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Jewish community groups host Afghan, Ukrainian evacuees for Thanksgiving meals
(JTA) — Four and a half feet of snow had just fallen on East Aurora, New York, but Kim Kaiser and her fellow volunteers through Jewish Family Services of Western New York weren’t willing to compromise on their Thanksgiving plans.
Those plans involved joining a community Thanksgiving feast on Tuesday night, two days before the holiday, at the Ukrainian American Civic Center in nearby Buffalo, along with the Ukrainian family of six that the volunteers had been supporting since their arrival to the United States at the end of the summer.
The event, which was sponsored by the Buffalo branch of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, was open to all new Ukrainian arrivals, their sponsors and their supporters. A buffet of traditional Thanksgiving foods was on offer, along with musical accompaniment by a Ukrainian singer and pianist.
For Kaiser, the evening was a can’t-miss milestone in her journey supporting recent immigrants who have come to the United States under duress. Last year, she began volunteering through Jewish Family Services to set up housing for Afghan, Congolese and Burmese refugees new to Buffalo, which has a very large refugee population.
“And then I heard of a family in our town that was going to be sponsoring a family from Ukraine,” Kaiser told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “My husband and I knew that we needed, that we wanted to do this.”
In joining the efforts to support refugees, Kaiser participated in an age-old Jewish tradition. The importance of welcoming strangers is so deeply rooted in Jewish tradition and experience that immigration issues have long enjoyed a bipartisan consensus in American Jewish communities even amid deep polarization on other topics. Many cities have social services agencies that began to support Jewish immigrants and now work with new arrivals of all backgrounds, often conscripting Jewish volunteers as the backbone of their work.
Over the last year, those networks have kicked into high gear as not just one but two significant waves of people unable to remain safely in their homes made their way to American shores: first Afghans last year after the U.S. military withdrawal from their country and then Ukrainians this year amid the war instigated by Russia there.
Now, as millions of Americans prepare for their Thanksgiving meals, Jewish volunteers are introducing Ukrainian and Afghan evacuees to Thanksgiving for the first time. Some are even setting aside their own reservations about the holiday to do so. (Thanksgiving’s cheery origin myth is seen by many as whitewashing the genocide of Native Americans that followed the arrival of Europeans in North America.)
In California, Gail Dratch and her husband Elliot have been volunteering through the Orange County Jewish Coalition for Refugees. They will celebrate the holiday on Thursday by inviting a family from Afghanistan into their home, where they’ll serve a halal turkey — in keeping with their Muslim guests’ religious requirements.
“For us, Thanksgiving has become just such a part of what we do,” Dratch told JTA. “And I know my family at least, we don’t think about the beginnings of Thanksgiving, which are really troubling. My daughters especially are very troubled by the original story. But clearly, this family is so thankful for having this opportunity to be in the United States.”
Both Kaiser and Dratch got support for their volunteer circles from their local Jewish federations, in Buffalo and Orange County. They were two of 15 local federations to get support from Jewish Federations of North America, an umbrella group, to resettle nearly 2,000 Afghans through refugee welcome circles, according to Darcy Hirch, a spokesperson.
Gail and Elliot Dratch stand with their partners from the volunteer circle and their evacuee family from Afghanistan, whose faces have been blurred for their safety. (Courtesy of Jewish Federations of North America.)
The Dratches have done far more than cook a special dinner. The Afghan family they are working with arrived on a Special Immigrant Visa, so the father was able to obtain a driver’s license quickly and found work almost immediately. But the mother had to learn to drive from scratch.
“She cried the first time I took her to a big parking lot just to drive around Angel Stadium,” Dratch said, referring to the stadium in Anaheim where the Los Angeles Angels play. “And when she got behind the wheel, she cried because she said it’s been a dream of hers to drive but she never thought she’d be able to, living in Afghanistan.”
The couple’s son, who is in preschool, is learning English very quickly, Dratch said.
