Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) National President Morton A. Klein released the following statement:

Almost every day we witness yet another outrageous attack on a Jew or a Jewish institution in the United States and around the world. This intolerable surge in antisemitism cannot be ignored, minimized, or explained away.

We call upon every member of Congress to unequivocally condemn these antisemitic assaults and the vile Israel-bashing that so often fuels and legitimizes hatred of Jews. Silence and equivocation in the face of such hatred only embolden the perpetrators.

We also urge every member of Congress, as well as President Trump and Vice President Vance, to publicly and forcefully condemn those prominent voices who traffic in reckless Israel-bashing and rhetoric that inflames hostility toward Jews, specifically figures such as Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens. When influential personalities spread distortions and hostility toward the Jewish state, they help create an atmosphere in which antisemitism thrives. We also urge universities to never allow a platform and to deplatform Israel bashing Jew-hating groups like SJP and CAIR and others.  They must publicly condemn antisemitic individuals and groups by name. Propaganda lies against the Jewish state, like genocide, apartheid, and occupation, must be condemned as ugly Jew-hating lies. Hamas and the Palestinian regimes’ charters calling for murder and violence against Jews and Israel’s destruction must be condemned. 

At the same time, our leaders must have the courage to speak honestly about the role that radical Islamist ideology and extremist imams have played in fomenting antisemitic hatred and violence. Pretending otherwise does nothing to protect Jewish communities and allows irrational hatred against Jews to metastasize. Only several months ago, the Muslim co-founder of Hamas, Mohammed Al Zahar, stated, “First we’ll kill all the Jews but next we’ll kill all the Christians.” And the Dean of Islam’s leading theological academy, Al-Azhar University, ordered a Fatwa on October 19, 2023, 12 days after the Hamas/Fatah/Iran massacre, to “kill all the Jews.”

We urge that our leaders follow in the footsteps of Egypt’s Muslim President El-Sissi, who proclaimed at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, the leading Islamic university in the world, “Is it possible that 2 billion people (Muslims) should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants of 7 billion people? We are in need of a religious revolution (in Islam). You Imams are responsible before Allah. The entire world is waiting. It’s inconceivable that what we hold most sacred should cause the entire Islamic nation to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world. This can’t be.”

America’s leaders must clearly and unapologetically denounce these bigoted forces and make it unmistakably clear that decent Americans are repulsed by such hatred. If this moral clarity is not shown now, the danger to Jewish communities will only grow more severe.