Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominee as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, tore into Hamas on Saturday, pledging that the terrorist group would be “eradicated,” while calling its celebration of the murder of two boys and their mother “an affront to all humanity.”
A lawmaker from Upstate New York who awaits Senate confirmation for the U.N. post, Stefanik told the Conservative Political Action Conference’s annual gathering near Washington, D.C., that the Trump administration would “always defend our precious American ally, Israel.”
“It has never been more important to show the world’s unequivocal support for Israel,” she said at CPAC. “We will not rest until every hostage is brought home and Hamas is eradicated.’’
During her speech, Stefanik reserved her harshest words for Hamas, which attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
“This past week, we continue to see with crystal clarity that our fight to support Israel and eradicate Hamas is a fight between good and evil, light darkness, life and death,” she said. “The world must never forget that Hamas terrorists savagely murdered over 1,200 innocent civilians—including women, children, the elderly and babies—and took hundreds hostage, committing unspeakable atrocities against humanity.”
Stefanik described the U.N. Relief and Workers Agency for Palestine Refugees as the “pro-Hamas terrorist group that committed atrocities on Oct. 7,” noting that Trump has ended U.S. financial support for the agency and said the president would go further.
“Make no mistake. Hear it now,” she said. “We will not only defund UNRWA, we will dismantle it.”
Stefanik called the 2020 Abraham Accords among Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain the “largest step to peace in the Middle East in over a quarter of a century.”
She talked about the Trump administration’s sanctions on the International Criminal Court, which issued warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his then-defense minister Yoav Gallant, as well as Hamas leadership. She described the ICC, a stand-alone body in The Hague which is not part of the United Nations, as an “illegitimate court, fueled by raging antisemitism and anti-Americanism.”
Stefanik gained national attention by using her perch on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce to ask three university presidents about the spate of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish protests on their campuses after the Oct. 7 attacks. In response to her questions, the presidents who testified refused to say that calls for genocide against all Jews necessarily violated campus rules against harassment.
She said she would bring the same fight to the United Nations.
“I led the charge to expose the rot of antisemitism on college campuses, and I will lead the charge on behalf of President Trump to root out the rot of the true den of antisemitism, and that is the U.N.,” she said at CPAC.