Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) President Morton A. Klein and ZOA Chairman Mark S. Levenson, Esq. released the following statement:

In our view, AIPAC made a serious mistake when it retracted and apologized for its recent ads expressing the accurate concern that radical, Jew-hating Israelophobes in the Democratic Party are infecting and influencing an alarming number of other Democratic Party members to become more hostile to Israel and even Jews. AIPAC should rescind its retraction, and resume its discontinued ad campaign to urge Democratic representatives to support Israel.

Pro-Israel organizations must do everything possible to assure that our friends in both parties remain our friends. This includes calling out and strongly opposing the dangerous influences and extremely worrisome trends that we are seeing today.

Less than two weeks ago, Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (MI) – who associates with a top Hezbollah supporter and anti-Israel terrorists – retweeted a vicious, completely fabricated, antisemitic blood libel. Tlaib’s retweet falsely accused innocent Jews (whom the tweet falsely called “a herd of violent #Israelisettlers”) of kidnapping, assaulting, and executing an Arab boy and throwing him into a water well. This blood libel is virtually the same as the blood libels used to incite deadly anti-Jewish pogroms throughout the Middle Ages.

Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), also known as AOC, spread similar antisemitic blood libels, and directly justified and incited violence against Jews – by declaring that Palestinian-Arabs have “no choice but to riot” against Jews in her July 2019 “Ebro in the Morning” radio interview. During the same interview, AOC also falsely claimed that Israel denies Palestinians access to clean water – an antisemitic “Jews poison the water” medieval-style blood libel; and “absolutely” agreed with the radio show host’s false characterization of the Jewish people as “white supremacist Jews,” and the host’s false statements calling Israel “very, very unjust” and “very, very, criminal.”

Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar (MN) is infamous for falsely accusing Israel/Jews of “evil doings” and oppression, falsely calling Israel “racist” and an “apartheid” state, falsely accusing Jews of buying Congress, and of dual loyalty, and is sponsoring legislation to promote anti-Israel boycotts, which compares anti-Israel boycotts to anti-Nazi boycotts.

Democratic Rep. Hank Johnson (GA) called Jews living in the historic Jewish homeland “termites.”

And much more.

The fact that House Democrats have continued to tolerate and refuse to take action against such vile antisemitism in their midst is deeply concerning in and of itself.