US music tycoon and Gazan peace activist join hands
Ariana Grande's former manager donates $100,000 to Palestinian medical charity
Two men from vastly different backgrounds have joined together to help Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in the wake of the 7 October 2023 massacre of Israelis and the subsequent war between Israel and Hamas.
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, born in Gaza but now living in the US as a resident senior fellow of the Atlantic Council, is a prominent peace campaigner and outspoken critic of Hamas. He has lost many members of his immediate family after Israeli air strikes on the Strip.
He was introduced to the philanthropist and music industry executive Scooter Braun, who helped devise the Nova exhibition, which has been travelling around American cities since May this year.
In an emotional social media posting, Alkhatib described how he had been invited by Braun, the grandson of Holocaust survivors, to become “an ally” of the Nova exhibit project. He said: “I connected with survivors and their families who lost loved ones during Hamas’s murderous massacre that killed over 1,200 Israelis. Importantly, I shared my experiences with these families and described the horrors that my family has lived through in the Gaza Strip and how I have lost dozens of them in three separate airstrikes”.
He said that Braun had demonstrated “immense capacity for empathy and kindness, acknowledging the tragedy of what took place for my family in Gaza while supporting me in my pursuit of connection with and compassion for Israeli victims of Hamas’s terrorism. He understands, and we share the view that Hamas is our common enemy”.
Alkhatib, aware that Braun had previously supported humanitarian projects to help Palestinian civilians, asked him if he would do the same for a medical charity that saves lives in the coastal enclave.
He said: “Mr Braun generously agreed to provide a $100,000 donation, which he has just sent to the International Medical Corps, which runs a field hospital and does incredible work to help desperate Palestinian civilians and patients. I am grateful for his generosity, which is actually going to make a difference for the people in Gaza. This is what pragmatic engagement, dialogue, conversations, and empathy look like and can achieve”.
Scooter Braun was singer Ariana Grande’s manager in 2017 when 22 people were killed in a suicide bombing at the Manchester Arena. Speaking at the anniversary event in Los Angeles to mark a year since the 7 October massacre, Braun reflected on the global outpouring of support in the music industry after the Manchester attack, enabling a memorial concert to be held in the city two weeks later. But he did not understand why there had been no similar response after the murders at the Nova festival, which he described as the biggest single attack on a music event in the world.
After visiting Israel with members of his family in December 2023, Braun helped to create the Nova exhibit which he says will tour the world and repeat the stories of those who died and of the survivors. He was keen to emphasise that the exhibit was particularly aimed at non-Jews — “it is for humanity”.
Alkhateb added that he and Scooter Braun “share the hope that we can have empathy for all innocent people, including those stuck in a war in Gaza and those hostage families waiting for their loved ones to be released from Hamas’s captivity”.
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