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

Much of the Muslim world has an extraordinary sometimes lethal hatred of LGBT people. That’s why in January (2016), the very first sentence of a ZOA Op-Ed in the Jewish Exponent stated:  “Syrian immigrants pose a grave danger to all Americans – and especially to American Jews and gays.”   Also, in December 2015, ZOA’s detailed article, entitled ZOA Opposes Bringing in ISIS Infiltrated Syrian Refugees (subtitled “ZOA Criticizes ADL, AJC, Reform, for Joining Anti-Israel CAIR, MPAC, Presby. in Letter Supporting Syrian Refugees”) explained that increased immigration of ISIS-infiltrated and Hamas and Hezbollah-sympathetic Syrian immigrants would lead to “Increased Crimes Against Women And Increased Hatred Toward Gays.”   ZOA’s December article also stated: “As the head of Germany’s Jewish community noted when he implored Angela Merkel to place a quota limiting Muslim refugees:  “Don’t only think about the Jews, think about equal rights for women and the treatment of homosexuals.” 

And just two days before the Orlando massacre, in ZOA’s June 9, 2016, press release entitled New Information From Europe Confirms Terrorists Among Syrian Asylum Seekers, ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said: “The ZOA has been saying since last year that the Syrian migrants pose a grave danger to all Americans –– and especially to American Jews and gays.”   

Radical Islamic terrorist Omar Mateen’s horrific slaughter of 49 innocent people and wounding of 53 more at Orlando’s Pulse gay nightclub sadly underscores why we need to heed ZOA’s warnings and top U.S. government officials’ warnings against bringing in ISIS-infiltrated, Hezbollah and Hamas-sympathizing immigrants.  Mateen was the son of an Afghan Muslim immigrant sympathetic to the Taliban.  Importing more people with almost worthless vetting (as stated by FBI chief Comey, Cong Peter King, and National Intelligence head, James Clapper) infiltrated by those who share these ideologies increases the danger to all Americans – especially Jews, gays, and other minority communities.  (As ZOA also wrote last month, Pres. Obama’s drastic reduction of the vetting time to only 3 months has further increased the danger to the American public.)

Unfortunately, groups such as HIAS, Inc. (which used to be the “Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society”) and the Anti-Defamation League (“ADL”) continue to push to increase the number of (ISIS-infiltrated) Syrian refugees admitted into the United States.  ADL included a plug for Muslim refugees in ADL’s press release condemning the Orlando massacre.  HIAS receives millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars each year to resettle Syrian refugees; HIAS’s 2014 information filing (the most recent year available) shows that HIAS received over $19.5 million of government grants in 2014.  HIAS in turn gives grants to other organizations to act as refugee resettlement subcontractors, which have joined HIAS in calling for the United States to admit more refugees. On the same weekend as the slaughter in Orlando, HIAS falsely blogged that the Jewish holiday of Shavuot (which fell on the same weekend) teaches to welcome refugees.

In fact, as a previous ZOA article explained in detail, Jewish law teaches us to have strong borders to keep out enemies, and teaches us to avoid actions (such as importing an ISIS and Hezbollah-infiltrated population) that endanger ourselves and our American countrymen and women.  Jewish law also speaks of not taunting or oppressing righteous strangers who accept moral laws; this is not a call for bringing into our country enemies or groups infiltrated by enemies who want to murder Jews, Christians, gays and other minority groups. 

It is time for liberal groups that support LGBT rights to wake up to the dangers posed by radical Islam, and to stop pushing for increased immigration that will exacerbate these dangers.  

The Islamic Republic of Iran’s Islamic Penal Code says that the punishment for homosexuality is death.  Iran executes hundreds of gays each year, usually by hanging them from cranes.   The Palestinian Authority (PA)/PLO tortures and persecutes homosexuals, and Hamas imprisons and executes homosexuals in Gaza.  Here in the U.S., a Muslim scholar and physician, Dr. Sheikh Farrokh Sekaleshfar, spoke at the Husseini Islamic Center in central Florida near Orlando just a few weeks ago (in April 2016), and was videotaped urging that “the sentence is death” for homosexuality, and to “get rid of” (kill) homosexuals out of “compassion.”  Sheikh Sekaleshfar reportedly also urged that the only way for homosexuals to be forgiven is to die. 

No other religious group besides radical Islam is calling for homosexuals to be murdered. 

Yet, during Q&A after President Obama’s remarks yesterday (June 13), President Obama appeared to downplay radical Islam’s unique present-day calls for the slaughter of gays by blaming “a lot of” religious groups’ attitudes toward homosexuals. 

When asked about the “LGBT angle,” President Obama stated:  “Well, I think we don’t yet know the motivations.  But here’s what we do know — is organizations like ISIL or organizations like al Qaeda, or those who have perverted Islam and created these radical, nihilistic, vicious organizations, one of the groups that they target are gays and lesbians because they believe that they do not abide by their attitudes towards sexuality. . . . I’m sure we will find that there are connections — regardless of the particular motivations of this killer — there are connections between this vicious, bankrupt ideology [ISIL and al Qaeda] and general attitudes towards gays and lesbians.  And unfortunately, that’s something that the LGBT community is subject to not just by ISIL but by a lot of groups that purport to speak on behalf of God around the world.”

The President’s seeming attempt to dilute and cast blame elsewhere is unfortunately not surprising.   President Obama’s speeches after radical Islamist terrorist Omar Mateen slaughtered so many innocent people once again failed to clearly define and focus on the enemy “radical Islamic terrorism” to describe the massacre – despite the fact that Mateen called 9-1-1 in the midst of the massacre to pledge loyalty to the Islamic State and to express solidarity with the Islamist Boston Marathon bombers and an Islamist al Nusra (al Qaeda affiliate) suicide bomber from Florida.  And despite the fact that Omar Mateen told co-workers in 2013 that he was a member of the radical Islamist anti-Israel organization Hezbollah.  And despite the fact that massacres in France, San Bernardino, Brussels, Israel, and elsewhere are committed by radical Islamist terrorists-not Buddhist,Hindu,Christian,or Jewish terrorists. It’s time to start hitting ISIS with a thousand sorties a day, as recommended by military experts, not the ten to thirty a day we’re now perpetrating. 

Those who care about the lives of all Americans and our minorities should stop promoting dangerous immigration policies that increase the presence of radical Islamists and their deadly ideologies.