The congresswoman fielded questions about Israel from nearly every member of the Senate panel in her confirmation hearing to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
(Jan. 21, 2025 / JNS) Israel-related issues dominated the Senate confirmation hearing of Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) on Tuesday to become the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Nearly every senator on the Foreign Relations Committee probed her views on the Jewish state and the region.
The congresswoman vowed to use her seat in Turtle Bay to combat antisemitism just as she had done in Congress.
“If you look at the antisemitic rot within the United Nations, there are more resolutions targeting Israel than any other country, any other crisis, combined,” Stefanik said. “We need to be a voice of moral clarity on the U.N. Security Council and at the United Nations at large for the world to hear the importance of standing with Israel and I intend to do that.”
Stefanik said that she would like to emulate Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who as U.S. ambassador to the global body in 1975 spoke out forcefully against a General Assembly resolution that determined that “Zionism is a form of racism.”
That resolution passed with the support of Muslim and Soviet-aligned countries but was later revoked in 1991. It is to date the only G.A. resolution ever to be withdrawn.
Some of the most intense scrutiny of Stefanik came under questioning from Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.).
Van Hollen said he was “surprised” to learn in his one-on-one meeting with Stefanik before the hearing that she believes “that Israel has a biblical right to the entire West Bank.”
Asked to confirm that that was her belief, Stefanik said, “Yes.”