ZOA’s Morton Klein said: “We need political and religious and media leaders to forcefully and repeatedly repudiate these lies or it will lead to tragic consequences.”
By Aaron Bandler
(January 13, 2026 / JNS) It feels necessary, due to political pressure, to accuse the Jewish state publicly of committing “genocide” in Gaza even though that charge is untrue, a New England legislator told JNS on background.
“I don’t think that ‘genocide’ is a term that can be used in the moment, in the fog of war,” the legislator told JNS. But there has been “so much mounting pressure” after lawmakers in the legislator’s state began accusing Israel of “genocide,” the lawmaker said.
“Nobody was going to engage with me, or even talk to me, or not just throw me in some bucket if I wasn’t willing to say that,” the legislator told JNS. “They didn’t want to hear anything else that I wanted to say. They just wanted to hear whether or not I was going to use that word.”
The legislator also felt such pressure from news outlets that reached out for comment on the matter, the person said.
“Depending on how you answer this question, are you going to be able to stay relevant in this conversation or be able to offer anything to this conversation unless you use this word they want to hear or not hear?” the legislator said.
The lawmaker added that the situation in Gaza is not a major issue for constituents and that colleagues in the state are in the same position, but “what becomes very apparent is that it doesn’t matter.”
“You can use that word, and I did, and it really made absolutely no difference in their narrative,” the legislator told JNS.
Kurt Schwartz, CEO of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, told JNS that “Jewish and pro-Israel communities, facing ever-increasing levels of antisemitism that are frequently expressed in hate, threats and violence, are too often let down by the response of community and elected leaders.”
“This is not a time to cower. This is not a time for equivocation,” Schwartz said. “It is a time for moral clarity, leadership and strong voices denouncing bald lies such as the genocide libel.”
Schwartz added that “politicians who shirk their obligations and lie to pass political litmus tests are failing their constituents, failing to recognize that strong voices and leadership are needed in these challenging times and are contributing to the dangerous escalation of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel hate.”
“We should remember the quote often attributed to Edmund Burke,” he said. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Mort Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America, told JNS that the legislator “said the hidden truth out loud.”
“The dangerous, Islamist and media inspired evolving U.S. culture has made it ‘cool’ and almost obligatory to promote ugly propaganda lies against the Jewish state,” Klein said.
“This reminds me of the widely believed insane lies in the Middle Ages that Jews poisoned the wells to kill Christians and that Jews murdered Christian children to use their blood to make matzah,” he said. “We need political and religious and media leaders to forcefully and repeatedly repudiate these lies or it will lead to tragic consequences.”
A spokesman for the World Jewish Congress told JNS that the organization “deeply concerned by the growing effort to turn support for Israel into a political litmus test, where candidates are pressured to disavow the Jewish state or embrace false accusations of genocide simply to be deemed acceptable.”
“Israel is America’s closest ally in the Middle East and a fellow democracy that shares—and defends—core Western values,” the spokesman said. “Demonizing Israel or applying standards to it that are applied to no other nation does not advance peace or human rights.”
“Rather, it fuels polarization, legitimizes antisemitism and weakens the moral clarity democracies need in an increasingly dangerous world,” the organization said.
This article was originally published in JNS and can be viewed here.