The head of a hardline pro-Israel organization — who had earlier called for the profiling of Muslims in the US — on Thursday defended Donald Trump’s pick of Steve Bannon as a top adviser amid charges that he was anti-Semitic.
“Bannon is the opposite of an anti-Semite. Every article about Israel and the Palestinian Arabs he has published are all supportive of Israel. He’s had articles complaining about campus anti-Semitism at CUNY, and required his Breitbart reporters to call CUNY officials and Gov. Cuomo aides urging them to do something about it,” Morton A. Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, told The Post.
Klein, a German-born economist, also blasted other Jewish organizations for slamming Bannon, and defended Brietbart News, which Bannon headed up before joining Team Trump.
“It is painful to see Anti-Defamation League President Jonathan Greenblatt engaging in character assassination against President-elect Trump’s appointee Stephen Bannon and Breitbart media,” said Klein, who has led the group for 23 years.
“He’s hired many Jews for his company. If he was an anti-Smite, why would he hire so many Jewish people? It’s nonsense,” he said.
Critics, he charged, were only trying to delegitimitize Trump.
Klein’s group will host Bannon at its annual gala on Sunday at the Grand Hyatt in Midtown. The event is sold out.
The guest list includes Harvard Law Prof. Alan Dershowitz, Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Rep. Ed Royce, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ken Langone, philanthropist known for the NYU Langone Medical Center and Bernie Marcus, founder of The Home Depot.
Klein is already on record supporting Trump’s call to profile Muslims in America.
“In an era in which the vast majority of terrorism is committed by Muslims, in order to protect American citizens, we should adopt the same profiling policies as Israel and be more thorough in vetting Muslims,” Klein told the Forward last June.