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Meet the 2 Jews of Guyana, a South American nation with a tradition of religious tolerance
(JTA) — When Janet Jagan, an immigrant from the United States, made history by becoming Guyana’s prime minister in 1997, she was thought to be the country’s only Jew.
In fact, another Jew had recently purchased an island off the coast of Guyana, and 25 years later, there are at least two Jews living in the tiny South American nation. One is a Guyanese-British-Israeli guesthouse operator who has been working in Guyana since the 1970s. The other is a former Madison Avenue marketing executive from Chicago who until recently ran the country’s largest tour operator.
Both offer a window into three dynamics that define Guyana: a government that embraces all faiths, an economy based on extractive industries and an expansive rainforest the country hopes will be a draw for its growing ecotourism industry.
Guyana, an English-speaking country of roughly 800,000, came to international prominence in 1978 as the site of the Jonestown massacre, in which more than 900 followers of cult leader Jim Jones were killed, either by suicide or murder.
These days, though, the country is drawing attention for the recent discovery of oil off its coast. ExxonMobil announced the discovery in 2015 and promptly began developing Guyana’s oil resources. With over 11 billion barrels of reserves and producing over 350,000 barrels per day, Guyana is on track to produce more than 1 million daily barrels by 2030, potentially transforming one of South America’s poorest countries.
It was an earlier extractive industry that first brought Raphael Ades to Guyana. Born in Tel Aviv in 1951 to an Italian-Jewish mother and a Syrian-Jewish father, Ades had a peripatetic childhood. The family moved first to Milan when Ades, who goes by Rafi, was 11, after his father Meyer entered the diamond trade, then two years later to southwestern Germany. They landed in Pforzheim, known at the time as Goldstadt because of the prominence of jewelry and precious stone trading locally.
But the family was not yet settled: In 1967, Meyer took the family to London, where Ades finished high school and took his university entrance exams, excelling in all of the languages he had picked up — English, French, Italian, German and Hebrew. As a psychology student at the University of London, Ades began helping his father, who maintained an office in London’s diamond district, at work. His father contracted out the polishing, and one of the polishers was Indo-Guyanese.
“That day, my dad took out the atlas and started to read up on Guyana,” Ades recalled. “‘This is somewhere I want to go,’ he told me.”
During a trip to visit an Israeli friend in Venezuela, Meyer went on a prospecting trip to Guyana, and registered the Guyana Diamond Export company. When he suffered a heart attack, Ades and his mother flew to Georgetown to be with him. Barely 21, Ades stepped in to take a larger role in the business. He flew with other diamond buyers into the rural mining areas, and learned the operations were producing thousands of carats of diamonds.
“I stayed in Guyana through the second half of 1972 and fell in love with the place,” Ades recalled. “I went to the [main] Stabroek market in Georgetown, seeing all of the iguanas and macaws. When my dad recuperated, I started going back to Guyana myself.”
His mining business thrived. In 1997, he bought Sloth Island, a 160-acre outpost about a two-hour journey from Guyana’s capital, Georgetown, requiring an hour-long car ride through the small villages that dot the Atlantic coast, and then an hour’s boat ride down the widening Essequibo River, passing pristine forests lined with mangroves and Indigenous villages.
When Ades bought the property, it was mostly underwater. He brought in workers from neighboring villages to pump out the water, build up the sand and retaining walls and add structures. Sloths were already there, but he brought ocelots and monkeys from neighboring islands, as well as other birds. (The ocelots, he said, used to eat the electrical wires and open the fridge.)
Now anchoring Sloth Island is a blue and white guesthouse, a series of covered huts for dining and hammock relaxation and a wooden walkway for nature walks through partially cleared forest. Indigenous guides identify the numerous species of plants and birds. The pandemic has receded as a threat to business, and the island hosts tourists every weekend — though climate change is presenting new issues.
“There are many times that the river floods part of the island and I lose sand and soil,” Ades said. “We have to keep on pumping out water and repairing damage to the buildings when that happens.”
