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When Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed could not say Iran is a bigger threat to the U.S. than Israel, it was a warning of elections in a post-Oct. 7 world, Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) president Morton Klein says.
American and even Israeli leaders are failing to show strength against hate as anti-Zionist voices gain power, Klein told Fox News Digital in a Monday interview.
“Ilhan Omar is one of the most vicious Jew haters in America,” Klein said, speaking on behalf of himself and not as the leader of the ZOA. “And it is very painful to me that the leaders of the Democratic Party have not continuously and vigorously condemned her” and other antisemitic political leaders, including Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., El-Sayed and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
They are not merely “pro-Palestinian” voices, Klein says: “They’re anti-Israel voices. They don’t really give a damn about the Palestinians either. They just hate Jews in the Jewish state. That’s my opinion.”
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Left: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a press conference in Jerusalem on December 9, 2024. Right: Zohran Mamdani, New York State Assemblyman and mayoral candidate for New York City, speaks at an emergency rally held by the Working Families Party to criticize the Trump administration, after ICE agents arrested Ras Baraka, mayor of Newark and New Jersey Democratic candidate for governor, at Foley Square in New York, New York, U.S., May 10, 2025. (MAYA ALLERUZZO/POOL/AFP via Getty Images and REUTERS/Bing Guan)
The ZOA is a 501(c)(3) that is unpermitted by law to talk candidacies as opposed to their positions, Klein stressed, before unloading on the voices that take aim at Israel and ostensibly handing political power to the antisemites and terrorists – which even includes Israeli elections just two weeks from now.
“Viciously antisemitic members of Congress have not been condemned in any significant way by the Democratic Party,” he continued. “So it’s disappointing to me as an American that we don’t condemn people who are filled with hate and not filled with what’s best for America.”
Anti-Israel rhetoric has moved from the political fringe into elected office, he said, warning that Democrats have not forcefully condemned members of their own party who he says traffic in antisemitism.
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It has even forced Israeli leaders to move toward a dangerous level of “appeasement,” according to Klein.
“I blame the Jewish leaders and the Israeli leaders themselves: You might find that surprising,” he said. “The Israeli government over the years has not made it clear that the Hamas Charter has two clauses that say, murder every Jew on earth, destroy Israel. And, most recently, El-Sayed not only refused to clearly name Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terror, as a greater threat than Israel during a Michigan Senate debate, “he said worse,” Klein lamented.
“He said both of them are dangerous to America, and he said Israel is as evil as Hamas,” he continued.
“The Democratic Party has not condemned him. Worse, [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer endorsed him, has given him tens of millions of dollars to run,” Klein said. “Elissa Slotkin, the senator from Michigan, Jewish senator, has endorsed him. And [Dana] Nessel, the attorney general, Jewish attorney general has endorsed them. This is disgraceful.”
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“If this guy was unequivocally anti-Black, they would have all condemned him. Why don’t they condemn people who hate Jews for no reason whatsoever? It’s very, very frightening,” he said.
During his push to hold the Michigan Senate seat for Democrats, Abdul El-Sayed described Judaism as “a light unto the world,” expressing deep gratitude for the Jewish community’s contributions.
“My commitment to Jewish safety is equivalent to the commitment to the safety of my own daughters,” he said.
Klein also weighed in on Mamdani for declining to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” a call to violence against Jews around the world, he warned.
“Mamdani was asked to condemn the phrase, globalize the intifada … he refused to condemn this phrase,” Klein said. “This guy is a monster. He is a jihadist Jew-hater supporter of terrorism.”
Despite the criticism, Mamdani has pledged to “protect our Jewish neighbors” and stated his commitment to “mourning with them, and committing to fight against evil and antisemitism.”
As Mamdani has done explicitly, Israel is often portrayed as the aggressor and perpetrator of a so-called “genocide” in Gaza, Klein observed, stating that the reality is those atrocities were committed by Hamas terrorists Oct. 7, when terrorists invaded Israel specifically to kill “Jews,” not merely “people,” Klein said.
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“They went in house to house, door to door, murdering every single family,” Klein said. “Can you imagine? They go in and there’s a mother and a father and children sitting, they’re scared out of their minds, and they shoot them to death. And oftentimes they raped the mother first and then they murdered them. Then they put babies into ovens and killed them that way. It’s just a nightmare what they did.”
“Yes, their goal is to murder every single Jew. In fact, the leaders of Hamas have said repeatedly: ‘We will have many, many more Oct. 7s; you wait, many, more Oct. 7s,” he added.
Klein said any future Israeli government after the Oct. 27 elections must be “as tough as nails, responding with overwhelming force for any terrorism,” and do as the “the people demanded: destroy Hamas.”
Klein warned, however, that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could be weakened politically if he is forced to form an alliance with left-of-center parties after Israel’s elections.
“The polls show that it’s likely that Netanyahu will win again, but he may have to have a broader coalition to bring in people from the left of center,” Klein warned. “I think the odds are high Bibi will continue to be the prime minister. But his hands will be somewhat tied if he’s forced, and I think he will be forced, to bring people from left of the center to have coalition.”
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Asked whether the process of forming a coalition could weaken Israel’s response, Klein answered, “Yes.”
“Yes, because some of the left-of-center people are appeasement-oriented,” Klein said. “They still believe just give the Arabs more, it’ll be all right.”
“And people have to understand, and these people don’t quite understand, this is not a war about land or about a Palestinian state. This is a war about destroying Israel and killing Jews.”
He argued that Israel should reject further concessions and project strength until its enemies accept that the Jewish state cannot be destroyed and the decades of calls for a Palestinian state are a proven failure.
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“They had it; they controlled it,” Klein said. “They could have just said a new country of Palestine has now emerged. No, because the goal is not that. The goal is Israel’s destruction.”
“Only when they understand that, that it’s hopeless for them to destroy the Jewish state of Israel, only then might they finally lay down their arms and say, we give up.”