As California’s gubernatorial race heats up, five leading candidates said at a forum on Thursday that they are committed to deepening the state’s partnership with Israel and fighting efforts to boycott the Jewish state. 

The candidates — Democrats Antonio Villaraigosa, a former state lawmaker and Los Angeles mayor; Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA); Tom Steyer, a billionaire businessman and former presidential candidate; and Matt Mahan, a tech entrepreneur and mayor of San Jose; along with Republican Steve Hilton, a conservative commentator who was once an advisor to former British Prime Minister David Cameron — appeared together Thursday night at a Los Angeles candidate forum hosted by Jewish California (formerly JPAC), the Bay Area Jewish Community Relations Council, the Los Angeles Jewish Federation and the Skirball Cultural Center.

“I’ve been to Israel half a dozen times. I’ve been all over the region. I’ve seen the innovation in energy. I’ve seen the innovation in water technology, and of course, California should partner with Israel to meet our own energy and water needs,” Swalwell, who represents a Bay Area district, said. “I will bring back as many values and technologies from Israel that can help Californians. That’s the job of the next governor.” 

Hilton praised the business relationship between California and Israel, and said “that foundation of prosperity and cooperation is how we build a stronger future for Israel and for us here in California.”

Villaraigosa also outlined his many past trips to Israel. “I’ve been to Israel half a dozen times, including the last time three years ago, when I wasn’t in office anymore. As governor of this state, I will work with the State of Israel,” he said. 

Mahan called California’s relationship with Israel “an important one for our country and for our state.” 

“In Silicon Valley,” he continued, “I’ve lost count of how many brilliant entrepreneurs [and] investors I’ve met from Israel who have brought incredible innovation to our state. And that exchange is something we need to continue to invest in.” 

Steyer, like the other Democrats on stage, drew a line between the Israeli people and the Israeli government. 

“Are we talking about the people of Israel? Or are you talking about the administration that runs the State of Israel? As far as I can tell, Mr. Netanyahu is quite a close confidant, ally and co-believer with our president. There’s nothing about our president, literally, that I agree with,” said Steyer. “How do I feel about the people of Israel, a scrappy group of people trying to build a country, build their families, build businesses? That’s a completely different question.” 

A recent Public Policy Institute of California poll showed a crowded, closely contested race, with five candidates neck-and-neck in the all-party primary, each with 10-14% of the vote. 

Hilton led the pack with 14%, followed by former Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) with 13%, and then Republican Chad Bianco, sheriff of Riverside County, with 12%. Swalwell was at 11%, with Steyer at 10%. The top two finishers face off in the November general election.

A spokesperson for Porter told Jewish Insider she could not attend due to a scheduling conflict.

“Rep. Porter spoke to Jewish California last year about her vision to address the many issues facing California as Governor, including the increase in antisemitism, and she looks forward to continuing the conversation,” the spokesperson said.

A spokesperson for Bianco did not respond to a request for comment, but SF JCRC CEO Tyler Gregory told JI he also had a scheduling conflict. Democrat Xavier Becerra, the former secretary of Health and Human Services, also did not participate. 

All five candidates at the forum on Thursday said they oppose the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Hilton and Mahan, citing the state’s anti-BDS law, said they would push back on efforts by municipalities to boycott or divest from Israel.

“They’re illegal. I will make sure that, as governor, my attorney general, sues these cities to stop them breaking the law,” said Hilton. 

“We should push against any attempt to unwind our prohibition of it,” Mahan said of the BDS movement.

Each of the candidates also criticized how public universities in the state responded to anti-Israel and antisemitic protesters during the spring 2024 encampments. 

“I’m a proud graduate of UCLA, but I’ll tell you something, I’ve never been so embarrassed and ashamed about what I saw happen on a UC campus, and as governor, we will not tolerate that,” Villaraigosa said. “The fact that it took so long to extricate these people that tried to intimidate people and wouldn’t allow them to go to class, wear their yarmulke, was absolutely unacceptable.” 

Mahan criticized a questionnaire from a union representing thousands of professors and lecturers in the California State University system that asked candidates last year to say they would refuse donations from AIPAC and JPAC.

“That tells you how bad it has gotten. As governor I will actively call that out,” said Mahan. “One of the most powerful things the governor has is the bully pulpit, and it’s important as governor to speak directly to that divisiveness and call it out and explain that it is wrong and that we will not tolerate it in our public institutions. We also have to talk about curriculum.” 

Steyer called freedom to protest “one of the hallmarks of higher education” in the U.S., but said “when protest moves into discriminating against other students, that’s when protest is no longer acceptable.” 

Swalwell recounted a recent conversation with a friend who said his daughter had taken some schools off her college list because of fears about antisemitism.

