The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) President Morton A. Klein and ZOA Director of Government Relations Dan Pollak released the following:
The Zionist Organization of America strongly endorses the letter released today by Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) and signed by the GOP leadership and 199 House GOP Colleagues to President Joe Biden opposing the administration’s proposal to open a U.S. consulate in Israel’s capital city of Jerusalem for the Palestinian Arab terrorist dictatorship, which pays Arabs to murder Jews and Americans. This would reward the Palestinian regime’s refusal to recognize the Jewish state. Establishing the consulate would be a major step towards changing the existing U.S. policy that Jerusalem is the undivided capital of the Jewish state and begin the division of Jerusalem. The letter makes the point that existing law explicitly prohibits the opening of any other U.S. diplomatic post in Jerusalem, and asks the administration to keep Jerusalem undivided as the capital of the Jewish State.
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said:
“A U.S. ‘Palestinian Arab’ consulate in Jerusalem is a discriminatory, diplomatic insult and an attack on Israel’s sovereignty. It is an attack on Israel’s rights to the Jewish people’s eternal holiest city, Jerusalem. The United States has no consulate serving another entity or group in any other country with which the U.S. maintains diplomatic relations.
“Such a consulate would also boost dangerous efforts to divide and claim Jerusalem for a Palestinian Arab terror state’s capital.
“Establishing a consulate would also reward the terrorist dictatorship of the Palestinian Authority for continuing to pay Arab terrorists huge lifetime pensions to murder Jews and Americans, for inciting hatred and murder against Jews and Christians, and for filing illegitimate, false claims against Israel in international bodies―all in violation of the PA’s signed Oslo agreements.
