ZOA Calls on Biden Administration to Rescind ‘Horrific and Frightening’ Appointments to Holocaust Museum Board

United with Israel staff

‘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.’

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) and its National President, Morton Klein, called on the Biden administration to rescind the “appointment 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.”

In a statement released Tuesday, Klein, also speaking on behalf of the ZOA, called the appointments of Kimberly Emerson and Alan Solomont to the council “horrific and frightening.”

He noted that “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.’” The report, in turn, had called for a focus of the museum to be “support for the 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,” Klein said.

Emerson is on the board of 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,” according to Klein

“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,” he added.

Solomont, on the other hand, was on the board of “vicious hostile-to-Israel groups” New Israel Fund (NIF)  and Israel Policy Forum (IPF).

According to Klein, NIF “funds numerous anti-Israel groups that promote antisemitic BDS, seek to bring Israeli soldiers before international tribunals, funded anti-Israeli government protests, and more.”

IPF, he said, ” 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 – which enables the Palestinian Authority’s ‘pay to slay’ payments to Arab terrorists to murder Jews, among many other horrors,” Klein added.