‘This Is the Time to Visit Israel’: Envoy Urges Americans to Support the Jewish State Amid Gaza War
Tyler O'Neil /
NASHVILLE, Tenn.—Anat Sultan-Dadon, Israel’s consul general to the Southeastern United States, says that now is the time to visit the Jewish state, to show solidarity amid the war against Hamas. She also condemned South Africa’s accusation of genocide against Israel.
“By all means, this is the time to visit Israel,” Sultan-Dadon tells “The Daily Signal Podcast” in an interview at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention.
“Yes, we have a war that we are conducting in Gaza in order to ensure that our southern border is safe,” she adds. “We are working to ensure that our northern border is safe, and this is the time to come and support Israel and Israelis on the ground.”
Sultan-Dadon also urges listeners to “use their voices” amid calls for Israel to implement a cease-fire in Gaza. She turned those calls around on those making them.
“Use your voice to call on Hamas to cease their fire, to call on Hamas to surrender, to lay down their weapons, and to release all of the remaining hostages” from its Oct. 7 attack, the consul general adds. As of last Wednesday, they “have now been spending 138 days in brutal captivity.”
Last month, the International Court of Justice began hearing arguments on South Africa’s accusation that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Sultan-Dadon condemns that as “shameful.”
“It is shameful that South Africa chooses to represent a terror organization, a terror organization, Hamas, that has no political goal,” she says. “Its goal is genocidal. The attack that they carried out on Oct. 7, Hamas’ leadership states that they will carry out Oct. 7 again and again and again.”
On Oct. 7, Hamas invaded Israel from Gaza, slaughtering more than 1,200 people—including civilians such as women and children—and taking hundreds of hostages. Hamas terrorists raped and tortured their victims and bragged about slaughtering Jews.
“So, while we are facing an attack by a genocidal terror organization, an organization whose charter includes the goal of wiping Israel off the map, off the face of the earth, we are the ones that have to defend ourselves from an accusation of genocide,” Sultan-Dadon notes.
She lays out the absurdity of the accusation by noting the different ways Israel and Hamas make war.
“We are the ones who are doing more than any other army has done in order to protect the lives of uninvolved civilians,” Sultan-Dadon notes. “We are doing so while Hamas is doing the exact opposite—using their civilians as human shields, putting them intentionally in harm’s way. Because in their thwarted minds, the more Palestinians who are killed, the better it serves their twisted agenda in harming Israel.”
“It is time that the international community, the United Nations, the international [organizations], do what they should be doing, standing on the right side of history,” she adds. “If one stands for life, for freedom, for humanity, one should be standing together with us as we are fighting to defeat this evil, to defeat a genocidal terror organization that glorifies death and destruction.”
She also notes that Hamas would not have been able to carry out the terrorist attacks of Oct. 7 without the support of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
“The larger destabilizing force that is behind the terror that we are seeing is the ayatollah’s regime of Iran,” Sultan-Dadon says. “Iran is funding, training, and equipping not just Hamas. They have many terror proxies in the region, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, including the Houthis in Yemen, terror elements in Iraq, terror elements in Syria.”
She calls on the international community to block Tehran’s nuclear plan and its “fomenting of terror in the region.”
“What they stand for is in stark contradiction to everything that we believe in,” Sultan-Dadon adds. “We sanctify life. We stand for life, freedom, while they glorify death and terror.”
Listen to the full interview below.
Editor’s Note: This article has been corrected to more accurately reflect the consul general’s remarks.
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