice — recycling classic antisemitic libels about Jewish control of finance and media, falsely blaming Jews for the slave trade, attacking Jewish identity itself, and even defending Kanye West’s call for violence against Jews.
Kelly has moved from accommodation to outright normalization, publicly praising Fuentes and treating an admirer of Hitler as a legitimate political voice.
Together, these figures reach tens of millions of Americans across television, YouTube, X, podcasts, and livestreams. Fuentes himself commands a large online following through his “Groyper” network. This is not marginal radicalism. It is mass politics.
Yet from the highest levels of Republican leadership — including the vice presidency — there has been no sustained, unequivocal rejection of these figures or the ideology they propagate.
When asked about antisemitism on the right, Vance has insisted that figures like Tucker Carlson are unfairly maligned and that the Republican “big tent” does not have an antisemitism problem. His framing reduces antisemitism to a vague subset of “extremism,” effectively sidestepping the ideology and its consequences.
The only clear break in Vance’s pattern of evasion proves the rule. When Fuentes grotesquely attacked Vance’s wife on racist grounds, Vance responded clearly and immediately.
But when Jews are targeted, when antisemitic narratives are normalized, and when eliminationist rhetoric spreads through the very coalition that sustains him, the response is silence or deflection. That distinction matters.
Silence Is a Choice and Antisemitism Is Not a Side Issue
No serious political actor is unaware of what is happening. This antisemitism is not subtle. It is rhetorically patterned and widely documented.
We have already seen where this pattern leads. Democratic leaders long ignored antisemitism on the progressive left, laundering it as “anti-Zionism” and activism. It produced exclusion, purity tests, and the quiet normalization of treating mainstream Jewish identity as a problem.
The Democratic Party’s antisemitism problem was not an accident. It was the result of leaders who refused to draw lines early. Some notable Republicans have shown that it is possible to confront this threat directly. Vance, however, appears to be repeating the Democrats’ failure from the right.
Antisemitism does not behave like a policy disagreement that can be managed. It behaves like fire. Once given oxygen, it spreads — from insinuation to justification, from justification to action. Once permitted, it does not remain contained.
And the problem doesn’t just concern Jewish Americans. Antisemitism has always been the earliest warning sign of democratic decay.
Societies do not begin by persecuting everyone. They begin by deciding that one group does not fully belong. Jews have been assigned that role with grim consistency across history.
When antisemitism is normalized — explained, contextualized, ignored — violence follows. Moral barriers erode. Victims are abstracted.
American Jews are seeing those patterns again: campus exclusions, ideological tests, street violence explained away as “context,” and political leaders unwilling to draw lines. This is why antisemitism is not just another culture-war issue. It is a stress test for liberal democracy itself.
Leaders draw boundaries. Through what they name, condemn, or ignore, they signal which ideas corrode civic life and which are allowed to spread.
Vance’s refusal to confront antisemitism — while some figures in his political orbit praise Fuentes and his coalition gives space to rhetoric that threatens Jews — sends a clear message: some forms of hatred are acceptable if they arrive wrapped in populist grievance. There is no neutral ground here. To refuse to draw the line is to move it.
A Moment of Decision
This is not a demand for ideological purity. It is a demand for moral clarity.
Criticizing elites is legitimate. Questioning institutions is healthy. Good-faith debate about America’s relationship with Israel is perfectly valid in a democracy. None of that requires trafficking in conspiratorial antisemitism, excusing it, or pretending not to see it when it appears.
History is unforgiving on this point. Leaders who believed they could harness antisemitism without being consumed by it were always wrong.
J.D. Vance is not a spectator in this moment. He is Vice President of the United States, with power and choice.
If antisemitism continues to metastasize inside the political coalition Vance is helping to build, he will not merely have failed to stop it. He will own part of the cost.
Micha Danzig is an attorney, former IDF soldier, and former NYPD officer. He writes widely on Israel, Zionism, antisemitism, and Jewish history. He serves on the board of Herut North America.