The year after he bought the island, his widowed mother, then living in Belgium, broke her hip. When she was well enough to travel she moved to Guyana to be with her son, dividing her time between Georgetown and Sloth Island. When she died in 2009, Ades was at a loss given the lack of a Jewish cemetery, synagogue, and minyan required to say the Mourner’s Kaddish. He was interested in burying her across from Sloth Island, on a hill in the mining town of Bartica just across the river. But a Jewish friend from France facilitated a connection with the Surinamese Jewish community, who prepared the body for burial in the cemetery adjacent to Paramaribo’s main synagogue.
“That’s the last time I was in a synagogue, in 2010, after my mother passed,” Ades recalled.
A view of Raphael Ades’ resort on Sloth Island. (Seth Wikas)
The absence of Jews in Guyana is a notable lacuna in a country that otherwise boasts a broad range of religions. History records a colony of Dutch Jews who settled in northwestern Guyana in the 17th century to produce sugarcane, but the English destroyed that colony in 1666, dispersing the Jewish residents. Jews from Arab lands moved to Guyana in the late 19th and 20th centuries to escape persecution but then migrated elsewhere; Jews fleeing Europe came in 1939 but did not settle long enough to establish a sustained community.
Janet Jagan was an anomaly: Born Janet Rosenberg in Chicago, she married a Guyanese man in the United States and moved with him to Guyana in 1947. Her father Cheddi Jagan was trained as a dentist but entered politics as Guyana gained independence from Great Britain, serving as the first premier of the semi-independent colonial government in the early 1960s and then as the country’s fourth president in the 1990s. When he died in 1997, Janet Jagan was sworn in as his replacement and then won a term of her own later that year. She died in 2009.
According to the 2012 census, Guyana is about two-thirds Christian, a quarter Hindu, and less than 10% Muslim, with smaller populations of Rastafarians and Baha’is. Guyana’s cities and towns are dotted with churches, mandirs and mosques, and the country has enshrined freedom of religion in its constitution. Christian, Hindu and Muslim holy days are national holidays.
“We embrace all faiths and are always looking to build bridges across communities,” Mansoor Baksh, a leader within the country’s Islamic Ahmadiyya movement, told JTA. Omkaar Sharma, a member of the country’s Hindu Pandit Council, said something similar: “We have a long tradition of co-existence and celebrating each other’s holidays. It’s what makes Guyana special.”
On the occasion of the Hindu festival of Diwali last month, President Mohamed Irfaan Ali, South America’s only Muslim head of government, emphasized the country’s inclusivity when he told the nation: “Under the One Guyana banner, our people are coming together, rejecting the forces of division and hatred, and uniting in the pursuit of peace, progress and prosperity.”
The sentiments have had practical implications for the country’s two Jews. In 2017, when a Guyana Tourism Authority group was slated to travel to Suriname for a conference on travel catering to Muslim tourists, the Mauritanian organizer of the event protested the presence of Jewish participants. There were supposed to be two: Ades, and Andrea de Caires, then head of the country’s largest private tour operator, Wilderness Explorers.
“I got a call from the Guyanese Tourism Minister at 1 a.m., who asked me if I was Jewish, and he explained the situation. And I thought, this [antisemitism] is still going on in the world?” de Caires remembered.
The Guyanese tourism minister refused to abide by the ban, de Caires proudly said, and told the Surinamese hosts and conference organizers: “If Jews aren’t allowed, then none of us are going.” The Surinamese, long known for their religious tolerance, also refused to accept the prohibition, and said that all participants were welcome (in Suriname’s capital Paramaribo, a mosque stands next to a synagogue and they share a parking lot). Both de Caires and Ades attended the event.
“When I arrived at the conference, the Surinamese minister of tourism welcomed me, and the director general of Guyana’s tourism ministry gave me the microphone to open the conference. We [Rafi and I] went in with our heads held high,” de Caires said.
De Caires has lived in Guyana since 2010 but her path to Guyana took a different route from Ades’. Born Andrea Levine in Chicago as the granddaughter of a rabbi, she traveled extensively as a child with her physician father, who taught her the importance of creating a Jewish home.
“Judaism was always a part of my life — we celebrated the holidays, lit candles on Friday night, but my father would often say, ‘Going to temple doesn’t make you Jewish,’” Caires said.
