Stefanik: Israel has biblical right to Judea and Samaria
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.
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 It is to date the only G.A. resolution ever to be withdrawn.
Stefanik’s nomination was greeted warmly by Republicans but met with greater skepticism from Democrats, who questioned her about what the “America First” agenda would mean for engagement with multilateral institutions during U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term.
“We want to do a full assessment of all
the U.N. sub-agencies and make sure that every dollar goes to support
our American interests,” Stefanik said. “I clearly think there are
certain programs that are not meeting the mission of the U.N.”
Stefanik
said she believed that the U.N. Palestinian aid agency UNRWA should be
“at the bottom of the list” of agencies to receive U.S. financial
contributions.
Former U.S. President Joe Biden paused funding to UNRWA in January 2024 amid Israeli allegations that UNRWA staff directly participated in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in southern Israel and that hundreds of UNRWA employees in Gaza had ties to terrorist groups.
In March, Biden signed a spending bill that barred U.S. funding to UNRWA for one year.
Stefanik noted at the hearing on Tuesday that she had voted to defund UNRWA as a member of Congress.
Some of the most intense scrutiny of Stefanik came under questioning from Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) about her views on Israeli sovereignty and the rights of Palestinians.
“I asked you in my office also about whether Palestinians have the right of self-determination. My understanding was you said, ‘Yes.’ You have a different answer today?” Van Hollen asked.
“That was not the direct question that we
discussed,” Stefanik replied. “I believe the Palestinian people deserve
so much better than the failures that they’ve had.”
Stefanik did not say that she believed Palestinians have a right to self-determination.
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.”
Van Hollen told Stefanik that Trump’s goal of bringing peace and stability to the Middle East would be “very difficult to achieve” if she were “to continue to hold the view that you just expressed, which is a view that was not held by the founders of the State of Israel, who were secular Zionists, not religious.”
Stefanik also clashed with Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) over claims that Elon Musk gave a Hitler salute to Trump supporters at an inauguration rally on Monday.
“Elon Musk did not do those salutes,’ Stefanik said. “That is simply not the case. And to say so is—the American people are smart, they see through it. They support Elon Musk.”
Murphy asked if the New York congresswoman was concerned that far-right and neo-Nazi social-media figures had interpreted Musk’s gesture as a show of support.
“What concerns me is these are the questions you believe are most important to ask to the U.N. ambassador,” Stefanik replied. “I have a very strong record when it comes to combating antisemitism.”
Senators also repeatedly quizzed the prospective ambassador about what she would do to confront U.S. rivals and adversaries at the U.N., including China and Iran.
Stefanik said that she believed that the possibility of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon is “the most significant threat to world peace” and that she believed that the United States should reverse Biden administration policy towards Iran and impose “snapback” sanctions under Security Council resolution 2231.
“What we have seen with the hundreds of billions of dollars sent to Iran during the last presidency is you have an emboldened Hamas, who committed the bloodiest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust on Oct. 7,” she said. “You had an emboldened Hezbollah.”
“That’s funded by Iran,” she added. “It has a cascading effect across the region.”
On China, Stefanik described some of the efforts that Washington needed to take to counter Beijing’s attempts to dominate the U.N. system.
“We need to pay particular attention to the technical organizations, whether it’s telecommunications, whether it’s civil aviation, and another way is we need to ensure Taiwan has maximum meaningful participation in international organizations,” she said.
“We need to have very strong Mandarin expertise and really keep a close eye on that as well in all the documents and statements coming out of the U.N. system writ large,” she said.
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