The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has pointed to further, deeply worrying borderline anti-Semitic, anti-Israel and anti-U.S. aspects of Samantha Power’s record as additional cause for opposing her nomination by President Barack Obama for the post of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Among the statements listed below that can be added to Power’s record that we outlined yesterday, the ZOA is shocked by her borderline anti-Semitic remark, made during the 2008 presidential race when there was a discussion about then-senator Barack Obama’s attitude to Israel, in which she complained, “So much of it is about: ‘Is he going to be good for the Jews?” Further concern about her attitude towards the Jewish state of Israel is provided by Power’s outlandish claim that the U.S. went into Iraq at Israel’s behest indicating, in the words of the respected Claremont Institute’s Paul Mirenhoff that, “So strong is her hatred of Israel that she attributes to this small State the power to corrupt the world’s super power.” This has also been described by Commentary blogger Noah Pollak as “an appalling slander, and a telling one.” Furthermore, Pollak goes on to state that Power is “assenting to the [John Mearsheimer/Stephen Walt] Israel Lobby view of American foreign policy.”

 Further disturbing Samantha Power statements:

•  March 2003: U.S. Commits Crimes: “U.S. foreign policy has to be rethought. It needs not tweaking but overhauling. We need: a historical reckoning with crimes committed, sponsored, or permitted by the United States” (‘Force Full,’ New Republic, March 3, 2003).
•  April 2003: Israel Is A Human Rights Abuser – U.S. Easy on Israel, Tough on Palestinians: “But for the United States, of all countries, to be talking about human rights just rings very, very hollow in light of all the objections to our policy in Israel — the perception that we’re hard on one side and not on the other, and that we don’t contest the settlements or human-rights abuses committed by Israeli soldiers, and so on” (Dan Kennedy, ‘Waging post-warfare: Eight foreign-policy experts on the uncertain future of the US role in Iraq,’ Boston Phoenix, April 25–May, 2003).
•  2004: Lumps Israeli “Sins” With Those Of Saudis, etc.: In a review of radical leftist Noam Chomsky’s book, Hegemony or Survival, Power agreed with many of Chomsky’s criticisms of U.S. foreign policy and expressed her own concerns about what she called the “sins of our allies in the war on terror”, lumping Israel with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, Russia, and Uzbekistan (Quoted in Joseph Klein, ‘Saved From Durban II,’ FrontPage Magazine, March 2, 2009).
•  2008: Jews Only Care If It’s Good For The Jews: [When concerns arose in 2008 regarding then-Senator Barack Obama and his views towards Israel, Power, then a key foreign policy adviser to Obama, struck back in an Haaretz  interview]: “So much of it is about: ‘Is he going to be good for the Jews?” (Quoted in Ed Lasky, ‘Samantha Power unplugged (updated),’ American Thinker, March 6, 2008).
•  2008: Israel a U.N. Defier: [In her book, Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira De Mello and the Fight to Save the World,]: “Israeli forces refused to comply with the spirit of international demands to withdraw and the major powers on the Security Council were not prepared to deal with the gnarly issues that had sparked the Israelis invasion in the first place: dispossessed Palestinians and Israeli insecurity … Israel had thumbed its nose at the Security Council resolutions that demanded that Israel stay out of Lebanon, and in the course of invading a neighbor, its forces had trampled on the UN peacekeepers in its way” (Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira De Mello and the Fight to Save the World, p. 36).

