Jared Kushner is back in the news. He has touched a nerve with some comments about what can or should be done to ease the humanitarian challenges in Gaza.
The comments appear to have been made Feb. 15 at a Harvard Kennedy School of Government event about current events in the Middle East. They were reported by the Guardian last week and have since garnered much attention. Much of the online criticism has been wildly dishonest but unintentionally gives us a window into a concept that may not survive the discourse around the current war: genocide.
At one point in the 90-minute discussion with Harvard’s Tarek Masoud, including a brief question-and-answer portion, Kushner mentioned the potential for Palestinian economic development in addition to a political and security program that would give the people of Gaza stability. He noted how valuable the Strip’s waterfront property could be. This comment was taken out of its clear context—that Palestinians themselves would benefit from economic development—along with another line in which Kushner suggested that if Egypt refused to temporarily take in Gazans on humanitarian grounds, Israel should do so in order to get them out of harm’s way until parts of southern Gaza were safer for civilians.
For reasons that are not difficult to assess, Democratic Party…
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