A special event was held on May 19 in New York, marking Israel's independence and the emphasizing the connection between American Jewry and Israel.
The event was initiated and organized by the Israel Heritage Foundation (IHF) and produced by Israel National News - Arutz Sheva.
The event honored and hosted Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan and former Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon, author of "In the Lion's Den."
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman spoke to Israel National News at the event.
When asked if the United States still supports Israel, Blakeman told Israel National News that the support today is “not to the extent that it should be.”
“I’m very disappointed that there are some members of Congress and our president who are not supporting Israel the way they should,” Blakeman said. “Israel is our greatest ally in the Middle East. We have been friends with Israel for years. Israel is a democracy. They are someone who believes in individual rights. They have civil rights in Israel. I believe we can do a much better job and that’s why I’m taking the lead in Nassau County, one of the largest counties in the United States, larger than nine states in population. That’s why we’ve formed a very special relationship with Israel, especially Judea and Samaria.”
Blakeman explained that while there are some Democrats who are good friends to Israel, the trend in the Democratic Party is away from Israel.
“When you have AOC and Tlaib and Omar who espouse anti-Israel rhetoric in Congress and Democrats don’t speak up against it, I think that’s terrible and until Democrats clean up the mess in their own party, they are going to be labelled as anti-Israel and in some respects some of them – not all of them – but some of them are antisemitic.”
In Nassau County, they are actively fighting the rise of antisemitism.
“We are righting it. We just started a commission, the antisemitism commission in Nassau County,” he said. “I appointed a commission to fight antisemitism. Antisemitism is everywhere and unless you fight it vigilantly, it will grow and there’s a few things we nee to do. First of all we need to educate people. A lot of people are very ignorant. They don’t even know about the Holocaust. They don’t know about why Israel was formed. There’s lots of things they don’t know and maybe we need to do a better job educating them. That’s number one and number two we have to increase our law enforcement tools to fight it because antisemitism can quickly turn violent as we’ve seen with attacks on Jews throughout the United States and throughout the world.”
Blakeman also declared ‘Danny Danon Day’ in Nassau County, presenting the former UN ambassador with a citation for his service.
“I want to give this to the ambassador,” he said, turning to Danon. “Your excellency, thank you so much for your service. Your politics, your principles, are spot on… Ambassador thank you so much for everything you do. The people of Nassau Country recognize everything you do for the State of Israel. Based on the power vested in me, whether I have that power or not, I’m going to do it anyway. I’ve declared Danny Danon Day in all of Nassau County.”
Blakeman aslo aid:
“I’m always very happy to be with any group that support Israel. It’s incredibly important. I am very proud to be the first Jewish country executive of Nassau County,” he said. “For those of you who are not familiar with Nassau Country, we are larger in population than nine states, our gross domestic product is larger than 140 nations in the United Nations, and we’re home to over 300,000 people who identify themselves as being Jewish. So we have a very significant Jewish population in Nassau Country. We have a very pro-Zionist population in Nassau country, and we’re moving even further in that direction.”
He mentioned signing a cooperation agreement on economics and culture and a friendship agreement with Judea and Samaria.
“This is important because all around the world there are factions that are trying to del-legitimize Israel,” he explained.
“They are trying to say that we should give back Judea and Samaria to [the Palestinian Arabs] and they have BDS and all kinds of other methods, both violent and political, to try to get those areas out of Israel,” he said. “They don’t recognize those areas as being part of Israel because they themselves ignore international law. When there is a conflict and territory is taken for defensive purposes that is a legitimate acquisition of territory and I have been to Samaria many times and when you go up in the hills overlooking Tel Aviv, it’s very clear that if the Palestinian Authority were to gain control of that high ground over Tel Aviv that it would be a military disaster for Israel.”
He added: “There are many reasons why those territories are legitimate but it’s funny because when we decided to do this, my attorney in the county they came to me, they don’t know much about my policy, now they do. They said, ‘You know that’s a violation of international law at Nassau Country.’ I was very proud of the fact that we were able to do that.”
Blakeman spoke about the large and growing Jewish community in Nassau County.
“There is a very vibrant Jewish population outside of New York City. We have to let our friends in Israel know that you’ve got to get out of the New York City bubble a bit, that we have some very important Jewish communities and I would say Nassau county is one of the most important Jewish communities in the world. It’s our largest growing population in Nassau County, the Orthodox Jewish population in Nassau County is growing by about 14 percent a year, which is phenomenal. We are very proud of that.”