“They’re just charming, lovely people,” she said. “It was their dream to come to the United States and raise their son here because they knew he would have far more opportunities here than in Afghanistan. And so we are thankful that this family has come into our lives because they’ve been such a gift to us.”
Dratch’s experience working with displaced people began in 2016 when she went to Greece to work with Syrian refugees.
“I think in the future people are going to look back and say, ‘Why wasn’t more done?’” she said. “And I don’t want to look back and think, ‘Why didn’t I do something?’”
In Buffalo, Kaiser’s volunteer circle takes turns running errands and sharing the duties of a host family for the parents and with four children with whom they have been working since September. Though the family has only been in the United States for a few months, Kaiser said she has noticed a big difference in the children, who she says were initially downcast and shy but are now “smiles all around.”
At the meal on Tuesday, which was set up for 200 people, Kaiser says she saw evacuees mingling with each other, delighting in speaking Ukrainian without relying on Google translate to communicate with each other, and exchanging addresses and telephone numbers with where they can be reached in the Buffalo area. The kids went back to the buffet table multiple times for dessert.
Said Kaiser, “You can tell that every time you do something for them that they are thankful that there’s somebody there to help them and that they can start feeling, finally, a little bit at ease.”
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Qatar’s Sudden Moral Outrage on Gaza Reconstruction Rings Hollow
Qatar’s Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani speaks on the first day of the 23rd edition of the annual Doha Forum, in Doha, Qatar, December 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
Qatar delivered one of the most revealing geopolitical moments of the year when its prime minister, Mohammed Abdulrahman Al Thani, announced that Doha will not pay to rebuild Gaza.
The irony is extraordinary. Qatar, the same state that hosted Hamas’ top leadership for more than a decade, financed Gaza’s bureaucracy, and positioned itself as Hamas’ indispensable diplomatic back channel, now insists it bears no responsibility for the consequences of the very organization it nurtured.
The sudden rediscovery of fiscal restraint would be amusing if the implications weren’t so revealing.
What Doha is attempting is not moral clarity. It is narrative control. By refusing to participate in reconstruction, Qatar avoids the unavoidable admission that its financial, political, and media patronage strengthened the organization that triggered the current war.
If Gaza was “destroyed,” as Qatari officials tirelessly proclaim, then a basic question follows: destroyed in response to what? Hamas executed the October 7 massacre, built an underground fortress of tunnels, stockpiled rockets in civilian zones, and systematically transformed Gaza into a militarized enclave. These were not accidental byproducts of governance. They were deliberate investments — and Qatar was Hamas’ most generous financial sponsor.
The record is not a matter of political interpretation. US Treasury designations, UN reports, and major independent investigations have repeatedly documented that Qatar-based donors, charities, and intermediaries supported Hamas, alongside Al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Mali. Qatari individuals sanctioned by the United States have also raised funds for Jabhat al-Nusra (HTS).
These findings are not Israeli claims; they originate from American counterterrorism authorities and multilateral bodies.
Yet Qatar continues to brand itself as a humanitarian benefactor to Gaza. In practice, its “relief payments” repeatedly functioned as political leverage: money that sustained Hamas’ rule and relieved the organization of basic governing responsibilities, all while allowing Doha to posture as a benevolent mediator.
Meanwhile, other regional powers have made their terms clear regarding Gaza reconstruction. The UAE and Saudi Arabia insist that any reconstruction of Gaza must be tied to a political framework that prevents Hamas from reconstituting itself. Qatar, by contrast, has spent years cultivating an outcome in which Hamas survives as a viable actor, preserving Doha’s influence and its role as a necessary mediator.
If Hamas’ military infrastructure is dismantled, Qatar is left with a failed investment and is now eager to disclaim responsibility for the outcome.
This dynamic is not new. For more than a decade, Qatar and Iran have served as parallel financial engines for Islamist militant groups across the region, using state funds, quasi-state charities, and well-connected private donors to support this activity. Western governments long tolerated the arrangement because Qatar hosts a major US air base, commands immense energy wealth, and uses its media empire to shape regional debate. But the mask is slipping. Doha’s attempt to distance itself from the consequences of its own policy choices exposes a contradiction it can no longer conceal.
