Annual gala of Zionist Organization of America, featuring Sheldon Adelson, breaks into wild applause over far-right views and the prospect of a Republican president.
NEW YORK – The United States should not accept any Syrian refugees, Zionist Organization of America president Mort Klein told attendees at a gala banquet here Sunday night, adding that many of them hate Jews and Israel. In addition, he said, parents and siblings of terrorists should be deported unless they publicly condemn, in Hebrew and Arabic, the acts of their family member. Klein was speaking to an audience of more than 1,000 people at the 2015 Justice Louis D. Brandeis Award Dinner, held at Manhattan’s Grand Hyatt hotel.
“Don’t bring these refugees here. Treat as pariahs all those who promote radical Islam. … We must crush radical Islam as we crushed Nazism,” Klein said.
Attendees greeted both of Klein’s proposals with wild applause. It was one of several moments of right-wing ideology met by popular — though perhaps, given the $700 per person ticket price, not populist — acclaim.
“I don’t even know the legalities of it,” Klein told Haaretz after the dinner, of the deportation proposal. “I am so frustrated by the horror, the terror almost every day. The streets of Israel are empty, stores are 80 percent down in sales, people aren’t going to the Kotel. This is terrible. We can’t allow them to destroy Israel’s society,” he said, adding that ZOA’s board had not yet approved his idea but he expected it to do so at a meeting later this week. “These are extraordinary times and we need extraordinary measures.”
At the event, which was billed as “ZOA’s Superstar Gala,” actor Jon Voight received the Dr. Miriam & Sheldon Adelson Defender of Israel Award and Israeli Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer was given the ZOA’s Dr. Bob Shillman Award for Outstanding Diplomacy.
Dermer, in his remarks, called on world governments to wage war against militant Islam and castigated them for not coming to Israel’s defense during the current round of terrorist attacks. “In the past few weeks, 19 Israelis have been killed and some 200 have been wounded in terror attacks. … But rather than support Israel … we hear outrageous statements about a cycle of violence and the need for both sides to act with restraint.”