“A metric of success for me is that Jewish California students feel safe in every California university and college,” said Swalwell. “Yes, California and our colleges have always led some of the best movements in our history. However, that does not give you license to hate, discriminate, to commit violence.”

Hilton described visiting UCLA after the encampments to speak to Jewish students and called on the other candidates in the room to bring their messaging of fighting antisemitism to other audiences, not just Jewish ones.

“It’s still going on, this sense of fear and intimidation, and we’ve got to take a stronger stance,” Hilton said. “Our elected leaders in this state aren’t quite as clear on some of these issues, and give succor to the hate and the ideology that’s causing this fear among our Jewish population. So I would like them to speak with the same strength and clarity against this ideology everywhere, not just in this audience.” 

Other questions touched on immigration, homelessness, affordability and the impact of artificial intelligence. The state’s gubernatorial primary will take place on June 2, and the top two vote-getters, irrespective of party, will advance to the general election. 

The American Jewish Committee and Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France (CRIF), the umbrella organization representing French Jewry, announced a new partnership on Friday aimed at combating an increase of antisemitism that has caused many French Jews to consider leaving the country. 

The agreement was formalized at the CRIF’s 40th annual dinner in Paris on Thursday. According to the groups, the partnership will bring together Jewish leaders and antisemitism experts from the U.S. and France to strengthen ties between the communities in their respective countries. It builds on existing collaborations between AJC and CRIF, including a conference last year titled “On the Frontlines: French-American Forum on Antisemitism,” which focused on youth engagement, education and transatlantic cooperation. 

France, which is home to Europe’s largest Jewish community, has seen a “dramatic rise of antisemitism,” as the country’s U.S. Ambassador to France Charles Kushner described it in an open-letter to French President Emmanuel Macron in August. 

In the letter, which was published in The Wall Street Journal, Kushner wrote that since Oct. 7, 2023, “pro-Hamas extremists and radical activists have waged a campaign of intimidation and violence across Europe.” He also raised concerns that in France, “not a day passes without Jews assaulted in the street, synagogues or schools defaced, or Jewish-owned businesses vandalized,” citing statistics shared by the country’s Interior Ministry regarding the rise in antisemitic incidents. 

Robert Ejnes, executive director of CRIF, wrote in August, “I don’t know a family that is not speaking about” emigrating to Israel.

“AJC and CRIF are focused on shaping a future in which Jews are safe and thriving,” said Ted Deutch, CEO of AJC. “By formalizing our collaboration, we are strengthening our ability to act together to confront antisemitism and defend democratic values at a moment when Jewish communities are under threat.” AJC’s Europe headquarters has been located in Paris since 2015. 

“AJC and CRIF have built a strong foundation of trust, shared leadership and concrete achievements,” said Yonathan Arfi, president of CRIF. “This agreement reflects the reality of a relationship that has existed and thrived for many years.”

A recently announced AI partnership between Google and Al Jazeera, the Qatar-backed media network, is raising concerns among some national security experts who say the arrangement helps to legitimize a state-controlled news organization long criticized for its sympathetic coverage of Hamas and hostility to Israel.

The agreement, announced in December, allows Al Jazeera to use Google Cloud as its main technology provider powering the network’s newly launched AI initiative, known internally as “The Core,” according to a press release. 

Though vaguely characterized, the collaboration will help Al Jazeera produce editorial content that draws on Google’s AI platforms including Gemini, a major component driving a key program called “AJ-LLM,” which the network describes as its “editorial brain.” The effort, which uses a large language model built on Al Jazeera’s archives, is among several so-called “pillars” of the media company’s AI project seeking to embed the technology in its workflow and output.

The deal represents a “major expansion” of Google’s deepening partnership with Al Jazeera that extends back to 2017, the press release says, as other leading U.S. tech companies — such as Microsoft and Cisco — have also forged closer ties to the media network.

But some experts are warning that Google’s new partnership in particular will help lend a sheen of institutional credibility to a channel that has faced accusations of spreading misinformation in service of promoting Qatar’s preferred narrative on a range of sensitive topics including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Toby Dershowitz, a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, an organization highly critical of Qatar, said that Al Jazeera “positions itself as an independent media outlet” even as it is “actually funded by and editorially governed by an authoritarian country,” noting the Department of Justice has required AJ+, its social media offshoot, to register as a foreign agent. “So far,” she said, “it has not obeyed the law.”

“Well-regarded Western big tech companies have a responsibility to ensure they are not colluding in Al Jazeera’s information capture, whether through the use of algorithms, AI or other methods,” she added in an interview with Jewish Insider on Wednesday. “Google’s expanding partnership with Al Jazeera is therefore deeply concerning.”