This leads to the essential question: who still takes Qatar’s moral lectures seriously?
A state that sheltered Hamas’ leadership now claims neutrality. A state whose sanctioned donors aided extremist networks now positions itself as a humanitarian authority. A state that spent years empowering the group responsible for one of the worst atrocities in modern history now refuses to help rebuild the territory devastated by that group’s actions.
The world should stop pretending not to see the pattern. Qatar’s diplomatic theater cannot hide the facts. The Emirate has influence, resources, and global reach. What it lacks, despite its insistence, is credibility.
Sabine Sterk is CEO of Time To Stand Up For Israel.
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How the Palestinian Authority Encourages Children to Die for Allah
A group of Palestinian children being taught that Israel will be destroyed. Photo: Palestinian Media Watch.
Instead of encouraging children to reach heights in education and contribute something positive in their lives, the Palestinian Authority (PA) Ministry of Education continues to indoctrinate children to see dying for Allah – Shahada (Martyrdom) – as the great ideal.
This child abuse was once again highlighted last week during celebrations of the UN’s “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.”
The Tulkarem Directorate of Education proudly posted photos on Facebook — taken at the school events — of children holding signs glorifying Martyrdom.
One sign portrayed Martyrs as smelling sweeter than a jasmine flower:
“How could a jasmine not envy a homeland that smells of Martyrs?” [Tulkarem Directorate of Education, Facebook page, Dec. 2, 2025]
Another sign proclaimed: “We will live like soaring eagles, and we will die like proud lions; we are all for the homeland and we are all for Palestine.”
These slogans encapsulate the PA’s indoctrination that Martyrdom, even for children, is not tragic or regrettable, but something beautiful, fragrant, and desirable. The PA is encouraging violence, and glorifying the murder of Jews.
Other posters held by students featured the PA map of “Palestine,” which erases Israel and displays the entire territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea as Palestinian land:
One sign was accompanied by the slogan: “The compass will never deviate from the path and will continue to point towards Palestine.”
Other students carried large symbolic keys, representing the so-called “right of return,” which the PA teaches is an inevitable immigration to all of Israel’s cities and towns of nearly six million Arab descendants of so-called “refugees.”
The message to the children is that Israel has no right to exist and that the national mission, or “the path,” remains the elimination of Israel.
The events were attended by high-level PA officials, including Tulkarem Education Directorate Director-General Mazen Jarrar, Tulkarem District representative Rasha Sabah, and Fatah Movement Tulkarem Branch Secretary Iyad Jarrad.
These official PA education events, which glorify violence, romanticize Martyrdom, erase Israel from the map, and instill lifelong hatred towards Israel, are all part of the ongoing PA campaign to ensure that the next generation denies Israel’s right to exist and is willing to fight and seek death to achieve its goals.
The author is the Founder and Director of Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.
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Africa’s Collapse Is a Threat to America and Israel
A woman from El Fasher prays surrounded by displaced women, in a camp in Al-Dabbah, Sudan, Nov. 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig
Regions in Africa are collapsing. Across most of the continent’s 54 countries, governments are tyrannical, Islamist, or both. Many have ceased to function as states, splintering into warring ethnic and religious tribes. The resulting civil wars are not modern conflicts bound by Geneva Conventions, but extermination campaigns. State collapse breeds terrorism, narco-trafficking, and mass migration. Whatever happens in Africa never stays in Africa.
Western discourse about these horrors is predictably partisan. One camp demonizes the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for backing anti-Islamist warlords; the rival camp vilifies Qatar, Turkey, and Iran for bankrolling political Islam. Meanwhile China quietly locks entire governments into multi-generational debt, Russia swaps Wagner mercenaries and weapons for gold and diamond mines, and Europe issues pious statements about human rights while signing migration-control deals with whichever militia currently controls the coast.
