Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) President Morton A. Klein released the following statement:
The ZOA praises Israeli Prime Minister’s great, important, well-received speech to a joint session of the U.S. Congress yesterday. ZOA was pleased to see bipartisan Congressmembers give multiple, rousing standing ovations for Netanyahu’s speech affirming the justice of Israel’s cause – which is America’s cause too. ( We were saddened and disappointed that 1/2 of the Democrats including VP Kamala Harris boycotted the speech of the Jewish State’s leader.)
PM Netanyahu movingly and painfully spoke of the horrors Hamas inflicted on innocent mostly Jewish families and babies from 41 nations including Israelis and Americans on October 7; the plight of the hostages and their families, including the beautiful Bibas toddlers who are still in captivity, and rescued hostage Noa Argamani – who attended the speech, accompanied her father; the heroism and sacrifices of life and limb by Israel’s brave soldiers combating Hamas terrorists; the fact that there were virtually no Gazan civilian casualties in Rafah; and the fact that, as West Point’s head of urban warfare studies John Spencer confirmed, Israel has the lowest civilian-to-combatant casualty ratio of any urban war in history.
We were pleased to see the Prime Minister’s strong articulation of the Jewish people’s historic right to the Land of Israel, noting: “the Land of Israel is where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob prayed, where Isaiah and Jeremiah preached and where David and Solomon ruled. For nearly four thousand years, the land of Israel has been the homeland of the Jewish people. It’s always been our home; it will always be our home.”
PM Netanyahu also forthrightly called out the blood libels used to try to delegitimize the Jewish State – including the ICC prosecutor’s shameful, totally fabricated accusation that Israel is deliberately starving Gazans – when in fact Israel has enabled half a million tons of food to enter Gaza, more than 3,000 calories per day for every man, woman and child in Gaza. As PM Netanyahu succinctly put it: “If there are Palestinians in Gaza who aren’t getting enough food, it’s not because Israel is blocking it, it’s because Hamas is stealing it.”
Netanyahu also thanked Presidents Biden and Trump for positive acts on behalf of Israel, and diplomatically addressed the Biden administration’s unconscionable slow-walking and hold-ups of needed arms shipments to Israel, without naming the Biden administration.
Echoing Winston Churchill’s appeal to America during WWII, Netanyahu made this non-partisan appeal: “Today, as Israel fights on the frontline of civilization, I too appeal to America: Give us the tools faster, and we’ll finish the job faster.” ZOA urges Congress and the Biden administration to heed this vital appeal.
The Israeli Prime Minister also correctly called out the anti-Israel, anti-American protestors as “Iran’s useful idiots,” recalling U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines recent disclosure that Iran is funding and promoting anti-Israel protests in America.
ZOA also appreciates so many other aspects of PM Netanyahu’s speech, including his statements regarding the need to demilitarize, deradicalize, and maintain overall security control over post-war Gaza “to ensure that Gaza never again poses a threat to Israel.” We must undo the decades of UNRWA schools teaching Gazan children to hate and murder Jews if we are ever to have peace.
It is sad that one isolationist Republican Congressman and many Democratic leftist Congressmembers boycotted Prime Minister Netanyahu’s wonderful speech. These are the Congressmembers who most needed to hear everything that the Prime Minister said.