Dershowitz, who recently published an analysis investigating the Google partnership, suggested that “big tech companies like Google are being used to help amplify often compromised information and transform it into legitimate sources, allowing it to flow throughout the news ecosystem,” all “without proper labels.”

“Because it’s a black box, consumers don’t fully understand what is happening,” she explained.

Other critics have aired similar reservations about the agreement with Google, especially as Al Jazeera has emerged as a top source on such widely used AI assistants as Gemini for news summaries regarding Israel and Gaza, according to a recent analysis. 

While it is unclear if the partnership will end up influencing Gemini’s broader public output, some observers say that Al Jazeera’s plan to train the AI tool with its own archives is a red flag.

“Those archives are not neutral,” Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, a Middle East analyst and former managing director of the American Jewish Committee’s European division, wrote of Al Jazeera in a recent Substack newsletter entry. “They encode years of narrative framing: legitimization of Islamist actors, systematic delegitimization of Israel, conflict framed as oppression versus resistance.”

Google’s role in the agreement, Rodan-Benzaquen argued, “adds a crucial layer of legitimacy.” Even as it “does not endorse Al Jazeera’s editorial line,” the tech company’s “infrastructure confers neutrality.”

“A tool hosted on Google Cloud is perceived as technical, professional, objective,” she concluded.

The Doha-based network, which broadcasts in Arabic, English and other languages, has drawn criticism from U.S. lawmakers in both parties who have called it a “state-controlled propaganda arm” used “to incite violence, glorify terrorist killers as ‘martyrs’ and broadcast hateful, extremist content.” 

Al Jazeera has also faced bans from several Middle Eastern countries including Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Israel, the latter of which has accused the network of acting as a “mouthpiece of Hamas,” whose leaders have been hosted in Qatar. Last year, the Palestinian Authority temporarily suspended Al Jazeera from the West Bank over accusations it was “inciting sedition” as well as “interfering in internal Palestinian affairs.”

A spokesperson for Google referred JI to its recent press release announcing the partnership but did not respond to additional questions about the new arrangement. Al Jazeera did not return a request for comment.

Michael O’Hanlon, the director of research at the Brookings Institution’s foreign policy program, told JI on Wednesday that he had reservations about the agreement, even as he suggested he was receptive to engaging with Al Jazeera. (Brookings has previously received funding from Qatar but says it chose to end the financial arrangement in 2017.)

“I have generally felt that in most cases it’s best to work with Al Jazeera,” he said. “That said, a formal partnership is a different matter. I’m not quite sure I’d do that.”

The Wall Street Journal kicked off its Tech Live conference in Qatar on Tuesday, underscoring a deepening partnership between the publication and the controversial Gulf state that has raised ethical questions among media watchers over possible conflicts of interest as well as an ideological incongruence with the traditionally conservative, pro-Israel bent of its editorial page.

The exclusive summit, making its debut in the Middle East, will continue to be held in Doha, the Qatari capital, for the next five years, according to an initial announcement from Dow Jones, which publishes the Journal. The event, gathering over 200 executives and other business leaders at the Waldorf Astoria “for three days of conversations, networking and curated experiences” focused on topics ranging from media to the cryptocurrency industry, is sponsored by the state-owned Qatar Airways, among a handful of other companies.

Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, who spoke at the event on Tuesday in an onstage discussion with Dow Jones’ CEO, Almar Latour, said in a social media post that the conference “represents a key platform to discuss technology’s role in business and advance Qatar’s digital standing.” 

Sheikh Jassim bin Mansour Al-Thani, the director of the Government Communications Office of the State of Qatar, also joined the Journal’s Tech Live event in Napa Valley, Calif., in early November.

“With the MENA region’s growth and increased role in tech — especially at the intersection of AI and the energy sector — we are delighted to be partnering with Qatar,” Latour said in an announcement last year touting the new relationship.

In addition to signing a multiyear agreement with Qatar to host its tech summit — whose attendees include Serena Williams, Alex Rodriguez and Washington, D.C. sports magnate Ted Leonsis — Dow Jones recently opened an office in Doha’s Media City as part of an effort to “strengthen its operations throughout the Middle East.”

The Journal’s advertising department, meanwhile, has run a series of online posts sponsored by Qatar and promoting investment in the Gulf state, though the publication notes in a disclaimer that “the news organization was not involved in the creation of” the paid content.

Still, the newspaper’s growing embrace of Qatar has drawn the attention of media critics who have aired strong reservations about partnering with a regime that has faced scrutiny over a long record of human rights abuses, press censorship and hosting Hamas leadership before and after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel. 

