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US soldiers stationed in Kiryat Gat turn sleepy Israeli city into an unexpected hotspot
(JTA) — At one of Kiryat Gat’s main shopping complexes, U.S. Army camouflage does everything but blend in.
American troops in fatigues move between shawarma stands and sports-shoe stores, a new presence in the southern industrial city, part of a multinational civil-military coordination center set up to monitor the Gaza ceasefire. The center, housed in a converted logistics building about 15 miles from the Gaza border, opened last week with roughly 200 American personnel as well as smaller contingents from at least eight other countries.
By the weekend, the sight of Americans in uniform had become routine. “Big guys, all in perfect formation,” one shopkeeper at the BIG mall told the Walla news site, “like they came out of a Hollywood movie.”
Cafes, restaurants, and food delivery services have been “working around the clock” to accommodate the city’s new foreign guests. On social media, commenters called the deployment “a new world order,” noting that Kiryat Gat was trending for the first time in years — and not because of pop star Ninet Tayeb, still the city’s most famous export.
City officials have leaned into the moment. Mayor Kfir Swisa publicly welcomed the deployment, telling residents the personnel were “received with open arms,” framing the center as both a security asset and an unexpected local boon. Senior U.S. officials have visited the site in quick succession, including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who said U.S. ambassador to Yemen Steven Fagin would oversee the civilian side of operations, while U..S Central Command’s Adm. Brad Cooper would handle the military track, including Hamas’s disarmament.
During an interview on Channel 12’s current-affairs program, host Avri Gilad asked Swisa whether the arrival of the Americans had changed life in the city. Swisa replied that it “puts Kiryat Gat on the map,” adding that “now the Americans have also realized what many young Israelis already know” — that the city’s location near the cross-country Highway 6, its rail link, and its “rich cultural and sports scene” make it an appealing place to be.
Gilad cut in, “They didn’t come here for the sports life.” He went on to ask if there had been “any new love interests,” echoing online chatter about whether romances might bloom between U.S. soldiers and local women, before inquiring how many McDonald’s branches Kiryat Gat has.
“They haven’t asked for a hamburger yet,” Swisa said. “They’re enjoying the local Kiryat Gat food.”
The BIG shopping complex where the American soldiers have been spotted is in Carmei Gat, a neighborhood whose rapid growth prompted one mainstream Israeli newspaper to dub Kiryat Gat as the new capital of the Negev, overtaking Beersheba as the region’s commercial hub. A new housing agreement set to be signed later this week in the presence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will add 21,000 apartments in Carmei Gat, doubling Kiryat Gat’s size and making it one of the 10 largest cities in Israel.
The neighborhood is also home to evacuees from Nir Oz, the Gaza envelope kibbutz that was relocated there after being attacked on Oct. 7. One convenience store owner, Shai Avisror, himself displaced from Kibbutz Zikim, said anyone arriving in uniform gets a free coffee or cold drink.
“Soldiers are the holy of holies,” he told one reporter, though it’s unclear if the same rule applies to the Americans.
Not everyone shared Swisa’s enthusiasm, with some residents warning that the American presence would endanger the city. “Until now it was relatively quiet here, and now we have become a strategic target,” one commenter wrote. Another wrote that the deployment would give “Hamas, Iran and the Houthis a reason to launch missiles” at the city, and advised homeowners to start selling apartments quickly because “Kiryat Gat is about to become Ofakim” — a reference to the Gaza envelope town that was attacked on Oct. 7. A third commented that while the city now boasted “a U.S. command center,” it still lacked “a cinema, a vehicle-testing station, a pub or even one good restaurant open on weekends.”
He added, “Thank God we are on Highway 6 and can get away fast.”
One commenter went further, alleging that the Americans were “FEMA soldiers” forming a multinational force that would eventually replace the IDF and police “in preparation for a single world government,” a conspiracy theory tied to claims about “Agenda 2030.”
