ZOA Thanks Our Activists/Leaders for Their Tremendous Efforts
Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) National President Morton A. Klein and ZOA Director of Research & Special Projects Liz Berney, Esq. released the following statement.
The ZOA profusely praises and profusely thanks Marriott hotels for taking a moral and correct action by deciding yesterday evening to cancel the radical Jew-Hating, Israel-hating Hamas-linked CAIR (Council on Council on American Islamic Relations) national banquet that was scheduled at the Marriott Crystal for Saturday night, October 21, 2023. CAIR blamed Israel for Hamas’ slaughter, rape, beheadings, torture and kidnapping of Israeli civilians, on the very same day the slaughter occurred, and since then. The CAIR banquet program featured notorious Israel-bashing speakers who foster antisemitism and incite and support terror against Israel.
Everyone at ZOA especially thanks so many of our activists/leaders for joining ZOA’s efforts. Your responses to ZOA’s Action Alert about the CAIR banquet were tremendous. You called various Marriott phone numbers despite difficulties in getting through the switchboards; wrote excellent letters to Marriott’s president; and many of you also updated us with copies of your letters, results of your calls and information. More and more of us are standing up for Israel and the Jewish people in these extraordinarily difficult times.
Marriott now has joined Hilton in doing the moral and right thing: The previous day, Hilton hotels canceled the USCPR (U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights) convention full of Israel-haters, antisemites and terror-supporters (including the same featured speaker at the CAIR event). The USCPR programs included freeing convicted Hamas-financers; preventing Israel from obtaining arms to defend herself at this precarious time; opposing efforts to combat antisemitism; launching boycott campaigns against individual American families who support Israel; “Confronting Zionism on College Campuses” (meaning, more attacks on Jewish students); “mobilization in order to combat” Israel, India, Zionists and Hindus; “advancing” the UC Berkeley “BDS strategy” (e.g., preventing supporters of Israel from speaking to campus groups); and Standing with six front groups of the PFLP and Hamas terror organizations (and trying to pass these terror affiliates off as “human rights groups”).
Marriott’s and Hilton’s cancellations of these hateful antisemitic terror-supporting events is an important victory! Thank you for doing your part in bringing this about!
Many of you have also kindly been asking what else you can do. There are many ongoing issues, calls to make to Congress to assure support for Israel; media lies that we all keep needing to correct; and ways that you can help now. Please check the ZOA Activists page, which we will continue to update! Some helpful items only take a few minutes!
We note that CAIR is claiming that Marriott canceled CAIR’s banquet due to bomb and terror threats. We don’t know a single person who made such threats. ZOA and our many activists communicated respectfully with Marriott. Thousands of people also signed a respectful petition asking Marriott to cancel the event. CAIR said that it is going to cancel another event it had scheduled for October 28, and have its banquet at another location.