Picture of Rebbe Accompanies Jared Kushner’s Op-Ed

By COLlive reporter 

Jared Kushner, who served as a senior adviser to former President Donald Trump and helped broker the historic peace deals between Israel and Arab countries, penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Monday.

Titled “Opportunity Beckons in the Mideast,” Kushner touted the achievement of the Abraham Accords and the opportunity it provides. “It would be a mis­take not to build on the progress in the Mid­dle East,” he wrote to the Biden administration.

“Elim­i­nat­ing the ISIS caliphate and bring­ing about six peace agree­ments—be­tween Is­rael and the United Arab Emi­rates, Bahrain, Su­dan, Mo­rocco and Kosovo, plus unit­ing the Gulf Co­op­er­a­tion Coun­cil—has changed the par­adigm,” Kushner said.

He dismissed the long held view, by the Obama, Clinton and other administrations, that the Arab-Israeli conflict could only be solved after Israel and the Palestinians reach an agreement. “That was never true,” he wrote.

Kushner wrote: “I was touched when I read in the As­so­ci­ated Press of a Jew­ish man who said he felt more com­fort­able wear­ing a yarmulke in Dubai than in France. The es­trange­ment be­tween Jews and Mus­lims in the Mid­dle East over the past 70 years is not the norm. As Jews and Mus­lims now travel more freely through the re­gion, they re­turn to the tra­di­tion of ages past, when mem­bers of the Abra­hamic faiths lived peace­fully side by side.”

As an example, accompanying the article was a photo by the Reuters news agency. “Hannukah is celebrated in Dubai, Dec. 10, 2020,” the caption reads, showing an image of the Rebbe seen on a large screen in the background.

Chabad’s involvement with the UAE stretches back as early as 2008, when American Jewish businesspeople requested that Chabad headquarters send a rabbi to develop Jewish life in the UAE.

In 2010, Chabad rabbinical students arrived in Dubai to lead the first-ever Yom Kippur service in the Arab state, and rabbinical students have been visiting for every Jewish holiday ever since, Chabad.org reports.

Rabbi Levi Duchman first came to the UAE in 2015 and led the communal Passover seder in the capital city of Abu Dhabi. He moved to the country later that year and now serves as the the rabbi of the United Arab Emirates and the official Chabad Shliach who oversees kosher supervision.