Much of the commentary reflected a broader unease over who is now directing events in Gaza. One user warned that “the Americans are only the beginning,” predicting “an airlift of Turkish and Indonesian soldiers soon and God knows who else they’ve sold us to.” Referring to Netanyahu as “Trump’s prime minister,” one commenter tied the moment to the dispute over the haredi draft, writing that with ultra-Orthodox men refusing to enlist, “there’s no choice now but to bring in American reinforcements.”
Netanyahu has said he would not allow the deployment of Turkish troops in Gaza and insisted that Israel remains fully sovereign, telling his cabinet that it “does not seek anyone’s approval” for actions carried out there.
Critics say the Kiryat Gat command center reflects a mismatch between its stated purpose and Israel’s main security priorities, focusing on humanitarian coordination and ceasefire maintenance rather than disarmament and anti-smuggling operations. Meir Ben Shabbat, head of the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy and a former national security adviser, wrote in the Israel Hayom daily that Israel “must eliminate the vagueness concerning headquarters and mediation and coordination entities” and explain what the center will actually contribute toward achieving Israel’s objectives in Gaza.
But for now, the relationship between the U.S. soldiers and their newly adopted city is still in a honeymoon period. An AI-generated video circulating on social media and shared by the city showed an American soldier speaking fluent Hebrew and praising Kiryat Gat’s “falafel, with tahina and amba — just delicious.”
The post US soldiers stationed in Kiryat Gat turn sleepy Israeli city into an unexpected hotspot appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump defends Tucker Carlson, whose interview with antisemite Nick Fuentes split Republicans
(JTA) — President Donald Trump defended Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with avowed antisemite Nick Fuentes, weighing in on a debate over antisemitism that has roiled the Republican party.
“I’ve found him to be good. He’s said good things about me over the years,” Trump told a reporter over the weekend who asked about Carlson’s interview. “You can’t tell him who to interview. If he wants to interview Nick Fuentes, I don’t know much about him, but if he wants to do it, get the word out.”
The president’s comments were his first on a growing divide within the Republican party over Carlson giving a platform on his top-rated podcast to Fuentes and over the growth of the antisemitic Fuentes-led “groyper” movement on the right.
Jewish conservatives and some of their allies have expressed alarm at explicit antisemitism within the movement. Conservative writer Rod Dreher recently estimating that as many as 40 percent of young GOP staffers in Washington, D.C. are followers of the 27-year-old Fuentes, who complained to Carlson that “organized Jewry” undermines American unity.
Yet neither Trump nor Vice President J.D. Vance has joined the chorus of condemnation for Fuentes’ brand of white supremacy. Vance, who employs Carlson’s son Buckley on his staff, in recent days defended Buckley from a right-wing Jewish activist’s accusations of antisemitism without directly addressing the Fuentes controversy. The vice president was also criticized for responding to a college student’s question about Israel and Jews without acknowledging the question’s antisemitic underpinnings.
The debate over Carlson was stoked when the president of the right-wing Heritage Foundation defended Carlson. A growing number of Heritage Foundation staffers and associates, both Jewish and not, have since distanced themselves from the think tank. Legal fellow Adam Mossoff, who is Jewish, and former board member Robert George, a Princeton University professor and prominent public intellectual, recently left Heritage, citing its handling of Carlson.
And in the cultural sphere, the actress and podcaster Dasha Nekrasova was also dropped by her agent on Friday over a weeks-old interview with Fuentes that she and her co-host conducted on the podcast “Red Scare.” “Nekrasova had a recurring role on HBO’s “Succession,” and “Red Scare” was initially a thought leader on the young left before lurching hard to the right in recent years.
Carlson campaigned with Trump for his 2024 reelection and has significant influence within his administration, while Trump dined with Fuentes and the antisemitic rapper Ye in Mar-a-Lago in 2022, an incident that prompted criticism from staunch Jewish Republican allies. Trump has since claimed he didn’t know who Fuentes was at the time.
Meanwhile, Paul Ingrassia, a Trump administration staffer who attended a Fuentes rally last year and recently withdrew his nomination from a Cabinet-level post over the revelation of texts in which he said he had a “Nazi streak,” remains in the administration. Instead Ingrassia found a new position as deputy general counsel of the General Services Administration.
