NEW YORK- The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has condemned the Bush administration’s pressure on Israel to refrain from taking action against the Syrian-sponsored Hezbollah terrorists.

Last weekend, a Hezbollah missile attack on northern Israel killed an Israeli child and wounded four others. Hezbollah is on the official U.S. list of terrorist groups because it has murdered hundreds of innocent Americans and Israelis, including the 241 U.S. Marines it slaughtered in Lebanon in 1983.

State Department spokesman Philip Reeker, in his August 11, 2003 Daily Press Briefing, said that U.S. officials “have been in contact with the Israelis and with the other parties, with Lebanon and Syria, urging them to exercise maximum restraint in order to avoid further escalation.”

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said:
“Just as the U.S. has been pursuing Al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan, Yemen, and elsewhere, Israel has ever legal and moral right to take action against Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon. The fight against Hezbollah is inseparable from the U.S. war against terrorism around the world. Instead of pressuring Israel to refrain from striking Hezbollah terrorists, the U.S. should be actively supporting Israeli military action against them.”

He added: “It is appalling that the State Department’s spokesman lumps our ally, democratic Israel, together with the terrorist state Syria, calling on ‘all sides’ to exercise restraint. The U.S. should make a clear moral distinction between a besieged, democratic, pro-American country like Israel which is defending itself, and a murderous, anti-American dictatorship like Syria which is sponsoring aggression against Israel. The inadvertent message of the Bush’s administration position is that there is no price to be paid for Hezbollah’s murders of Jews.”