Josh Kushner, a billionaire venture capitalist and President Trump's in-law, has blasted a tech executive online for visiting Israel and posting images of Tel Aviv's beachfront on social media.
Kushner, the younger brother of President-elect Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, defended Patrick Collison, co-founder and CEO of payment processing company Stripe, on social media platform X on Wednesday. .
Mr. Collison's company, which is partly owned by Mr. Kushner's venture capital firm Thrive Capital, was released on This caused a stir among pro-Palestinian supporters. .
“Good to be back in Tel Aviv. I missed this run,” Collison wrote.
Collison's seemingly innocuous post went viral, racking up more than 14,000 likes and thousands of comments. Many of them came from pro-Palestinian sympathizers and referred to the thousands of deaths that began in the aftermath of Israel's October 7 military action. , 2023 Genocide.
Paul Biggar, a software engineer and pro-Palestinian activist, responded to Collison's post: “10 people contacted me about this tweet. Sad day.”
Kushner wrote: It saddened me to see how much hatred people had towards Jews. Happy Thanksgiving! ”
Bigger, who called on his followers on social media to boycott Stripes, responded to Kushner's comments by writing: This is about Israel and its occupation and genocide in Palestine. ”
“It is a tactic of Israel and its supporters to label criticism of Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine and the genocide of Palestinians as 'anti-Semitism,'” Biggar told the Post in an email.
“Of course this is absurd. Mr. Kushner is trying to silence criticism of the genocide.”
The newspaper has reached out to Kushner and Collison for comment.
Josh Kushner, 39, rarely speaks out on hot-button political issues. His social media pages primarily consist of posts related to his business ventures, including Oscar Health, a health insurance company he co-founded in 2012.
In December of last year, He reacted to then-Harvard University President Claudine Gay's testimony In Congress, she defended the administration's response to alleged anti-Semitic incidents on campus related to the Israel-Gaza crisis.
Kushner, who like his brother attended Harvard University, wrote: “Congressional testimony speaks louder than a tweet. Harvard is better than this,” the post included a heartbroken emoji.
The Kushners are scions of a prominent New Jersey family that built a multibillion-dollar real estate empire. Their father, Charles Kushner, was a real estate developer who co-founded the Kushner Companies with his father, the late Joseph Kushner.
The Kushner family practices Orthodox Judaism. Their religious beliefs are such that Jared and Josh Kushner's famous wives, Ivanka Trump and supermodel Karlie Kloss, respectively, both converted to Judaism before they got married.
Josh Kushner after the massacre by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023 I wrote: “I am heartbroken by the horrific atrocities that occurred in Israel this weekend.”
“My grandmother witnessed her mother being killed by the Nazis right in front of her eyes because of her Jewish beliefs,” he wrote.
“It's hard to understand that we still live in a world where hate is the answer. The killing of innocent civilians is never justified.”
