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jared kushner
After Helping Convince Trump to Attack Iran, Kushner Solicits Billions for His Private Equity Firm
"While US servicemembers die in another forever war in the Middle East, Donald Trump’s 'peace envoy' is raising money for his private equity firm," wrote US Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Mar 16, 2026
Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump's son-in-law, is reportedly trying to entice governments in the Middle East to invest billions in his private equity firm while he simultaneously works as "a special envoy for peace"—a role he appears to have used to help convince Trump to wage war on Iran.
The New York Times reported late last week that Kushner "has spoken with potential investors in recent weeks about raising $5 billion or more for Affinity Partners, his investment firm."
Citing five unnamed people with knowledge of the talks, the Times reported that "Affinity’s representatives have already met with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund," Affinity's largest investor. Saudi Arabia's leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, reportedly played a significant role in the behind-the-scenes lobbying campaign urging Trump to attack Iran—Saudi Arabia's top regional rival.
Bin Salman controls the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which pumped $2 billion into Kushner's firm in 2022.
"Mr. Kushner’s fundraising is expected to stretch on for the better part of this year," the Times added. "The efforts show the blurring of the lines between public service and private profit-seeking during Mr. Trump’s second term. Only a few weeks ago, in his role as Mr. Trump’s 'peace envoy,' Mr. Kushner met in Geneva with Iran’s foreign minister. The US and Israeli bombing campaign in Iran began shortly after those meetings concluded without a deal on Iran’s nuclear program."
Last week, Trump said he decided to attack Iran in coordination with Israel—whose prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is a personal friend of Kushner's—because the president "thought they were going to attack us," a view he claimed to have reached after listening to "what Steve [Witkoff] and Jared and Pete [Hegseth] and others were telling me."
US Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote in response to the Times reporting that "while US servicemembers die in another forever war in the Middle East, Donald Trump’s 'peace envoy' is raising money for his private equity firm."
Abbas Araghchi, Iran's foreign minister, wrote in a social media post on Sunday that a "fair and equitable deal" between the US and Iran "was within reach" before Trump and Netanyahu started bombing.
"Those providing poor advice to POTUS are responsible for bloodshed," Araghchi wrote, attaching a screenshot of the Times story on Kushner's fundraising efforts. "This war is imposed on both Americans and Iranians."
I've been told that family of a U.S. soldier killed in the war of choice on Iran is relying on public donations.
As fair and equitable deal was within reach, those providing poor advice to POTUS are responsible for bloodshed.
This war is imposed on both Americans and Iranians. pic.twitter.com/fR15XKjfYk
— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) March 15, 2026
Judd Legum, founder and author of the Popular Information newsletter, noted last week that Kushner's participation in the Geneva diplomatic talks that preceded the US-Israeli assault on Iran "violated his pledge not to be involved in foreign policy in a second Trump administration."
On Monday, Legum observed that Kushner also said in December 2024 that his private equity firm would not "have to raise capital for the next four years," allowing him to "avoid any conflicts" of interest.
Trump formally named Kushner a "special envoy for peace" last month, a move that means the president's son-in-law is now required by law to file a financial disclosure report. Kushner has just days left before the 30-day deadline to file the disclosure.
Donald Sherman, president and CEO of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, wrote in a letter to the White House last week that "Mr. Kushner’s history of financial gains resulting from his time as a White House advisor during President Trump’s first term raises serious concerns about potential conflicts of interest that must be addressed before Mr. Kushner participates in any additional matters that may relate to his own financial interests or those of his investors."
"The risk of Mr. Kushner’s potential conflicts is particularly concerning because his private investment firm has very publicly done significant business with foreign partners who also have interests in the conflicts on which he has been assigned to work," Sherman noted.
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No Plan for Mideast Peace Will Work Without Recognizing Palestinians' Full Humanity
The bottom line is that Palestinians have never been permitted the human right to make their own decisions; the results have been devastating both for them and for the region.
