ZOA Open Letter Urging Prime Minister Netanyahu: Continue Opposing a Palestinian Arab Terror State; Jewish Building Freezes; Ending Judicial Reform; Expose Horrific Nazi-Policies of Abbas’ Terrorist Dictatorship of the Palestinian Regime
News Press Release
September 21, 2023

To the Honorable Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel:

We are proud to welcome you to the United States and the United Nations and ZOA’s President Morton Klein looks forward to meeting with you in NYC.

We are also proud to be working with others to have large demonstrations supporting you, PM Netanyahu, and the democratically elected government of the Jewish State of Israel.

During your upcoming meetings with President Joe Biden and other officials, the Zionist Organization of America and our many friends urge you to stand strong against pressures to “advance prospects” for a Palestinian Arab state. As you have explained, a Palestinian Arab state would be a terror regime with all the powers of a state on Israel’s longest border and an existential threat to Israel’s existence. Israel is suffering from multiple terror attacks every single day. Any moves to “advance prospects” for a Palestinian Arab state will make the current terrible situation even worse.

As you judiciously wrote in The New York Times in March 2018, a Palestinian state “doesn’t work. . . . When we leave land, Arab terror organizations take over. Immediately.”

You also elegantly reminded the world of these dangers in 2015, when you promised that you will not allow a Palestinian Arab state, and said: “Whoever moves to establish a Palestinian state or intends to withdraw from territory is simply yielding territory for radical Islamic terrorist attacks against Israel.”

And as you eloquently explained in your famous 2002 speech to the Likud Central Committee, a Palestinian Arab state would never keep a demilitarization agreement; would make alliances with foreign powers; would import weapons; would shoot down Israeli planes; and would result in Israel being blamed and stopped if Israel attempted to enforce demilitarization. If Israel agreed to a Palestinian Arab state, “We will thus have created with our own hands a threat to our very existence.”

We also urge you to say “no” to Jewish building freezes in Judea/Samaria. Such freezes are antisemitic discrimination, and undermine Israel’s historic, legal, just and moral rights to Judea/Samaria. Freezes have never brought us closer to peace. Instead, freezes encourage more terror, and undermine the Jewish people’s sovereign and basic human rights.

We also urge you to move forward on democracy-enhancing, critically necessary Judicial Reform. Israel must end this judicial tyrannical dictatorship. Esteemed U.S. Judges Robert Bork and Richard Posner wrote lengthy articles years ago decrying the Israeli Supreme Court system as the worst in the world which has arrogated to itself more power than any court should have among other problems.

Likewise, we urge you to say “no” to providing financial support to the Palestinian Authority regime. Such support merely enables the PA to continue its sickening program of paying Arabs lifetime pensions to murder Jews and Americans totaling $400 million per year. And they just doubled the amount paid to the killer of Ari Fuld.

Please pay NO attention to a shameful letter to President Biden organized by the far-left extremist Israel Policy Forum (IPF), promoting a Palestinian Arab terror state. The letter was signed by 20 individuals affiliated with IPF and a few dozen other similarly misguided, left wing American Jews. These include a former executive director of New Israel Fund (NIF), which funds anti-Israel NGOs that boycott and defame Israel. The signers also include Union of Reform Judaism President Rick Jacobs, who is also a former NIF board member. Jacobs went to Israel to join antisemitic Arab protests against the Jewish owners of properties in Shimon HaTzadik/Sheikh Jarrah; opposed and condemned your necessary speech to Congress about the Iran deal, called those condemning the anti-Israel group Black Lives Matter “racists”; and is now leading a rally against you outside your hotel in New York.

Finally, it would be of great value for Israel to launch a campaign more clearly exposing Abbas and the vile terrorist dictatorship of the Palestinian regime who supports Pay-to-Slay; names schools, streets and sports tournaments after Jew-killers; and whose media teaches Arabs to murder Jews by ramming cars into them and slitting their throats and whose textbooks promote hatred and violence against Jews and propaganda lies against Israel.

For the sake of the continuity of the Jewish state, the IPF letter and its signers must be ignored. The proposals in the IPF letter would lead to countless Jewish deaths and gravely threaten every man, woman and child in Israel.

Wishing you Hatzlachah and Strength.

G’mar Chatima Tova,

Morton A. Klein, National President of the Zionist Organization of America, and ZOA’s board, staff, activists and friends

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