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By MORTON A. KLEIN<\/p>\n
Last week, potential presidential candidate, Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, spoke to hundreds of\u00a0 Jews at the pro-Israel Republican Jewish Coalition meeting in Sheldon Adelson’s\u00a0 Las Vegas Palazzo hotel. Surprisingly, Christie didn’t mention Israel in his prepared remarks but (during the question and answer period following his prepared remarks), he inaccurately referred to Judea and Samaria as “occupied territories.”<\/p>\n
This is the language of those hostile to Israel, designed solely to delegitimize the Jewish state’s claims to that land. Christie later claimed that he “misspoke.”\u00a0 But I don’t believe him.\u00a0 Here’s why.<\/p>\n
The audience noticeably gasped and murmurs quickly spread throughout the room when Christie used this term.\u00a0 This audience understands that Israel captured this land from Jordan in a defensive war. More importantly, Jordan had no legal sovereignty there, but had illegally controlled this territory from 1948 to 1967, only being recognized by two countries. These activist Zionists know that Israel has a greater political, religious, legal, and historic right to that land than do the Palestinians.\u00a0 For G-d’s sake, even the term Jew comes from the fact that we Jews come from Judea.<\/p>\n
Having been in the room and as someone who has delivered many public speeches, the audience reaction was so pronounced that Christie should have realized he upset many in the room, giving him his first opportunity to say that he was wrong and misspoke.\u00a0 But he didn’t. Despite that, I still wanted to give him another opportunity to do so.<\/p>\n
It’s important to note that I wanted to like Christie.\u00a0\u00a0 As the head of the Zionist Organization of America, I, like anyone – Republican or Democrat- who supports the Jewish State, want to find reasons that important politicians also want to maintain and strengthen U.S. support for our most important ally.\u00a0 When I approached Christie after his talk, I respectfully explained why he should use one of the more accurate terms – either “Judea and Samaria,”\u00a0 “West Bank,” or “disputed territories.” Then I asked him if he would do so.<\/p>\n
Christie responded brusquely and dismissively with a scowl and a non-answer. “I saw you shaking your head,” he proclaimed. I asked him again if he would use one of the more appropriate terms. He again responded with the same non-answer refusing to say he misspoke saying, “Yeah, I saw you shaking your head in the first row when I used that term.” Now I was concerned and thoroughly frustrated.<\/p>\n
It was only after I then spoke to the many journalists covering this event (which triggered over a hundred “tweats” over Twitter) and after Christie met with important donors Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, that he stated that he “misspoke.” What the governor didn’t say is that he sincerely apologizes, or that he now understands\u00a0 Israel has a legitimate claim to this land, or that Jews have every right to live there.\u00a0 And remember – he only said that he “misspoke” after speaking to a major donor whose support he was seeking.<\/p>\n
He never said it to me, whom he didn’t know and whose support he was not seeking. Clearly, to non-donor Mort Klein, he would likely express his true feelings while to donor Adelson he would more likely say whatever was necessary to gain his support.<\/p>\n
It pains me to say that Christie either has a woeful lack of knowledge and understanding of the reality of the issues facing Israel or that he is simply hostile to the Jewish State and sympathetic to the Arabs.<\/p>\n
After my encounter with Christie, several conference attendees told me to look into his record with respect to how he approaches radical Islam. So I did. And it’s not encouraging.<\/p>\n
Christie shockingly kissed, embraced, and praised New Jersey radical\u00a0 Iman Mohammed Qatanani, a man who\u00a0 openly calls for\u00a0 U.S. funding of Hamas, a U.S. designated terrorist group, whose charter calls for the murder of Jews and the destruction of Israel.<\/p>\n
Qatanani has also proclaimed “On the 15th of May, 1948 was the greatest disaster which occurred on the face of the earth…the State of Israel was established on the land of Palestine.”<\/p>\n
Christie even designated a top aide, Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles McKenna, to testify as a character witness for Qatanani. Furthermore, in his Vegas speech, Christie\u00a0 mis-characterized the controversy over his appointing Sohail Mohammed as a judge to the New Jersey Superior Court as “Muslim bigotry” then went on to profusely praise Mohammed. The truth is that people were concerned about the fact that he was general counsel for the American Muslim Union which has blamed Israeli commandos for the 9-11 terrorist attacks and that Mohammed defended Palestinian Isamist jihadist operative Sami Al Arian, whose indictment Mohammed said was “nothing but a witch hunt.”\u00a0 Terrorism experts Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson have written: “Mohammed is not only a lawyer for Islamists, but is one of them.”<\/p>\n
Christie also turned a blind eye to the deeply troubling record of the people who were trying to build the “ground zero” mosque, deriding anyone concerned about their radical statements and questionable motives as “crazies.” He blasted the New York Police Department’s surveillance of Muslim communities – which has been responsible for stopping multiple attempted terror attacks – as possibly “born out of arrogance, or out of paranoia, or out of both.”<\/p>\n
All this and more is why Pipes and Emerson wrote “time and again Christie has sided with Islamist forces against those safeguarding American security and civilization.”<\/p>\n
I’m deeply troubled by Governor Christie, not just as a supporter of Israel, but as an American.<\/p>\n
Morton A. Klein is National President of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA).<\/em><\/p>\n