Consultant Elise Stefanik of New York would be the highest-ranking Home Republican to deal with the Israeli Parliament because the Oct. 7 terrorist assault with a speech on Sunday that’s anticipated to ship a forceful rebuke of President Biden and his fellow Democrats whereas presenting her occasion because the true allies of the Jewish state.
Ms. Stefanik’s speech comes because the Biden White Home is urging Israel to finish the battle in Gaza, and it builds on the Republican political technique to capitalize on Democratic divisions over Israel’s response to the terrorist assaults.
That technique, which has performed out in Congress for the previous six months, has included a largely symbolic Home vote on Thursday geared toward rebuking Mr. Biden for pausing an arms cargo to Israel and compelling his administration to ship these weapons rapidly.
Mr. Biden lately put a maintain on navy support out of concern that Israel would use the weapons on Rafah, a crowded metropolis in southern Gaza. The administration has additionally instructed Congress that it plans to promote greater than $1 billion in new weapons to Israel.
“I’ve been clear at residence, and I shall be clear right here,” Ms. Stefanik is anticipated to say in her speech, in accordance with a ready model of her remarks reviewed by The New York Occasions. “There isn’t a excuse for an American president to dam support to Israel.”
Her remarks additionally seem designed to curry favor with former President Donald J. Trump, who has talked about Ms. Stefanik, a former George W. Bush White Home aide and staunch defender of Mr. Trump, as a possible vice-presidential candidate.
Whereas a time-honored adage of American politics has held that partisanship ends on the water’s edge, Ms. Stefanik’s remarks could assist strengthen her bona fides with the previous president by paying little thoughts to the precept and decorum behind that unwritten rule.
Ms. Stefanik has positioned herself as one in every of Mr. Trump’s most loyal defenders in Congress, a task she first staked out throughout his first impeachment in 2019. Her ready remarks for Sunday point out Mr. Trump by identify 3 times whereas highlighting a number of of his administration’s accomplishments, together with a bundle of Center East offers generally known as the Abraham Accords and transferring the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
“We should not let the extremism in elite corners conceal the deep, abiding love for Israel among the many American individuals,” Ms. Stefanik plans to say. “People really feel a powerful connection to your individuals. They’ve opened their hearts to you on this darkish hour.”
Along with her remarks at Jerusalem Corridor within the Knesset, Ms. Stefanik will meet with Israeli officers, go to spiritual websites and tour areas focused within the Oct. 7 assaults.
Ms. Stefanik has performed a high-profile function within the congressional investigations into antisemitism on school campuses. Her questioning of the Harvard and College of Pennsylvania presidents finally result in their resignations, delivering to Ms. Stefanik her largest star flip this Congress.
