President-elect Donald Trump's son-in-law co-directs a family foundation that has donated tens of thousands of dollars to Jewish settlement organizations in the West Bank, according to tax records.
Trump has said Jared Kushner, who serves as a close adviser, could help negotiate a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. The donations by Kushner's parents' foundation could complicate his ability to be an impartial broker.
The Israeli daily Haaretz on today first reported the donations by the family foundation, which Kushner and his siblings direct with their parents.
The US and most of the international community consider settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem to be illegal or illegitimate and obstacles to peace. The Palestinians seek both territories, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, for their hoped-for state.
But Trump has signaled he may alter decades of U.S. policy. The Republican Party's platform rejected "the false notion" that Israel is an occupier, and an adviser to Trump on Israel affairs has said Trump does not perceive settlements, home to roughly 600,000 Israelis, to be an impediment to peace.
According to tax records, the Charles and Seryl Kushner Foundation donated at least USD 38,000 between 2011 and 2013 to the American Friends of Bet El Yeshiva, the fundraising arm of a Jewish seminary in Beit El, a West Bank settlement. The Beit El Yeshiva Center is associated with Arutz Sheva, also known as Israel National News, a news organization affiliated with the Jewish settler movement.
Today, a manager at the seminary declined to comment about the Kushner family's donations and asked a visiting team of Associated Press journalists to leave.
In 2012 and 2013, the Kushner family foundation donated a total of USD 15,000 to the Etzion Foundation, which operates three Orthodox Jewish study institutions in West Bank settlements. In 2011, the family donated $5,000 to Ohr Torah Stone, an Orthodox Jewish educational institution in the West Bank settlement of Efrat.
The family also donated at least USD 298,600 to the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, an organization that runs educational and cultural programs for Israeli soldiers, between 2010 and 2012, according to the tax records.
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