Feb 16, 2026
When President Donald Trump convened his so-called Board of Peace in Davos, Switzerland, a key item on the agenda was to endorse his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s extravagant (and, I might add, detached from reality) plan for a “New Gaza.” The rendering of Kushner’s scheme shows it to be more of a luxury resort for wealthy tourists than the foundation of a just future for the Palestinian victims of Israel’s genocide. But since the raison d’être of the Board of Peace was supposed to be dealing with the aftermath of Israel’s war on Gaza, the conversation, by necessity, had to address the needs of hundreds of thousands of now-homeless Palestinians.
Thus, Kushner presented a proposal for a model Palestinian community—the “New Rafah”—he intends to build to house Palestinians in Gaza. The plans for this New Rafah have been circulated since the meeting. Everything is covered: how Gaza’s economy will run; how its educational and health systems will create a new generation of hale and non-ideological Palestinians; and how the “new cities” will be laid out, function, and be governed. And everything has been calculated down to how many teachers, doctors, judges, religious leaders, and laborers will be needed per capita in each community.
If Kushner were preparing an owner’s manual for a complex piece of machinery or the instructions for installing and operating new software, this plan might seem flawless. But Palestine isn’t a video game, and Palestinians are human beings, not Lego pieces to be assembled, as per the instructions. Like every other people on Earth, Palestinians have emotional ties to their homes and families, and memories of the personal and collective injustices they have endured. This failure to consider the fullness of Palestinian humanity is the fatal flaw that will either stop the New Rafah before it begins or cause it to unravel soon afterward.
The refusal of those who have held power over Palestine to acknowledge the grievances and aspirations of its Indigenous Arab people isn’t new. In fact, it has defined their history.
Instead of acting to support Palestinians as their rights were systematically trampled, the US and other Western states have historically blamed Palestinians, while exonerating themselves and Israel.
For example, in 1919, when the British Lord Balfour was presented with the findings of the US-commissioned survey of Arab attitudes, which demonstrated their overwhelming rejection of his intent to grant the Zionist movement a homeland in Palestine, he famously responded, “In Palestine, we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting its inhabitants as to their wishes... Zionism… [is] of far profounder import than the desire and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who inhabit that ancient land.”
And Palestinians were not consulted when the United Nations drew up grossly unfair maps to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. Those maps gave the Jewish community over one-half of the land (despite its being less than a third of the population). The maps were rejected by Palestinians because more than half a million of them were disenfranchised without any say in the matter. Nor did Palestinians receive support when 650,000 of their brethren were expelled from the newly created Israel in 1948, or when, after the Oslo Accords, neither the UN nor the US would hold Israel accountable for sabotaging the peace plan through settlement expansion, land seizures, the erection of a wall, and the deliberate obstruction of the development of a Palestinian economy.
Instead of acting to support Palestinians as their rights were systematically trampled, the US and other Western states have historically blamed Palestinians, while exonerating themselves and Israel. The result of this century of systematic abuse and denial of rights has been to create a Palestinian community that is justifiably embittered and losing hope. And when they express these feelings, their grievances are dismissed and they are told to just “deal with it”—something that would never be said to, for example, Israelis or the Jewish people. This is because US policymakers understand the full humanity of the Jewish community. They understand their history of the losses they have experienced and their need to be respected and heard.
What we are seeing in the wake of the genocide in Gaza and in the midst of the state-sanctioned ethnic cleansing and erasure of Palestinian communities in the West Bank is just the same story playing out one more time. Every effort is made to make Israelis feel secure, while Palestinians are expected to lose their homes, families, and memories, and be resigned to being moved about like pawns on a chessboard and be grateful to have the opportunity to live in a model city once they have been properly vetted, biometrically identified, and de-radicalized. The bottom line is that Palestinians have never been permitted the human right to make their own decisions. The results have been devastating both for them and for the region. The reason behind the wars that have been fought and the aberrant behavior of some elements of Palestinian society can be found in one simple fact: the refusal to allow Palestinians the freedom to determine their future in a manner that recognizes the fullness of their humanity.
We’ve polled throughout Palestine a number of times in the past few years, and what we’ve found is that Palestinians don’t want to live under the control of Israel or any other external powers. They want the Israeli occupation to end, national unity of all factions in all parts of their country, and to hold a national referendum to elect new leaders and develop a plan for governance that can move them toward freedom and independence. They deserve nothing less.
