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

The ZOA is appalled by, and calls upon the Jordanian parliament to retract its praise for the Arab terrorists who murdered two Druze Israeli policemen on Friday on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Israel.  Jordanian Parliament Speaker Atef Tarawneh’s praise of the Arab terrorists/murderers as “martyrs who sowed and watered the pure land” and as “young Palestinians who are still fighting in the name of the nation” etc. incites still more unbridled terror, and instigates the repeated use of holy religious sites to hide terrorists’ weapons and as places to perpetrate terror.  ZOA also calls upon the Jordanian Speaker Tarawneh to retract his false, offensive claim that Israeli “occupation” of Jerusalem and the “West Bank” (Judea/Samaria) are “lighting the fire of revenge” among young Arabs and justified the killing. 

The Jordanian parliament’s and its speaker’s actions and statements violate the 1994 Treaty of Peace Between The State of Israel And The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (the “Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty”).  The Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty requires the parties to not incite or instigate terror, and recognized that the international boundary between Jordan and Israel is the Jordan and Yarmouk Rivers, and the Dead Sea, etc. – thereby confirming that Israel is not an occupier of any other nation’s land.

It is also absurd for Jordanians to call Israelis “occupiers” – when Jordan was created out of, “occupied,” territory and continues to be situated on 78% of the territory designated for Jewish settlement and the Jewish homeland under binding international law (i.e., the League of Nations Mandate and San Remo resolution). 

The Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty also requires Jordan:

“to refrain from . . . instigating, inciting, assisting or participating in acts or threats of belligerency, hostility, subversion or violence against the other Party [Israel].”  (Article 4.3.2)

“to refrain from . . . joining or in any way assisting, promoting or co-operating with any coalition, organisation or alliance with a military or security character with a third party, the objectives or activities of which include launching aggression or other acts of military hostility against the other Party, in contravention of the provisions of the present Treaty.”  (Article 4.4.1)

“to recognise and . . . respect each other’s [Israel’s] right to live in peace within secure and recognised boundaries.”  (Article 2.2)

“to act together to promote interfaith relations among the three monotheistic religions, with the aim of working towards religious understanding, moral commitment, freedom of religious worship, and tolerance and peace.” (Article 9)

When ISIS killed 10 people and wounded 34 people in an attack in Jordan this past December, Jordanian officials condemned the attack as a “cowardly terrorist attack.”  There is no difference between a Palestinian Arab terrorist attack against innocent Jewish civilians and Israeli Druze policemen and ISIS terrorist attacks against innocent Jordanians.   

As President Trump stated during his Speech to the Arab Islamic American Summit in Riyadh on May 21, 2017, our nations must unite to drive out and “vanquish the forces of terrorism . . . That means honestly confronting the crisis of Islamist extremism and the Islamist terror groups it inspires. And it means standing together against the murder of innocent Muslims, the oppression of women, the persecution of Jews, and the slaughter of Christians.”