ZOA Urges Biden to Rescind ‘Horrific’ Holocaust Museum Council Appointments

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) is calling on President Joe Biden to rescind the recent “horrific” appointments of leaders of anti-Israel groups to the Holocaust Museum Council — whose founding principles insist on “support for a Jewish homeland.”

Zionist Organization of America head Morton Klein blasted the recent appointments of two figures —  attorney Kimberly Marteau Emerson and former U.S. ambassador to Spain Alan D. Solomont — to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Council after the president announced his intent to do so last month.

In response to the appointments, the nation’s oldest pro-Israel organization released a statement condemning and urging the “rescission of President Biden’s recent horrific and frightening appointment [last month] to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Council (the governing board of trustees of the Museum) of two board members of hostile-to-Israel non-governmental organizations: Kimberly Marteau Emerson and Alan D. Solomont.”

Klein, who described himself as “a child of Holocaust survivors who lost most of my family to Hitler’s Holocaust,” noted Israel’s place in efforts to recognize the Holocaust: 

Congress established the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to memorialize Holocaust victims and “carry out the recommendations of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust in its report to the President of September 27, 1979.” 36 USC §2301. The 1979 President’s Commission report called for the Holocaust Museum to focus both on America’s failings in the Holocaust, including the Evian conference, the inability to believe the Holocaust was happening, and failure of effective action, as well as America’s achievements, including America’s “support for a Jewish homeland.”

“Thus, the Holocaust Memorial Museum – which by law is mandated to carry out ‘support for the Jewish homeland’ – should never have board members of anti-Israel organizations on the Museum’s governing board,” he asserted.

The statement then points to Emerson’s history of attacking Israel.

“Since 2012, Kimberly Marteau Emerson has been an active member of the Board of Directors of the Israel-bashing and America-bashing Human Rights Watch (HRW), which is infamous for falsely accusing Israel of ‘apartheid,’ ‘crimes against humanity,’ ‘persecuting’ and ‘systematic oppression’ and ‘inhumane acts’ against Palestinians,” the ZOA head stated.

He then called attention to HRW’s specific policies which threaten the security of the Jewish state:

HRW calls for dismantling Jewish communities where 800,000 Jews live in the lawful Jewish homeland in Jerusalem and Judea/Samaria; forcibly removing these Jews to the other side of the artificial 1948 ceasefire line; free movement of Arabs to and from Gaza; dismantling much of the security fence that protects Israelis from terror attacks; and a one-sided “return” of Palestinian Arabs to overrun Israel.

Klein noted that Emerson’s name “appears on HRW reports, such as the HRW 2017 World Report, which complained about ‘expanded police and intelligence powers over terrorism-related cases,’ and,” he continued, “complained that the International Criminal Court (ICC) did not yet open formal investigations ‘implicating U.S. officials for unprosecuted torture in Afghanistan or Israeli officials for their policy of illegally transferring Israelis to settlements in the occupied territories.’” 

However, Klein explained, “Judea/Samaria is Jewish land, not ‘occupied territory’ — and Jews living there are not illegal.”

The statement highlighted the “antisemitic” boycotts against Israel that the same report encouraged:

The same HRW report on which Emerson’s name appears also promoted antisemitic boycotts, by reiterating a 2016 HRW report in which “HRW concluded that it is impossible to do business in Israeli settlement communities without contributing to injustice and discrimination against Palestinians.” 

As a result, Klein accused Emerson of having “lent her name to and supported the deeply antisemitic proposition that selling or renting homes to Jews is a human rights violation!”

“Someone who puts her name on reports espousing such views cannot run a museum memorializing the murder of six million Jews that began with the Nazis enacting boycotts against Jews,” he emphasized.

The statement then addressed Solomont’s history of anti-Israel affiliations, having served as a:

long-time Board member of vicious hostile-to-Israel groups New Israel Fund (NIF, which funds numerous anti-Israel groups that promote antisemitic BDS, seek to bring Israeli soldiers before international tribunals, funded anti-Israeli government protests, and more), and Israel Policy Forum (IPF, which is so radical that it was the only group to testify against moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem).

“Solomont is currently the National Board Chair of the notorious anti-Israel group J Street, which promotes anti-Israel UN resolutions; funds anti-Israel political candidates and lobbies for U.S. funding for the Palestinians.” This “enables the Palestinian Authority’s ‘pay to slay’ payments to Arab terrorists to murder Jews, among many other horrors,” Klein charged.

In other words, he asserted, Solomont “called for standing against the 800,000 Jews living over the artificial green line.”

The statement concluded by explaining that the “anti-Jewish, anti-Israel affiliations, statements, contributions and positions of Kimberly Marteau Emerson and Alan D. Solomont are antithetical to service on the Holocaust Memorial Museum Council.”

As a result, the ZOA concluded by calling upon Biden to “rescind these horrific and frightening appointments.”

Last year, the ZOA branded Biden as one of the “most hostile presidents toward Israel,” blasting his numerous policies undermining Israel’s sovereignty and security, including the distribution of hundreds of millions of U.S. tax dollars that will go towards aiding and abetting Palestinian terror.

Previously, the prominent pro-America and pro-Israel group condemned Biden’s nomination of Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt as his administration’s special envoy tasked with monitoring and combating antisemitism, as it called for her disqualification due to her past “abuse of false Nazi and antisemitism charges against those with whom she disagrees politically.”

FLASHBACK: In Israel, Biden Promises to “Honor the Holocaust” Before Correcting Himself

Follow Joshua Klein on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.