Carlson, for his part, has doubled down, even as some sponsors have quietly exited his show. Last week he disparaged Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the anti-Nazi pastor who was executed in 1945 for his involvement in the German resistance movement. Carlson also compared the Israel Defense Forces to Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann.
The GOP’s fault lines over Fuentes and antisemitism aren’t breaking as cleanly as those over other issues. Even a newly minted Trump adversary on the right, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, declined to condemn Carlson or Fuentes in a recent CNN interview.
“I defend every single person’s free speech rights. I think that’s incredibly important. So I don’t apologize for that. And I don’t believe in cancelling people. And I think it’s important for people like Tucker Carlson and yourself to interview everyone,” Greene told Dana Bash over the weekend.
On CNN Greene noted that she had spoken at a Fuentes-led conference in 2022, but claimed, “I don’t know Nick Fuentes. He’s someone I’ve never exchanged text messages with or phone calls.”
Asked specifically about Fuentes’s past antisemitic comments, Greene continued, “You should have Nick Fuentes on your show, and you can ask him questions about that. I myself am not antisemitic. I have never criticized the Jewish people or said anything about them in particular. I am critical of the government of Israel.”
The post Trump defends Tucker Carlson, whose interview with antisemite Nick Fuentes split Republicans appeared first on The Forward.
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How Mussolini’s Jewish lover changed Fascist art and design
Not even 70 years after Italy unified, Benito Mussolini’s staged march on Rome so unnerved the government that King Victor Emmanuel III named him prime minister, opening the door to Fascist rule. “And so then began the task of selling Italy: at home, abroad, and as an idea in itself,” according to “The Future Was Then: The Changing Face of Fascist Italy.”
Now on view at Manhattan’s Poster House, the exhibition examines the intersection of propaganda and art in Mussolini’s Italy. Featuring 75 works on loan from the Fondazione Massimo e Sonia Cirulli in Bologna and curated by photographic artist and author B.A. Van Sise, the show explores how the regime used bold design, vivid color and modernist imagery to shape the nation’s self-image and fuel the Futurist movement.
But beyond the bombast, the sleek typefaces and arresting compositions lies a deeper, more complicated story. At its heart is Mussolini’s longtime lover and muse, Margherita Sarfatti, a Venetian Jew whose aesthetic sensibilities helped define the visual language of Italian Fascism.
“It’s not a Jewish show, though a person could argue it has a huge Jewish element since everything goes back to Margherita Sarfatti, who’s as Jewish as they come,” Van Sise said. “Fundamentally, Sarfatti’s the core of the show. The entire Italian art establishment changes gears because Mussolini’s girlfriend likes Futurism.”
Born in 1880 into a wealthy Jewish family, Sarfatti became a journalist, art critic and socialite who served as Mussolini’s adviser, biographer and cultural strategist. She funded Il Popolo d’Italia and was, as the exhibition text notes, “the uncrowned queen of Italy.”
“Think Gertrude Stein with better couture,” Van Sise said. “Every single thing in this show exists because of her — the Duce’s girlfriend adored Futurist art, and her taste dictated the direction of Italy’s visual culture. Artists and movements jumped ship to follow her lead, obeying in advance.”
Her influence is evident in pieces such as Marcello Dudovich’s 1936 poster “Esposizione Rhodia Albene alla Rinascente,” which depicts two elegantly dressed women striding in lockstep, evoking Sarfatti’s emphasis on fashion, modernity and movement.
The exhibit unfolds in three sections — “Italy as an Idea,” “Italy at Home,” and “Italy in the World” — each highlighting how Italian identity was constructed through imagery that linked domestic life, political messaging, and global ambition.
“Cioccolato Ali d’Italia,” a poster from 1931, depicts a sleek silver aircraft soaring across the page. Created to commemorate Minister of Aviation Italo Balbo’s transatlantic flights to South America, the image showcases Italy’s growing aviation prowess. A small rendering of Columbus’ ship tucked in the corner underscores the regime’s imperial aspirations.
