By Ryan King and David Spector
United Nations ambassador-designate Elise Stefanik issued a blistering and stunning rebuke of the organization where she is set to serve as an emissary, denouncing the UN in a Tuesday speech as a “den of antisemitism” that she intends to confront.
Stefanik (R-NY), 40, the outgoing House GOP conference chair, foreshadowed forthcoming battles at the UN when she takes charge as ambassador and rattled off some of its offices and commissions she will target, during an address at an Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET).
“We know that the UN is a den of antisemitism,” she said at the EMET’s annual dinner where she was honored with the Rays of Light in the Darkness Award.
“Ever since and even before the barbaric terrorist attacks [from] Hamas on Oct. 7, the UN has continuously betrayed Israel and betrayed America, acting as an apologist for Iran and their terrorist proxies.”
Stefanik ticked off examples of the UN’s betrayal such as UN Women deleting a post condemning Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack, the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs spouting data from Hamas’ Ministry of Health, and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, which had Hamas staff.
Last week, President-elect Donald Trump announced Stefanik as his pick to serve as US ambassador to the UN. Since then, Stefanik has kept somewhat of a light public profile as she hunkers down and prepares to ascend to that role.
But during the dinner ceremony hosted by EMET, a pro-Israel think tank in Washington, D.C., Stefanik made crystal clear how she sees the UN, an organization that is often maligned in conservative circles.
She also lavished praise on Trump, noting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had hailed the former president as “the best friend that Israel has ever had.”
“I believe it is quite obvious to the world that if President Trump were in the White House today, what has been happening at the UN would never have happened, because October 7th would never have happened,” she posited.
“I will stand up for President Trump’s America First, peace through strength policies and bring moral truth and crystal clear moral clarity at the United Nations on Day One,” she vowed.
Stefanik visited Israel back in May and delivered an address to the Knesset where she toured the site of Hamas’ barbaric and bloody slaughter.
“Each and every one of these visits to Israel underscores to me the fundamental facts that Israel is a miracle and that Israel is foundational to the United States,” she reflected.
The Empire State Republican also harked back to her explosive exchange with the presidents of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during a congressional hearing about antisemitism on college campuses last year.
During the hearing, Stefanik pressed the three campus presidents on whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” violates campus policies and none of them definitively stated that it did.
“I was just not getting the answers. So when thinking through this last question, which was not prepared, I thought to myself, ‘How could I ask this in the most straightforward … way’ to force it to [be] answer[ed] correctly,” Stefanik recalled of her line of questioning.
“Disgraceful attempts to contextualize the genocide of Jews is a symptom of decades of moral decay, intellectual laziness and dangerous radical left groupthink at so-called elite institutions across society.”
Stefanik underscored that “this fight is far from over — it is just the beginning.”
The New York rep may have some international allies in her fight, Hungary’s Ambassador to the US Szabolcs Takács said his country is “very confident that US-Hungarian ties will take a very good turn” when Trump takes office.
“The new Trump administration will bring the new hope of peace in the Middle East,” he told The Post.
Shabbos Kestenbaum, a student at Harvard University who later testified before Congress about antisemitism on campus, was similarly bestowed with a Rays of Light in the Darkness Award.
Kestenbaum recounted meeting with Stefanik and commended her leadership during what he described as a horrifying time on campus in which some of his Jewish friends took steps to conceal their identity out of fear.
The Empire State Republican ended her speech with a reminder of the hostages currently being kept in captivity by Hamas, including seven Americans.
“We must not stop and we will not stop until every hostage is brought home,” she declared.
Stefanik has already drawn some bipartisan cheers over scoring Trump’s nod to serve as UN ambassador, including from pro-Israel Democrats such as Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) and Rep, Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.), the latter of whom delivered an address at the Rays of Light in the Darkness Awards dinner.