De Caires moved to New Jersey and trained as a jeweler, working with clients that included Tiffany’s. She transitioned to working at Bloomingdale’s in sales and then management, and then she moved on to the cosmetic company Borghese, where she became vice president of sales and marketing.
“I got caught up in Madison Avenue, a single mom of three kids, and then I met Salvador,” she recalled. “And I knew there was no point in pursuing a relationship if I wouldn’t move to Guyana.”
Salvador is Salvador de Caires, her Guyanese husband whom she met through her sister. Visiting Guyana for the first time in 2008, she fondly recalled her first visit to the Karanambu Lodge in the country’s south, a former cattle ranch that is now a conservation hub sitting at the center of Guyana’s forests, rivers, and savannahs. The most accessible route is via airplane from Georgetown and then four-by-four vehicle. While based at the lodge, de Caires continued to take conference calls for her New York-based career, while learning more about Guyana and the business of running a tourist destination off the beaten path. She and Salvador moved permanently to Guyana in 2010 to take over the day-to-day management of the lodge.
“When we moved to Guyana, it never occurred to me there would never be a Jewish community here. There’s a Jewish community everywhere,” de Caires remembered thinking. “That was pretty startling.”
Andrea de Caires is shown with Guyanese President Irfaan Ali. (Courtesy of de Caires)
So when they moved from Karanambu in 2016 to work at (and eventually lead) Wilderness Explorers in Georgetown, de Caires was committed to opening her home to Guyanese friends and neighbors with Hanukkah parties and Passover seders.
“The first year we had a Hanukkah party, our invitation went out for latkes and black cake (a traditional Guyanese dish), and we had government ministers, ambassadors and local friends over,” she recalled. “I told the story of the holiday and we lit the candles.”
It wasn’t the first time de Caires had been single handedly responsible for the fostering Jewish traditions in Guyana. She recalled an incident in 2012 when a Colombian-Jewish tourist came to Karanambu Lodge during Passover and asked her to make matzah brei. Under a thatched roof, she was able to make the holiday delicacy for her visitor.
For Ades, too, it is hosting that makes him most appreciate his chosen home in Guyana.
“I will always remember Feb. 1, 1963, the day we left Israel. We had always planned to return,” he said. “But I’m still here. Between then and now I have lived in so many places, and Guyana has been my home for a very long time. One of the best parts of my week is meeting new people who come to Sloth Island — people of different backgrounds from around the world. It is wonderful to welcome them all.”
De Caires plans to share her Jewish traditions once again next month, hosting another Hanukkah party for her Guyanese friends and neighbors. And with the worst of the pandemic in the rearview mirror, both Ades and de Caires are looking forward to booming tourist seasons. De Caires and her husband are also ready to begin a new professional chapter: They recently accepted new positions with a Guyanese conglomerate to develop its tourism operations at a riverine resort.
Does de Caires feel like she has lost something by establishing roots in a place without an established Jewish community?
“If I left here, that would mean there’s one less person to support others [including Jews],” de Caires replied. “I think it’s interesting Rafi and I are both in tourism — you need to have a lot of tenacity, but it’s important that we welcome others to this beautiful country.”
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The post Meet the 2 Jews of Guyana, a South American nation with a tradition of religious tolerance appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israel Exposes Iranian Terror Network as IRGC-Linked Cells Expand Attacks Across Europe
Charred remains of ambulances belonging to Hatzola, a Jewish community organization, which were set on fire in an incident that the police say is being treated as an antisemitic hate crime, in northwest London, Britain, March 23, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Hannah McKay
Israel has exposed a far-reaching Iranian-backed terrorist network targeting Israeli officials and overseas assets, as the Islamist regime intensifies a widening campaign of attacks against Jewish and Israeli targets across Europe through proxy groups.
On Monday, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency the Mossad, the Israel Defense Forces, and the country’s domestic security agency the Shin Bet released a joint statement confirming that authorities had uncovered and dismantled an Iranian-backed network after several of its members were arrested in Azerbaijan last month.
Following the onset of the US-Israeli war against Iran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the regime’s elite military force responsible for overseas terrorist operations and the coordination of proxy groups, has escalated efforts to establish cells abroad and carry out attacks, widening what officials describe as a sustained campaign of destabilization beyond the Middle East.