Even as other media outlets have likewise joined forces with Qatar, the Journal‘s relationship stands out in particular because its conservative editorial page has frequently turned a skeptical or jaundiced eye toward the Gulf monarchy — which one contributor called “a theocratic monarchy that is Hamas’s main financial and diplomatic sponsor” in an August opinion piece.

In an October article casting doubt on an executive order signed by President Donald Trump vowing to protect Qatar if it comes under attack, the editorial board also reminded its readers that the country “is a benefactor of Hamas that took the terrorists’ side against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.”

“It is fair to say that Qatar plays both sides,” the board added. “This is useful at times, but it is far from the typical profile of a state receiving U.S. guarantees.”

Qatar has in recent years significantly expanded its partnerships with U.S. media companies including Bloomberg and CNN, the latter of which is sponsoring the Doha Forum that begins this weekend, after the network previously inked a deal with the Gulf monarchy to launch an office in Media City, which the emirate describes on its website as a “global hub for media companies” and other related businesses.

Sources have told Jewish Insider that the Media City deal includes an annual fee of several million dollars that Qatar will pay to CNN. The network has said that “anything related to CNN editorial content is fully controlled and funded by CNN and entirely independent,” noting the agreement “centers on the provision of facilities and technical support for” the new operation.

It is unclear if Qatar agreed to pay the Journal or Dow Jones to host the tech conference or open the office in Doha. Representatives for Dow Jones did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday, nor did the Qatari government. 

Qatar has also invested in conservative media, part of an expansive lobbying effort to burnish its image in the United States that otherwise includes funding higher education and ongoing outreach to federal lawmakers.

The Journal’s news reporters, for their part, had previously  extensively documented Qatar’s influence efforts in the United States.

As the holiday of Hanukkah – the festival of lights – came to a close last week, it is worth considering Israel’s strategically important partnership with the ‘land of fire’: Azerbaijan. The only Muslim majority country to have friendly, sustained and substantive relations with Israel, Azerbaijan is not only a beacon of religious tolerance with a historical and currently thriving Jewish community, but also an important geopolitical partner just to the north of Iran.

Israel and Azerbaijan cooperate closely in the defense and energy spheres and both share disquiet over the recent Western rapprochement with Tehran. Iran has threatened to annex Azerbaijani territory and bomb its energy infrastructure. Azerbaijani authorities have foiled Iranian-sponsored terrorist plots in their country. So, Israel and Azerbaijan have developed a joint venture to produce drones and Israeli defense contractors supply the Azerbaijani military with state of the art equipment. In return, Azerbaijan’s state energy company, SOCAR, is active in helping to develop Israel’s offshore natural gas fields, while much of the oil imported to Israel is from Azerbaijani reserves.

Due to the ‘miracle of oil’, Azerbaijan has been able to develop and distinguish itself as a ‘Dubai on the Caspian’, spending its energy wealth wisely and emerging as an international player of outsized stature in the former Soviet space. When Russian President Vladimir Putin visited recently, he showed uncommon respect to Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and was not able to pressure Azerbaijani leaders the way Russian has done in Georgia, Ukraine and even with the United States over Syria. Azerbaijan recently served on the UN Security Council and is very active in a number of other international fora. And, its leaders do not hide their amity with Israel: Azerbaijan’s foreign minister visited Jerusalem this year and on another visit to Washington DC made a point of addressing pro-Israel Jewish organizations.

In Azerbaijan, it is not just the secular state that emphasizes good relations with Israel and discourages anti-Semitism. When asked, average Azerbaijanis express admiration for the accomplishments of the State of Israel and warm opinions about Jews in their country and around the world. Many Azerbaijani tourist guides will make a point of showcasing a major new synagogue in Baku, the country’s capital. President Aliyev regularly congratulates the Jewish community on days of religious significance and when the country’s religious leaders gather, rabbis congregate with imams and priests.

It behooves Israeli leaders and Jewish communities around the world to encourage this relationship, especially now that historical ties to Turkey are in tatters. In fact, Azerbaijan is now the largest outside investor in Turkey, due to a major pipeline project, and it is increasingly wielding influence in the greater Levant region. Azerbaijan is keen to become a technological and telecommunications hub for the Eurasian continent, so Israeli companies could seek partnerships for innovation in that sphere as well as others. Overall, as the nuclear and regional threat from Iran continues to loom large for both countries, Israel and Azerbaijan should continue to provide for their own mutual defense, strengthening an already substantive partnership amongst small nations that know how to seize the initiative.

Dr. Alexandros Petersen is the author of The World Island: Eurasian Geopolitics and the Fate of the West and co-editor of ChinainCentralAsia.com.