NEW YORK - A record 1000 people came to the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) National Dinner on Sunday night at the Marriot Marquis Hotel in New York City. The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, was ZOA's Keynote Speaker. Bolton received the ZOA's Defender of Israel Award and delivered a powerful speech in which he laid out many of the problems at the United Nations, stating, "Let's be clear - for it to be said that Israel is being treated as a normal nation at the U.N. is fantasy." Bolton's address was repeatedly interrupted by applause and he received a standing ovation.
Bolton, whose appointment as U.N. Ambassador was strongly supported by the ZOA, has worked in recent weeks in the U.N. Security Council to have Syria and Palestinian Islamic Jihad named in connection with the terrorist attack against Israelis in Netanya which killed five and wounded more than 30 and also succeeded in having the Islamist terrorist group Hezbollah condemned for its attack upon Israel. This was the first occasion the U.N. has ever condemned Hezbollah. Bolton said at the dinner that the U.S. would not back down and that naming terrorists "is something we plan to do in the future." He also spoke of Iran's public threat to wipe Israel off the map as being "no mere flight of rhetoric when it comes from a state that has been pursuing weapons of mass destruction." |