The 1933 “Ardita Fiat” poster highlights the introduction of the Fiat Ardita, a streamlined, torpedo-shaped car whose name, which means “the daring one,” embodied Fascist vigor. In it a woman sits behind the wheel, her white gloves and black fez hat mirroring those worn by the Arditi, Italy’s elite assault troops.
Van Sise said it was essential to acknowledge the significant, though often overlooked, role Italian Jews played in Fascism’s early years. Among them were Gino Arias, an economist who addressed the National Fascist Party shortly before it seized power in 1922; Elisa Majer Rizzoli, who led the party’s women’s wing; and Guido Jung, an Orthodox Jew who served as finance minister.
“It was really important to include the Jewish history of the Italian Fascist period because it’s partly my own,” Van Sise said. “My family were Tunisian and Libyan Jews who came to Italy, and some branches were old-line Italian families — there for centuries, if not a millennium.”
Eventually Jews were targeted in Italy. By 1938 Mussolini had enacted racial laws, forcing thousands of Jews, including Sarfatti and Van Sise’s grandfather, to flee. Sarfatti spent her exile in Switzerland, Argentina, and Uruguay before returning after the war, only to learn her sister was among the more than seven thousand Italian Jews murdered in the Holocaust.
Van Sise’s grandfather also returned, before the war’s end, and joined the partisans.
He provides the exhibition’s stark coda: a small black-and-white photograph showing the corpses of Mussolini and others hanging by their heels in Milan’s Piazzale Loreto. The photographer was Van Sise’s grandfather.
“It’s a brutal image,” Van Sise said. “But it brings the story full circle — art, politics and identity collapsing into history itself.”
“The Future Was Then: The Changing Face of Fascist Italy” runs through Feb. 22 at the Poster House.
The post How Mussolini’s Jewish lover changed Fascist art and design appeared first on The Forward.
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Berlin to Lift Suspension of Israel Weapons Sales, but Says Ceasefire Must Hold
A German and Israeli flag fly, on the day Chancellor Friedrich Merz meets with Israeli President Isaac Herzog for talks, in Berlin, Germany, May 12, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Liesa Johannssen
Germany on Monday moved to resume weapons sales to Israel that had been suspended since August over the war in Gaza, but said the decision is subject to the observance of the ceasefire and the large-scale provision of humanitarian aid.
Germany, the second-largest exporter of arms to Israel after the United States, announced a suspension of some arms exports to Israel in August, amid mounting popular pressure over the war.
The decision affected weapons and systems that could be used in Gaza but not others deemed necessary for Israel to defend itself from external attacks.
Berlin will lift the suspension order on Nov. 24 and return to a case-by-case review of arms exports to Israel, while continuing to monitor the developments on the ground, a German government spokesperson said on Monday.
HUMANITARIAN AID MUST CONTINUE ‘ON A LARGE SCALE’
The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas “is the basis for this decision, and we expect everyone to abide by the agreements that have been made – that includes maintaining the ceasefire,” a second government spokesperson said.
“It also means that humanitarian aid is provided on a large scale and that the process continues in an orderly manner, as agreed,” the spokesperson added.
Germany remains committed to supporting a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians on the basis of a two-state solution and would continue to engage in supporting reconstruction in Gaza, the spokesperson said.
Germany is one of Israel‘s staunchest supporters, in part because of historical guilt for the Nazi Holocaust – a policy known as the “Staatsraison.”
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz came under massive criticism from his own conservatives for the decision to partially suspend the deliveries, which he said was in response to Israel‘s plan at the time to expand operations in Gaza.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Germany provided 30 percent of Israel‘s major arms imports in 2019-2023, primarily naval equipment including Sa’ar 6-class frigates (MEKO A-100 Light Frigates), which were used in the Gaza war.
ISRAEL CALLS ON OTHERS TO FOLLOW
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar on X lauded Germany for its decision to lift the order.
“I call on other governments to adopt similar decisions, following Germany,” he wrote.
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said the decision, in which his ministry was closely involved, was “responsible and correct” and that the ceasefire appeared to be sustainable.