 Noteworthy commentary on Samantha Power:

•  Power Hates Israel – Blames It For U.S. Iraq Invasion: “Blaming Israel for U.S. tactics in Iraq, of which Power clearly disapproves, is such a reach that it can only spring from deep-seated anti-Israel sentiment. . . So strong is her hatred of Israel that she attributes to this small State the power to corrupt the world’s super power.” (Paul Mirengoff, ‘Samantha Power: Hater of Israel,’Powerline blog, June 5, 2013).
•  U.S. Foreign Policy Distorted/Misguided By Support For Israel: [Regarding Power’s view that U.S. foreign policy, in addition to being dangerously unilateral, is distorted and misguided by its support for Israel and replication of undefined Israeli “tactics”] “Power is not just assenting to the [John Mearsheimer/Stephen Walt] Israel Lobby view of American foreign policy, but is also arguing that Israel had something to do with the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003 –an appalling slander, and a telling one” (Noah Pollak, ‘Obama and Israel, continued,’ Commentary, January 26, 2008).
•  NY Post columnist Lt.-Col. Peters: Power, A Left-Wing Militant, Has Zero Qualifications For UN Amb. Post:  “As for the earnest Ms. Power, she has zero qualifications to serve as our UN ambassador. She’s a left–wing militant who has yet to show the least interest in defending America, rather than merely using our might as her tool … Both Power and [Susan] Rice consistently advocate using our military to protect the human rights of often-hostile foreign populations. Of course there are, indeed, times when measured intervention is strategically wise and morally imperative — but our military’s fundamental purpose is national defense, not mercy missions to those who spit in our faces. (By the way, I know of no instance when Power has vigorously defended Jews or Christians murdered or driven from their homes by the Arabs she wants to “save”; guess human rights aren’t universal, after all.) … On a purely practical level, Power is a terrible choice to be our UN rep. It’s a job for a veteran, polished ambassador who understands the arcane ways of diplomacy and the UN’s exasperating rules and procedures — which the Russian and Chinese ambassadors employed to humiliate Rice. It’s not a job for a zealot on a hobby horse” (Ralph Peters, ‘O’s cynical picks,’ New York Post, June 6, 2013).
•  Distinguished British journalist Melanie Phillips: We Should Be Frightened By Power – She’s Extreme & Dangerous to U.S. & World: “I predicted at the beginning of the Obama presidency has now happened: that in a second term, he would promote to the front rank those who were so extreme and so dangerous to the well-being of America and the civilized world that in his first term, so as not to frighten the horses, he would keep them in the lower ranks out of sight. Well, we should all be frightened by Samantha Power. She is the living embodiment of the way in which ‘human rights’ have morphed into their absolute opposite, and instead of providing a protection against tyranny have been turned into the anvil upon which freedom and justice are being smashed … [Regarding Power’s April 2002 comments advocating  a “mammoth” U.S. intervention against Israel on behalf of Palestinians]. No, she was talking about invading Israel to prevent a genocide, or major human rights abuses, (her language wasn’t clear, but the point is the same), against the Palestinians — something which, in any rational universe, not only could not possibly be laid at Israel’s door but also held out the possibility that Israel might commit atrocities against people who themselves make Israel the victim of precisely such atrocities (and indeed, commit them regularly against other Palestinians). She also suggested that defending Israel was not a cause that should be dear to all Americans and indeed all decent people everywhere, nor that the great majority of Americans do indeed thus support Israel, but that the only people who might be alienated by invading Israel would be American Jews who exercised tremendous political and financial power over American politics. Subsequently she said of these comments that she couldn’t remember what she had said and didn’t understand what she had meant (Melanie Phillips, ‘A Perfect Match,’ MelaniePhillips.com, June 5, 2013).

 ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said,“Some of these additional examples of Samantha Power’s disturbing views may be legitimately judged to be borderline anti-Semitic and shockingly hostile to the United States.Her attacks on both the U.S and Israel being human rights-abusing evil-doers; about the need for the U.S. to distance itself from Israel and take the Palestinian side; of lumping Israel together with major human rights abusers like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan; her antipathy to those who support Israel and the notion that Palestinians launch attacks on Israel because Israel ‘dispossessed’ them (when of course Palestinians were not ‘dispossessed’ but rather fled a war the Arabs themselves launched to stop the establishment of Israel) – all these comments and more strongly indicate that Samantha Power would be a frightening and even dangerous appointment as U.S. Ambassador to the UN and prove most unlikely to defend effectively the interests of the United States and its allies, including Israel. 

“We reiterate our call for the Senate to vote down her appointment.”