Jared Kushner, Jewish Businessmen Meet With Qatari PM

Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump arranged a private lunch meeting with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al Thani and a bipartisan group of mainly Jewish businessmen in New York City last week, three sources told Axios.

The Qatari prime minister has been a key player in mediating talks between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas during their ongoing war and was in New York to speak at a United Nations Security Council meeting on the situation in the Gaza Strip.

One of the sources who attended the meeting told Axios that Al Thani talked about his country's mediation efforts to release the hostages taken by Hamas during the group's brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The prime minister also reportedly answered questions about Qatar's relationship with the terror group.

According to Axios, Wednesday's lunch took place at Coco's, a members-only restaurant in the General Motors Building in Manhattan.

Participants, according to the outlet, included Bill Ackman, founder of Pershing Square Capital Management hedge fund; Mark Rowan, founder of Apollo Global Management; Robert Kraft, owner of the NFL's New England Patriots; Marc Lasry, CEO of Avenue Capital Group and former co-owner of the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks; Daniel Och, founder of Och-Ziff Capital Management hedge fund; Barry Sternlicht, chairperson of Starwood Capital Group; Dan Senor, author and former adviser to Mitt Romney during the 2012 presidential campaign; Josh Kopelman, founder of First Round Capital; Gary Ginsberg, lawyer, political operative and confidant of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former VP at Softbank; Robert Thomson, CEO of News Corp; Josh Kushner, Jared Kushner's brother and founder of Thrive Capital; Edmond Safra, a businessman and owner of Coco's; and Lex Fridman, AI researcher from MIT and podcaster.

An attendee of the meeting told Axios that Al Thani said Qatar's relationship with Hamas and hosting of the terror group in Doha began in 2006, with the backing of the Bush administration.

The Obama and Trump administrations also encouraged Qatar to keep an open channel with Hamas to try to steer the situation in Gaza, he said.

The attendee said the Qatari prime minister told the group that the billions his country has transferred to Gaza over the past five years was coordinated with and approved by Israel.

"Many of us came in with a negative perception of Qatar based on what we have been reading, and came away with a more nuanced understanding of the role they have been playing in Gaza, both historically and currently," one meeting participant told Axios. "We were impressed by the prime minister's willingness to answer tough questions."

Another said: "it was an intense conversation at times and there was some skepticism among some of us at the end of the meeting,” adding that some questions remained about how Qatar plans to move forward with Hamas after the war is over.