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Trump's Board of Peace and Its Plan for Gaza Are Sheer Evil
The board's vision for Gaza is a greed-soaked plan dependent on mass murder and land theft, driven by men so wealthy and entitled that they believe they can escape accountability while reaping billions in profit in the process.
Feb 06, 2026
While the sheer pomposity, Trumpian megalomania, and painfully paradoxical context surrounding the so-called “Board of Peace” might tempt some to dismiss it as mere spectacle or farce, its criminal, inhumane, and hegemonic nature makes it far too dangerous to ignore.
Last month, President Donald Trump and his new, thuggish boys’ club of heads of state publicly celebrated the launch of the Board of Peace (BoP) at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Its hypocrisy was inadvertently underscored by Elon Musk—Trump’s on-again, off-again ally—when he quipped onstage that one might call it the Board of “p-i-e-c-e,” a venture devoted to claiming “a little piece of Greenland, a little piece of Venezuela,” to which his interviewer, Larry Fink, billionaire CEO of BlackRock, responded with cheer, “We got one.” Only a room filled with the world’s tech and business elite could find this funny.
In the weeks since, people of conscience around the world have been left to reckon with what may come of this brazen proclamation of a Trumpified world order. In particular, the board’s presentation of plans for “New Gaza” offered stark clarity about the greed-driven intentions Trump, his inner circle, and their Israeli billionaire partners seek to pursue, while raising a fundamental question as to how such a project of colonization and land theft could claim any legal basis at all, let alone a moral one.
As it stands, the BoP charter elevates Trump to a position akin to a global dictator for life, unchecked—on paper— by any external mechanisms of accountability or transparency. Acting as permanent chairman, chief executive, and controlling shareholder of the organization, Trump has declared that he holds absolute veto power, while retaining complete discretion over the potential multibillion-dollar slush fund generated through permanent member fees. In keeping with his long record of felonies and fraud, all budgets, financial accounts, or disbursements the BoP deems “necessary” to carry out its sweeping mission are subject only to the so-called “institutions of controls or oversight mechanisms” designed by the very same Executive Board.
Thus far, Greenland remains the only red line EU states have managed to articulate.
A few invited world leaders, mostly from the European Union, have done little more than politely decline their invitations. While they have not yet bent the knee to Trump in this mobster’s reality-show version of US imperial power in action, this has not stopped those same governments from endorsing the other “peaceful actions” Trump is poised to pursue under the guise of BoP authority. These include the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the seizure of Venezuelan oil; the execution of dozens of extrajudicial boat strikes that have killed more than 100 people in the Caribbean; threats of war and the promotion of dangerous regime-change fantasies in Iran and Cuba; and support for his complete takeover of occupied Palestine through United Nations Security Council Resolution 2803. That resolution effectively granted Trump authority in Gaza by endorsing his 20-point Gaza peace plan and welcoming the BoP as a transitional governing body. Thus far, Greenland remains the only red line EU states have managed to articulate.
Despite some rejections, other governments have gone ahead and accepted their invitations for a free three-year membership. The participation of Israel’s wanted genocidaire-in-chief, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, should serve as the clearest red flag that this organization has no interest in even pretending to care about the lives of the Palestinian people or any standard of international law. Netanyahu could not even fly to Davos to attend the BoP’s self-appointed pomp and circumstance for fear of being arrested as a wanted war criminal.
Other beacons of democracy and world peace, eager to lend legitimacy to the BoP, include Trump’s own “favorite dictator,” Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi; Argentina’s scandal-prone, right-wing President Javier Milei; “Europe’s last dictator,” Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko; Netanyahu’s idea of a “moral conscience,” Albanian President Edi Rama; and Hungary’s model in authoritarianism, Viktor Orbán. Leaders from Arab states—including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan, and Qatar—have also joined, and will presumably stand alongside Trump and the Executive Board to help oversee, and quietly endorse, “New Gaza.”
Their participation set the stage for Davos, where none other than Jared Kushner delivered the first public presentation of an investment plan contingent upon the ethnic cleansing and erasure of a national Palestinian identity. Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and a member of the BoP “Executive Board,” has long served as the self-styled “master planner” of transforming Gaza into a prime real estate opportunity. He has a track record of articulating his absolute disregard for Palestinian life, describing the besieged Gaza Strip in February 2024 as “very valuable… waterfront property.”