The contradictions have become absurd. A Wall Street Journal investigation recently suggested that the UAE deliberately funneled roughly $20 million to Al Qaeda in Mali by paying ransom for an Emirati businessman, from the ruling family, and several Malian politicians. The unspoken accusation was that Abu Dhabi had chosen to fund global terrorism.
Yet the transaction is almost identical to repeated American practice. Washington has unfrozen billions in Iranian assets and granted major concessions to Moscow to secure the release of detained US citizens. In recent years, paying hostage-takers has become standard behavior, not evidence of secret jihadism sympathy.
When Sudan gave sanctuary to Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, the terrorist used Khartoum to plan the 1998 attacks on US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es-Salaam, and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in the Gulf of Eden.
Bin Laden is dead. His host, Omar al-Bashir’s Islamist regime, was overthrown in 2019. Yet the military and paramilitary forces that once served Bashir — the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) — staged a coup in 2021, ejected the civilian transitional government, and plunged the country into a new civil war in April 2023.
Washington believes Sudan’s Muslim Brotherhood — in its various iterations — instigated the war and are now backing SAF commander General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan against RSF’s General Muhammad Daglo — aka Hemedti. The US has imposed sanctions on both generals and on Burhan’s Islamist allies.
Together with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), America has proposed a “Quad” peace plan in which both Burhan and Hemedti step aside and hand power back to civilians. Hemedti pretended to agree to the deal. Burhan vowed war to the bitter end. Short of deploying troops on the ground, the Quad has no tools to force the warring parties to accept the plan.
A Burhan victory risks Sudan sliding back into the global Jihad hub it was in the 1990s, potentially allying with Islamist insurgencies across the Sahel. Senior Islamist militia commander Mosbah Abuzeid, a key Burhan ally, regularly appears draped in a Palestinian keffiyeh, promising his fighters will one day “liberate Jerusalem.” A Hemedti victory, by contrast, installs in Khartoum a ruler accused of genocide, but whose ambitions appear national rather than transnational.
Neither outcome offers Sudan — or the world — anything resembling stability. The pattern repeats across the Sahel and beyond.
In Niger, site of the 2017 ambush that killed four US Green Berets, the military seized power in 2023. Washington rushed aid to the new rulers, reasoning that keeping Islamists out of power mattered more than the junta’s gross human-rights violations.
In neighboring Mali, a brutal military regime battles Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM), an Al Qaeda affiliate that has been trying to topple Bamako by attacking roads, fuel convoys, and population centers.
As America retreats into neo-isolationism, incorrectly identified as “America First,” the post-1945 order is fading away. A multilateral free-for-all system has replaced it.
Ranked by footprint, the main players in Africa today are China, a patchwork of European nations, the US, wealthy Gulf states, and Russia. Each courts local tyrants, bankrolls chosen factions, and carves out resources, ports, or basing rights.
Radical Islamist networks — fed by a loose global coalition — have turned the Sahel, the Maghreb, and the Horn of Africa into human abattoirs. Their opponents answer with equal savagery, often genocide. Libya has been a failed state since 2011. Sudan, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Somalia, and eastern Congo are locked in interconnected wars that have already killed millions and displaced tens of millions.
Africa’s tragedy is structural: Predatory elites, tribalized politics, and the total collapse of any legitimate monopoly on violence ensure that extremists of every stripe flourish while moderates are exterminated. External patrons aggravate the problem while pointing fingers at one another.
The consequences will not stay in Africa. Surging Islamist terrorism, exploding narco-routes, and new waves of desperate migrants will crash against Europe’s shores. Instability will radiate into an already combustible Middle East. Israel and America’s allies will be forced to spend ever-larger resources to contain African terrorist sanctuaries, on top of Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.
Blaming this or that foreign meddler feels good, but changes nothing. Until America and its partners commit to coherent, muscular political settlements backed by real power — instead of sporadic sanctions and press releases — the continent will remain trapped in an escalating cycle of atrocity. The only alternatives on the table today are hypocritical half-measures or abandonment. History has already shown that neither works. Failure usually costs the whole world, dearly.
Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a research fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD).