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Ambassador Erdan thanked his “Dear, dear friend Morton Klein,” adding, “Mort, your unwavering commitment to Israel and Zionism is truly remarkable. Under your leadership, the ZOA has become a beacon of truth and a staunch defender of Israel. You are not only a trusted ally and friend, but also an inspiration above all. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
Amb. Erdan then explained: “In this dark year, an unexpected ray of light emerged. A generation of lions emerged, defending our homeland with unbreakable resolve. . . . Their courage has made one thing clear: Our enemies can never defeat us on the conventional battlefield.” He noted that after October 7, that in addition to rockets, the enemy’s “secret weapon” against us is “the United Nations, the house of lies.” The enemy knew that the United Nations would rush to tie Israel’s hands, and brand Israel as a “human rights abuser” to stop and prevent Israel’s victory. What the UN does “is not just bias. It is a weapon in the terrorist arsenal, to help them survive.”
Amb. Erdan added: “An institution born to prevent genocide has been hijacked by those who plot it.” Fifty-six countries, nearly one-third of the UN’s 193 countries, are Muslim countries “who obviously support the Palestinian Arabs in every war against the Jewish state, even if we are fighting a terror organization. . . . Over half of the UN states today are not even democracies” – and this causes moral distortions. “Cuba, Sudan, Somalia and Eretria . . . are on the Human Rights Council; you cannot make this up. . . . Saudi Arabia was chosen recently to chair the council on the status of women. . . . The President of the International Court of Justice, the ICJ, the very court on a witch hunt to accuse Israel of genocide, is from Lebanon run by Hezbollah. A judge from a country at war with Israel now sits in judgment over us. An absurdity. So Israel, a country that represents only one-tenth of one percent of the world’s population . . . receives 70% of the UN’s condemnations. We get more condemnations than Russia, Syria, North Korea and Iran combined.”
Amb. Erdan continued: “Since October 7, we have witnessed a new low, even for the UN. Over 400 days have passed with our hostages in captivity. Yet the Security Council hasn’t even held one single meeting to advance their release. Not a single UN body has even condemned Hamas. Disgusting. The conclusion, friends, is that today, the UN has become a stain on humanity. This stain . . . costs $75 billion dollars per year.” The U.S. “is still the biggest funder of the UN, almost $20 billion dollars every year, . . . literally financing an institution run by dictators and jihadists.
Friends, the UN must be defunded. (The crowd cheered at this.) I am hopeful that the Trump administration will get this done. President Trump understands what a scam looks like. Remember UNRWA? The UN agency breeding terror. President Trump saw through them. He cut off their funding, just like that. Zero dollars for terror. Zero dollars for antisemitism. Now it’s time to do the same to the entire UN. Every tax dollar sent to the UN today is a dollar funding our shared enemies. The time has come to defund the UN completely. And together we can end this madness. As long as the UN spews lies, we will never stay silent. We will expose the falsehoods.”
Ambassador Erdan explained that at the UN, he knew that he represented the world’s most moral nation and most moral military, and thus he went on the offensive to stand up for the truth. Amb. Erdan recounted that he called for UN Secretary General Guterres to resign when Guterres claimed that October 7 did not occur in a vacuum; and that Amb. Erdan was detained for protesting Iranian mass murderer Raisi’s speech in the UN General Assembly. When the Russian Foreign Minister held an anti-Israel event on Yom HaZikaron, Erdan lit a memorial candle for Israel’s heroes and walked out.
During Ambassador Erdan’s speech, a few protestors started screaming anti-Israel “free Palestine” slogans. They were quickly ejected by security. A gala guest commented, “I noticed that they made sure to eat the dinner here before they started protesting! I guess Israel-haters have no problem eating our Zionist food!” Ambassador Erdan remained unflappable, and commented: “Palestine never existed, by the way,” which elicited cheers from the crowd.
During the four years that Amb. Erdan stood alone at the UN, he remembered the words of the Lubavitcher Rebbe “A little light dispels much darkness.” He also remembered that the ambassadors of the Babylonian and Roman Empires, and the delegations of the Moabites and Amorites and Amalek were nowhere to be found. Empires have crumbled and disappeared. But as long as we stand united, we will survive and thrive and destroy Hamas and bring the hostages home.
After a warm introduction by ZOA Vice Chair Michael Orbach, Brigadier General (res.) Amir Avivi noted that today, after October 7, everyone in Israel understands that the Oslo Accords which brought Palestinian terrorists into Israel and Israel’s disengagement from Gaza were terrible mistakes.
General Avivi then explained: “But thirty years ago, there was only one organization here in the west, standing strong and saying this [Oslo] is wrong; standing against the other organizations who were saying that Oslo is the right path; and this organization standing strong is the ZOA, and I thank you Morton Klein, for this leadership. Because it’s not easy to stand against the stream, and say the truth. And it took 30 years [for others] to realize how wrong everything was for the past three decades, which brought us at the end of the day to the seventh of October. . . .”
General Aviv added: “Our soldiers are fighting fiercely in Gaza, in Lebanon.” General Avivi asked the gala attendees to fill out postcards on their tables thanking the soldiers for their service. “Our soldiers want to know only one thing. They want to know that the Jewish people are behind them, supporting them, that we appreciate what they are doing for Israel.” Numerous audience members filled out the postcards with warm messages thanking Israel’s courageous soldiers.
General Avivi and other generals did an assessment three years ago that an existential war was imminent. From October 7, Jews woke up to the need to fight two big wars. The war on the ground and the war that ZOA is fighting to make clear that we need to eradicate our enemies.
Emcee Rita Cosby praised the ZOA Coalition slate running in the upcoming World Zionist Congress elections, consisting of 25 of the strongest pro-Israel organizations, led by the ZOA. The election will take place from March 10 through May 4, 2025. Ms. Cosby encouraged anyone interested in joining the ZOA Coalition slate as a candidate to speak with ZOA Director of Research and Special Projects Liz Berney ([email protected]). A video by WZO Chair Yaakov Hagoel, in his capacity as representative of World Likud, also encouraged attendees to vote for the ZOA Coalition during the upcoming WZC elections.
The Myron Zimmerman Award for Outstanding Student Activism honoree, Harvard graduate Shabbos Kestenbaum, was warmly introduced by ZOA Campus Director Jonathan Ginsburg and five ZOA campus professionals and delivered a stirring speech about standing up proudly on campuses and elsewhere to antisemitic hatred.
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