According to Israeli intelligence, members of the cell had smuggled explosive drones into Azerbaijan while gathering intelligence on potential targets under direct instructions from Iranian operatives as part of an organized effort to lay the groundwork for planned attacks.
With the arrest of the cell’s members, authorities were able to expose the broader terrorist network and its chain of command, including several senior operatives who were later killed during the US-Israeli campaign against Iran that began on Feb. 28.
Among those killed was Rahman Moqadam, head of the Special Operations Division within IRGC intelligence and the senior commander overseeing the network.
Moqadam allegedly recruited and trained operatives both inside and outside Iran to gather intelligence on Israeli political leaders, security officials, Israeli and Western military facilities, ports, and Israeli shipping routes worldwide.
Last month, Azerbaijan foiled a series of planned attacks linked to Iranian operatives on its territory, including plots targeting the Israeli embassy in Baku, a synagogue, and Jewish community leaders, as well as the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline, which runs through Georgia and Turkey and supplies roughly a third of Israel’s oil imports.
Police arrested at least seven Azeri nationals in connection with the investigation.
At the time, government authorities said law enforcement “prevented terrorist acts and intelligence operations in Azerbaijan organized by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).”
According to Israeli security officials, Mahdi Yekeh-Dehghan was identified as the network’s regional commander in Azerbaijan after Turkish authorities arrested six suspects, including an Iranian national, in January during coordinated raids across five provinces on charges of political and military espionage for Iran.
Yekeh-Dehghan is said to have directed the cell’s operations, including efforts to smuggle explosive drones from Iran through Turkey to Cyprus and to collect intelligence on US forces at Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey.
Since the start of the war, European governments have tightened domestic security amid mounting fears that Iran could, in retaliation, activate proxy networks across the continent against Israeli and Western interests.
But even with increased security and heightened intelligence monitoring, Europe has seen a string of attacks targeting Jewish and Israeli institutions, several of them claimed by Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya, a newly emerged Iran-linked terror organization.
Just in April, the group claimed responsibility for a wave of attacks across the UK, Germany, North Macedonia, and the Netherlands, many of them concentrated in London.
Since emerging in early March, it has taken credit for at least 15 attacks against Jewish and Western targets across Europe.
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University of Michigan regents race turns into Israel litmus test for Democrats
A Republican businesswoman from a well-known Jewish family who narrowly lost a bid for the University of Michigan Board of Regents in 2022 suggested on Monday that Democrats may have handed her a second chance by nominating a candidate who is facing backlash for past praise of Hezbollah.
In an interview, Lena Epstein said the choice creates a “clear contrast” in a race that could be shaped by campus antisemitism and wars in the Middle East.
The Michigan Democratic convention on Sunday nominated civil rights attorney Amir Makled to run for the eight-member board tasked with governing the state’s university in the general election over incumbent regent Jordan Acker, who is Jewish. Acker had drawn criticism from pro-Palestinian students and activists over the university’s response to protests following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack and the war in Gaza.
Makled, who legally represented some demonstrators and backed calls for divestment from Israel, has since faced scrutiny over past social media posts viewed as pro-Hezbollah and antisemitic. He called Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah a “martyr” after he was killed by Israeli strikes in 2024.
The controversy led the Service Employees International Union last week to rescind its endorsement of Makled. The posts were later deleted.
“Eyes are open, chills are going down people’s spines, terrified at the prospect of Makled representing their families at the University of Michigan Board of Regents,” said Epstein, a 2008 graduate of the University of Michigan’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business.
Epstein said she is now reaching out to Jewish Democrats who previously opposed her, framing the race as a nonpartisan effort to confront antisemitism and tensions over Israel on campus. Epstein lost her 2022 bid by just 0.7 percentage points in an election year when Democrats swept every statewide office. Democrats currently hold six seats on the regents board.
The Republican Party nominated Epstein last month alongside Michael Schostak, who is also Jewish and running for another open seat against incumbent Paul Brown. “When it comes to Israel and combating antisemitism on campus, there will be no greater regent than me,” Epstein said.
