Across the street from the United Nations in Manhattan sits the dim black glass of Trump World Tower, which houses the U.N. Plaza Grill restaurant. Here, on May 30, 2024, while the U.N. and the international community at large condemned Israel for invading Rafah in Gaza, an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit hosted a speaker who called for even more violence against Palestinian civilians, Prism has found.

The comments were made at a dinner held by the Cedarhurst, New York-based Israel Heritage Foundation (IHF), which included an appearance by the new Israeli consul general in New York, Ofir Akunis. 

The video of the event, posted to the IHF’s YouTube channel and reported for the first time by Prism, shows that Martin Oliner, chair of the Religious Zionists of America, took to the podium with a message directed at Akunis about how Israel ought to operate in Gaza.

“You, as a representative in America, as general consul, have to take back the views of this group, which I think are pretty clear: that the state of Israel has to do what it has to do,” Oliner said. “Look, we’ve been accused of genocide, so maybe it’s up to us to actually kill civilians.” 

Oliner argued that Israel was losing the war and could not hope to win without “lehishmid veleharg,” a Hebrew phrase (להשמיד ולהרג) that roughly translates to destroy and kill—an apparent reference to a phrase in the Hebrew Bible, or the Tanakh.

“Take the lessons from America when they dropped atomic bombs on Japan,” Oliner continued, adding that Israel had “killed the fewest civilians.” In reality, about 70% of those Israel has killed in its genocide in Gaza are women and children, according to the U.N., not to mention scores of noncombatant men.

“But we’re still being accused of genocide. But maybe we need to kill more civilians,” Oliner said. After he ended his speech, the audience applauded. 

Oliner did not respond to multiple requests to comment. The Israeli Consulate in New York also did not respond to Prism’s request for comment.

Oliner’s comments at the IHF dinner were condemned by Muslim and Palestinian advocates and a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies with whom Prism shared the video. 

“It’s insane that anyone would say this out loud,” said Edward Ahmed Mitchell, national deputy director and civil rights attorney with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). “It speaks to a deeper problem that goes beyond him.”

Ahmed Mitchell said he believed Oliner’s comments essentially reflect the Israeli government’s policy. “It is what many supporters of the Israeli government are encouraging and backing right now as we speak,” he said. 

On March 18, Israel launched an escalation of its genocide in Gaza, killing more than 400 people and injuring more than 500.

“The fact that he felt comfortable calling for the killing of more Palestinian civilians … to an audience of pro-Israel advocates, including a representative of the Israeli government, tells you how deep the rot is in terms of hostility and racism towards Palestinians,” Ahmed Mitchell said.

Oliner’s views are well-known to CAIR. In January, the largest U.S. Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization called for Oliner to be removed from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s board of trustees over an anti-Palestinian op-ed he wrote for the Jerusalem Post.

Oliner wrote in the piece that Palestinians in Gaza are “collectively guilty” for Hamas’ Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on Oct. 7, 2023, and not “worthy of any mercy.” 

“They are fundamentally evil, and they must pay a price for their actions,” wrote Oliner. He continues to serve on the museum’s board of trustees.

“The fact that [Oliner] has gone even further now, in terms of making these genocidal remarks, confirms that our earlier concern about him was well justified,” Ahmed Mitchell told Prism. The U.S. Holocaust Museum, he said, “was founded to make sure that never again is never again for anyone.”

“And yet he is now openly discussing and celebrating and encouraging genocide against the Palestinian people. It’s completely unacceptable,” Ahmed Mitchell said.

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum did not respond to Prism’s request for a comment.

In response to questions from Prism, the IHF distanced itself from Oliner’s remarks, saying that it does not agree with Oliner’s sentiment that Israel must use “lehishmid veleharg” or kill civilians. 

“Martin Oliner attended the event and gave his own views in his question and comments,” the IHF wrote to Prism. “He was not the speaker and we had no knowledge ahead of time of what he would say. We did not agree with the positions he expressed and he has been at other events and writes in the Jerusalem post and had not expressed such views in writing or in previous questions he had asked at our other events.”

The IHF also wrote that it does “support the actions of the government of Israel to try and kill the terrorists” and “support the Trump Plan for Gaza and the Palestinian Arab civilians being relocated out of Gaza.” 