Kushner began his chilling slideshow by urging skeptical investors to “just calm down for 30 days,” declaring, “The war is over. Let’s work together.” Eager to move on to their real business of “peace,” Kushner appeared wholly willing to ignore the ongoing forced starvation, imprisonment, systemic torture, murder, and displacement of Palestinians across the occupied territories. Since the supposed “ceasefire” in October 2025, the Israeli military has killed at least 477 Palestinians in Gaza.
Trump has also failed to address Israel’s continued ban on dozens of international humanitarian and non-governmental organizations, a policy that has deliberately denied lifesaving aid and medical care to the region while newborn babies continue to die of hypothermia. Instead, Kushner outright lied about the current scale of Israel’s designed humanitarian catastrophe, claiming that “100% of the food needs are met” and that “the cost of needs has gone down,” before unironically describing the administration’s role as “the largest humanitarian effort into a war zone that anyone’s been able to tell us about.” Meanwhile, as the conference unfolded, Israeli forces bulldozed the UN Refugee headquarters in East Jerusalem, and the Israeli Knesset voted by an overwhelming majority to annex the entirety of the West Bank.
Amid the distortions and denials of reality, Kushner did allow the logic of the project to surface when he identified the architect behind the purported $25 billion master plan for Gaza: Yakir Gabay, whom he described as “one of the most successful real estate developers and brilliant people I know.” Gabay is an Israeli billionaire and international real estate tycoon with close familial ties to the Israeli government. Reports also indicate that he has participated in efforts to pressure Columbia University administrators to suppress student protests.
Much like Kushner, a recent article by the editor-in-chief of Jerusalem Post described Gabay as having been eager to craft a plan for “New Gaza” from the very first weeks of Israel’s prolonged assault on the densely populated region:
October 7, [Gabay] tends to say, woke him to action. [Gabay] thought: This time, my capabilities can change the face of reality…Other businesspeople heard about his work a year and a half ago. The White House had asked him to develop something even during Joe Biden’s term. He has good relationships with Tony Blair and Kushner, and when Trump won the elections, it became easier to push the issue.
On the whole, Kushner’s “New Gaza” presentation made no attempt to acknowledge a Palestinian state, recognize Palestinian self-determination, nor address Israeli occupation or the implications of Gaza’s "reconstruction" for the other occupied Palestinian territories. Instead, the eerily bizarre AI-generated slideshow of skyscrapers, oil rigs, and industrial complexes offered only a glimpse into the twisted billionaire fantasy that Kushner’s inner circle—including figures like Gabay—has sought to merge with Zionist imaginaries.
The only part of Kushner’s presentation that even acknowledged Palestinians was a single slide on “Palestinian-led demilitarization.” Beyond this ominous token reference, the narrative repeatedly circled back to framing Gaza as “an amazing investment opportunity” to the room full of multimillionaires and billionaires.
Recent reporting from Drop Site News has confirmed and expanded upon this language, revealing “Resolution No. 2026/1,” an unsigned State Department document from December 2025 that declares the Board of Peace aims to transform Gaza into a “deradicalized and demilitarized terror-free zone.”
Here, “deradicalization” functions as a catch-all term to delegitimize resistance and criminalize opposition to Israeli occupation—a legal right under international law. Palestinians who maintain their political consciousness, national identity, or will for self-determination, and who refuse to normalize occupation, are almost certain to be labeled “terrorists” or deemed insufficiently “deradicalized.” Those who take up arms to defend their people against some of the world’s most heavily armed and nuclear powers risk being denied existence in their own lands—murdered or turned away by the very architects of genocide who now claim to bring “peace.” Access to basic rights is made contingent on surrendering political and economic agency, including abandoning a historically rooted cultural identity of resistance under occupation, forsaking traditional livelihoods, and subordinating the desire to shape the future of the land to whatever "economic opportunities" BoP members deem investible.