Epstein’s past controversies
Epstein is a third-generation owner and the chief executive of Vesco Oil Corporation, the business her grandfather Eugene Epstein founded in Southfield, Michigan, in 1947. Her mother’s family founded Winkelman’s department store in Detroit.
She is no stranger to controversy.
Epstein, who served as the Trump campaign co-chair in Michigan in 2016, made headlines after a country club her family had belonged to for generations canceled a scheduled fundraiser for her when she ran for Congress in 2018.
That year, days before she lost her bid for a U.S. House seat to Rep. Haley Stevens, who is now running in a Democratic primary for an open Senate seat, Epstein caused an uproar by inviting a Messianic rabbi to offer a prayer for the victims of the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue massacre.
In 2023, Epstein faced scrutiny during her bid for chair of the Michigan Republican Party after saying she considered herself a “Jewish Messianic believer of Christ.” Mainstream Judaism does not accept Messianic Jews because they believe in the divinity of Christ and try to convert Jews to Christianity. Epstein later withdrew from the race.
In the interview on Monday, Epstein said she “never was” a Messianic Jew and apologized to anyone offended by it, calling it “nothing more than a blip.”
Epstein said she remains “very, very proud” of her Jewish identity and said she is actively involved in the community, including membership at Temple Beth El in Bloomfield Hills, a Reform congregation, where she said her eight-year-old daughter attends religious school, and participation in family milestones such as a recent bar mitzvah at Adat Shalom Synagogue, a Conservative congregation in Farmington Hills. She said she studies the Torah every Tuesday night with her mother and with a Chabad rabbi.
“I’m 100% Jewish,” she continued. “I apologize if any of that discussion offended anybody. But I definitely want to be very, very clear that my existence as a Jew, my love of Judaism, my commitment and passion for Judaism have never been stronger, and it’s been a lifelong pursuit.”
A test of Democrats’ Israel divide
Michigan is one of a few states in which voters play a direct role in choosing university overseers.
Makled’s nomination comes at a fraught moment for the Democratic Party, testing its coalition and approach to Israel policy amid the wars in Gaza and Iran. Michigan, home to the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the United States, was also the birthplace of the 2024 Uncommitted movement, which protested the Biden administration’s support for Israel in the war against Hamas that led more than 100,000 voters in Michigan to leave their primary ballots blank.
Anonymous text messages to state Democratic Party donors claimed that Acker, who met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog in January, would “put Israel first.” Acker’s home was vandalized in 2024 by pro-Palestinian protesters, some of whose homes were later raided by federal authorities.
Days before the convention, The Guardian reported that Acker had allegedly made “lewd” comments about a Democratic strategist in a private group chat. A lawyer for Acker said he had “doubts about the authenticity” of the evidence.
Makled is an ally of Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive U.S. Senate candidate from Michigan rising in the polls. El-Sayed, the son of Egyptian immigrants and a critic of Israel, faced backlash for appearing alongside streamer Hasan Piker, who has been accused of antisemitic rhetoric. In an interview with CNN aired Sunday, El-Sayed said that the Israeli government is “evil” like Hamas. “Killing tens of thousands of people makes you pretty damn evil,” El-Sayed said. “It’s not how evil is this one versus that one — Hamas: Evil, Israeli government: Evil. We can say both.”
Appearing at the El-Sayed campaign rally with Piker earlier this month, Makled told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he stood by his defense of the pro-Palestinian encampment while condemning the attack on Acker’s home.
At the Democratic convention on Sunday, Stevens, who is perceived as the preferred candidate of pro-Israel voters, was booed by delegates.
JTA contributed to this report.
The post University of Michigan regents race turns into Israel litmus test for Democrats appeared first on The Forward.
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Child Pregnancies Surge in Gaza Amid Reports of Hamas Fighters Demanding Sex From ‘Wives of Martyrs’ for Food
Hamas gunmen stand guard on the day that hostages held in Gaza since the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack, are handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), as part of a ceasefire and hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Oct. 13, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
The sexual depravity that Hamas proudly broadcast to the world during its Oct. 7, 2023, rampage across southern Israel has now show up in Gaza, with video testimonies emerging of pervasive abuse, coercion for food, and an increase in both child marriages and child pregnancies.