The “Trump plan” for Gaza would constitute the forcible transfer of the entire Palestinian population, according to multiple human rights organizations, expanding U.S. government liability for continuing crimes perpetrated against Palestinians.

“People who say that ‘maybe we need to kill more civilians’ should be shunned and removed from any civilized company, let alone a Jewish one,” Omer Bartov, an Israeli American professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, told Prism in an email. 

“Israel just killed hundreds of civilians in Gaza, breaking the ceasefire after it reneged on its own agreement, ensuring that more of its hostages will be killed. The images of murdered babies should be seared on Oliner’s mind for as long as he lives,” Bartov continued. “I hope and expect that he will be called to account before the Almighty for invoking the Holocaust as justification for the killing of children.”

According to the IHF’s website, the organization’s “main objectives are to support sovereignty throughout Israel, including Judea and Samaria [how Israel refers to the West Bank], strengthen Israel’s security, encourage worldwide Aliyah [Jewish immigration to Israel], combat bigotry and Anti-Semitism by showing Israel authentically and establish genuine peace through Israel’s good deeds and innovation.”

Prism previously reported on IHF’s close relations with U.S. officials who push pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian policies in the U.S. The IHF also hosted President Donald Trump in 2023. 

Oliner is pretty much saying the quiet part out loud when it comes to what much of the pro-Israel political establishment here in the U.S. thinks.

Tariq Kenney-Shawa, Al-Shabaka U.S. policy fellow

Tariq Kenney-Shawa, U.S. policy fellow with Al-Shabaka, a global network of Palestinian policy analysts, told Prism in an emailed statement, “Neither Oliner nor the Israel Heritage Foundation will be held accountable for inciting genocide because the Trump Administration, and many leading establishment Democrats, by and large agree with the sentiment. In other words, Oliner is pretty much saying the quiet part out loud when it comes to what much of the pro-Israel political establishment here in the U.S. thinks.”

Kenney-Shawa said that Oliner’s statements coming to light now, amid the Trump administration’s “unprecedented crackdown” on pro-Palestinian speech and political expression “highlights the glaring double standard at play.”

“While Palestinian students are being deported for protesting the genocide of their loved ones and nonprofits are losing funding and facing sanctions simply for advocating for Palestinian rights, Israel’s supporters can explicitly call for genocide without fear of accountability,” Kenney-Shawa said. Prism previously reported that philanthropic funders in the U.S. withdrew at least $8 million over 15 months from nonprofit organizations that have expressed solidarity with Palestinians during the genocide.

Several prominent figures attended the May 2024 IHF event featuring Oliner, including billionaire founder of private investment fund Talpion, Henry Swieca, who resigned from Columbia University’s business school board in November 2023, citing concerns of antisemitism on campus. 

Prior to Oliner, the video of the dinner shows Akunis, the consul general, addressing the gathering. He said his very first meeting at the Israeli Consulate in New York “was about the campus crisis, the crisis at Columbia, UCLA, NYU, New School, wherever, just name it.”

At the time, encampments were cropping up at colleges across the U.S. in response to Columbia’s heavy crackdown on the encampment set up there to protest the university’s ties to Israel and its genocide in Gaza.

“I said in the meeting that we will not accept and we will not be silenced in front of the pictures that remind us of Berlin University in 1933,” Akunis said, referring to a series of campus book burnings in Nazi Germany against what were deemed “un-German” texts and authors. “And that is what we saw here in Columbia, the same picture.”

The IHF dinner was organized with and produced as a joint event with right-wing Israeli media outlet Arutz Sheva and also featured the parents of an Israeli soldier who was killed on Oct. 7, 2023. Arutz Sheva editor Yoni Kempinski told the gathering that the parents were members of the hard-line Gvura Forum, which has vocally advocated against any Israeli-Hamas prisoner exchange and negotiated peace, and aligned with far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. Prism has reported that Smotrich, who has been criticized even by U.S. leaders, has also been a guest of the IHF.

Editorial Team:
Sahar Fatima, Lead Editor
Carolyn Copeland, Top Editor
Rashmee Kumar, Copy Editor