The document further states that only those who “support and act consistently” to establish a “deradicalized, terror-free Gaza that poses no threat to its neighbors” may participate in governance, reconstruction, economic development, or humanitarian assistance. It also bars any individuals or organizations the board deems to have “supported or demonstrated a history of collaboration, infiltration, or influence with or by Hamas or other terror groups”—a sweeping allegation Israel has long weaponized without evidence.
In practice, such standards mean that anyone who stands in firm solidarity with Palestinians, including international NGOs that seek to hold Israel to even minimal standards of accountability, will likely be barred from operating in Gaza. This has already become an entrenched and worsening reality since October 2023. What the BoP presents as a security framework is, in essence, a blueprint for controlling Palestinian movement, erasing any viable possibility of a Palestinian state, and ultimately, advancing ethnic cleansing, while preventing humanitarian organizations from participating in any meaningful process of reconstruction or the delivery of aid. A framework that insists “no one will be forced to leave Gaza”—as if forced removal were ever legitimate—while simultaneously conditioning access to aid, resources, and even limited political participation on compliance with what Trump and his confidants dictate, is not a framework in which any meaningful shred of freedom or dignity can exist.
In essence, Trump now supposedly wields full legislative, executive, and judicial control over the future of Gaza. He alone, along with his board of resort profiteers—who would hastily clear away the rubble burying the bodies of erased bloodlines and the remnants of mosques, churches, hospitals, and schools—will have complete authority over how surviving Palestinians live, how they are governed, and who may participate in decision-making. Only at the very bottom of the BoP’s tyrannical hierarchy sits a so-called “technocratic committee,” nominally including members of the Palestinian Authority. Its role appears purely advisory, permitted to exist only insofar as it appeases Trump and aligns with his agenda. There is little indication that it will serve, or even slightly represent, the people it claims to speak for.
The development is ultimately so jarring, so rooted in supremacist ideologies, and so flagrantly opposed to basic principles of sovereignty and human rights that it has few historical parallels. The closest comparison seems to be the gruesome reign of Belgian King Leopold II.
The very consideration of such an inhumane, corrupt, and cruel project is a threat to humanity.
Those who participate in this process, including figures such as World Bank President Ajay Banga, lend legitimacy to a project that advances a perverse vision and a chapter of history that is not inevitable. Collaboration in the name of “reconstruction and development of Gaza” for a project so morally and legally corrupt is not a pragmatic compromise—it is active participation in a plan that has no place in the world. The human cost of this complicity is impossible to ignore.
The BoP plan also offers no conception of justice, reparations, or accountability for Israeli terror. Its version of “peace” is imposed through state violence to silence, control, and force Palestinians into submission. It is a project that raises skyscrapers for Western elites atop mass graves, without including, or even acknowledging, the Palestinians its architects have killed and displaced. It relies too on the pathetic inaction of the overwhelming majority of UN member states.
Much remains unknown about what is immediately required to take a single step toward “peace” in the region: if and when Palestinians may finally find reprieve from Israeli bombardment; whether the Rafah crossing will actually open; what will become of finding and returning the bodies of loved ones buried under the rubble; whether human rights organizations or journalists will even be permitted to document the reality–and work safely–on the ground; if displaced Palestinians will ever be allowed to return to Gaza; and crucially, whether other states will intervene. What is clear, however, is the sheer evil of this project.
Following Kushner’s presentation, many have rightfully said that if this BoP monstrosity were fictional, it would be so dark it would border on being unbelievable. And yet it is profoundly real: a greed-soaked plan dependent on mass murder and land theft, driven by men so wealthy and entitled that they believe they can escape accountability while reaping billions in profit in the process.
World leaders have long entrenched impunity and rewarded the most atrocious US-Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity, especially over the past two and a half years. Yet the board’s ambitions—laid out in a charter that mirrors the UN and spans what Trump calls “the whole region of the world”—reveal a danger that stretches far beyond Palestine. The very consideration of such an inhumane, corrupt, and cruel project is a threat to humanity. And still—precisely because of the chaos, confusion, and sheer audacity of their plans—this dystopian vision for “New Gaza” is not inevitable. Those with political and economic power must firmly reject and actively work to rein in this Orwellian BoP. If any entity requires immediate disarmament and deradicalization, it is Trump and his so-called Executive Board.
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