In a new bombshell report, the Daily Mail presented findings from both the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) into rising child marriages and an anonymous journalist at Jusoor News who filmed Gaza residents reporting on the exploitation of women.
According to the UNFPA, while pre-war numbers of child brides fell to 11 percent in 2022, a decrease from 26 percent in 2009, marriage records from 2025 showed that at least 400 girls between 14 and 16 had become wives. This number likely only counts a fraction of the total as many such religious ceremonies to theologically justify child abuse go unreported.
Nestor Owomuhangi, whose official title is “UNFPA Representative to Palestine,” explained that war and collapsing humanitarian conditions had exacerbated this regression.
“We are witnessing the dismantling of a generation’s future,” Owomuhangi said.
Multiple men told Jusoor News they had seen or heard of Hamas members abusing women, with one reporting that a Hamas charity organization had blackmailed his neighbor and sought to become her pimp. “They wanted her to whore herself in exchange for a food parcel, or an aid voucher, or 100 shekels,” he said.
Exchange rates on Monday placed 100 shekels as equal to $33.48.
A fighter in Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, confirmed the sex crimes, saying that Hamas members took advantage of the “wives of martyrs” in a tent in the Gharabli area in Deir al-Balah. He was told to say nothing but chose to tear down the tent, declaring, “We told them it was an insult to our honor and dignity.”
Another anonymous man in Gaza said “we were contacted by the wife of a friend. She had asked a Qassam Brigades commander to help her, but he took advantage of her. His behavior is disgraceful. We investigated the matter and found her in a tent in the Gharabli area where a bunch of Qassam members were taking advantage of her.”
He also reported that “we informed the leadership, but we were told we had to keep silent about it.”
An unnamed woman said she had experienced sexual harassment from a man at a Hamas charity who appeared religious when she sought help. “I asked him how he could talk to me like that. And he should be ashamed,” she said. “I told him I would expose him. He said, ‘You cannot expose me; I am the government here.’”
One anonymous elderly woman said that “one charity in Gaza is unfortunately the biggest perpetrator. From its chairman all the way down to its doorman, it’s being done by all their employees and members, as though it’s an organization set up for sexual harassment, psychological abuse, and harassing young women.”
Reports of rising sexual abuse against girls and widows come as Hamas continues to resist pressure to disarm in accordance with the US-backed ceasefire and peace plan for Gaza.
On Sunday, the New York Times reported that two Hamas officials had said the Palestinian terrorist group planned to surrender thousands of automatic rifles and small weapons which belonged to Gaza police and other internal security organizations. However, this would not entail full disarmament, which according to the peace plan is a key prerequisite for beginning major reconstruction of Gaza and for Israel, whose military currently controls 53 percent of the enclave, to further withdraw its force.
According to several reports, Hamas recently rejected the Board of Peace’s eight-month phased plan for the terrorist group to disarm. US President Donald Trump proposed the Board of Peace in September to oversee his plan to end the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, subsequently saying it would address other conflicts.
Meanwhile, Hamas is further tightening its grip on the nearly half of Gazan territory it still controls, where the vast majority of the population lives.
Since the initial ceasefire took effect in October, Hamas has imposed a brutal crackdown, sparking clashes with rival militias as it seeks to eliminate any opposition.
The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC) — an Israel-based research institute — released a report last month explaining how the US-Israeli war against the Islamic regime in Iran had disrupted the second phase of the ceasefire agreement in Gaza, which required Hamas to disarm in order for Israeli troops to withdraw.
Earlier this month, Hamas demanded that the Israel Defense Forces exit first before giving up weapons.
ITIC’s analysts warned that this delay could enable Hamas — which still controls approximately 47 percent of Gaza — to rearm. The Islamist terrorists are reportedly smuggling in guns from Egypt and creating weapons internally.
In late March, Turkey reaffirmed its longstanding support for Hamas when the terrorist group’s senior negotiator Khalil Al-Khaya and its political bureau delegation met with Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalın. Kalın had also met with senior Hamas leaders in Istanbul the previous week.
According to the Middle East Monitor, the Hamas delegation “expressed its appreciation to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for Turkey’s efforts to achieve peace in Gaza.”