Jared Kushner during an Aug. 2020 press briefing at the White House about the Abraham Accords, in which Israel and the United Arab Emirates agreed to normalize relations. Photo by Oliver Contreras/Sipa/Bloomberg via Getty Images

By Jacob Kornbluh November 25, 2024

Jared Kushner, President-elect Donald Trump’s son-in-law and former Middle East adviser, announced on Monday a $1 million donation to the Chabad center in the United Arab Emirates following the horrific murder of Rabbi Zvi Kogan, a local Chabad emissary.

“Ivanka and I will be donating $1 million to the Chabad of UAE and will redouble our efforts to work with the Jewish community and the country’s leadership to build a resilient, vibrant Jewish community in Abu Dhabi and Dubai,” Kushner said in a statement posted on X.

His brother and sister-in-law, Joshua Kushner and Karlie Kloss, followed and matched the contribution with an additional $1 million.

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Kogan, who worked in the capital of Abu Dhabi as an emissary of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement and who held both Israeli and Moldovan citizenship, had been missing since Thursday. His body was found on Sunday and authorities arrested three Uzbek nationals in connection with the murder.

Kushner, who brokered the normalization deal between the UAE and Israel in 2020, known as the Abraham Accords, attended prayers led by the local Chabad center in Abu Dhabi when he led a joint American-Israeli delegation to the country in September 2020.

While Kushner said earlier this year that he would not return to the White House, he is reportedly involved behind the scenes and could be a key player in a potential normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Affinity Partners, Kushner’s private equity firm, secured an estimated $2 billion investment from the sovereign wealth fund overseen by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Kushner and his wife, Ivanka, have a special connection to Chabad. In 2016, the couple visited the grave of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, referred to as the Ohel, in the Queens borough of New York City. Kushner was behind the 2017 decision by Trump to grant clemency to Shalom Rubashkin, a prominent member of the Chabad community and the former head of America’s largest kosher meat processing plant in Iowa, who was convicted in 2009 on fraud charges. The Kushner family’s foundation reportedly donated more than $342,500 to various institutions and projects associated with the Hasidic sect.

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