TOM SUOZZI: ‘Another pro-Israel Republican is not going to add much.’

Campaigning to retake his former seat in the House of Representatives, Democrat Tom Suozzi told The Jewish Star that “there is no difference” over Israel between him and his rival, Republican Mazi Pilip.

“Except,” he added, “I have experience in relationships with people and know how to get things done in government.”

Competing in the Feb. 13 special election to fill the unexpired term of ousted Republican Rep. George Santos, Suozzi emphasized his long-term broad support for the Jewish state and a record of bipartisan action during six years in Congress. He gave up his House seat in 2022 for a failed Democratic primary challenge to Gov. Kathy Hochul.

“I consider myself a Zionist, I’ve always been supportive of Israel in every single way,” Suozzi said during a sit-down with The Jewish Star and LI Herald Newspapers in the offices they share in Garden City last Wednesday.

He emphasized that he “would not condition aid” to Israel, including “on what the leader of Israel was saying or doing or that kind of stuff,” recalling that he’d “signed letters and spoken out about that while I was in Congress.”

“People who are concerned about conditioning of aid should be very concerned that the Republicans have conditioned aid to Israel on cutting $14 billion dollars from the IRS — that was just totally irresponsible,” he said. “And they should further be concerned” about Republican efforts to link aid for Israel and Ukraine with a border security fix — while at the same time they are refusing to negotiate on border security in the House.”

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Asked why Orthodox Jews increasingly have been leaning Republican, and whether he expected to win their votes, Suozzi said: “I think that the far left — the Squad, the 14 members of Congress that have been giving us a hard time — have damaged the Democratic brand.”

“My argument to my Orthodox friends and to other pro-Israel Jews and other pro-Israel people is that another pro-Israel Republican is not going to really add much to the equation right now,” he said. “If you really care about Israel, and you care about the Israel-United States relationship, you want to keep it bipartisan, no matter what, so it will withstand the vagaries of our internal domestic politics. We don’t know who’s going to be in power next year, or in five years or in 10 years. You need to have strong, outspoken pro-Israel Democrats now more than ever, and I am that person.”

“People know me and they know that I’m a reasonable person that is not going to fall for the far left stuff,” he said later. “I’ll fight against the far left and I’ll fight against the far right and I’ll fight for the people. I’ll fight for the things that people care about.”

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The Mazi campaign alleges not only that Suozzi has been soft on the Squad (the radical left anti-Israel group of Democratic congressmembers) but that he asked “to be one their honorary members.”

“That’s all made up,” he said. “Let me tell you the whole Squad story so people know what it is.

“My father was born in Italy, came to the United States a young boy. You know the story: First kid in the neighborhood to go to college; fought in World War Two, got the Distinguished Flying Cross on a B24; came back home and went to Harvard Law School on the GI Bill. What a country!

“Even though he went to Harvard Law School, he couldn’t get a job at a law firm because nobody liked the Italians because the Italians had teamed up with the Germans during World War Two, and because of the mafia, so his whole life in the 1930s, the ’40s ’50s, even into the ’60s, people would say to him, go back to where you came from. … That’s why my father was always so strong against discriminating against anybody.”

Just before he went onto a live TV interview, “they’re talking about how Donald Trump told the Squad they should go back to where they came from — to their crime-infested blankety blank countries. … That really set me off.

“And so I got on the TV — I was on the show for another reason — [and said], let me just go back to your previous segment for one second. I think what the president said was totally inappropriate and totally unAmerica because that’s what they said to my father, to go go back to your country. I said I don’t agree with the Squad on most issues, but today I want to be an honorary member of the Squad, because I don’t think it’s right that the president spoke about going back to where you came from. So that’s what they’re using to try and say Tom Suozzi is a Squad member. It’s complete you know what.”

“The idea of saying I’m a Squad member is absurd. I took on the Squad on Israel and other issues,” he said.

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Suozzi was asked about a TV commercial that derisively called Pilip a “Maga Republican,” and pictured Rep. Elise Stefanik as a right-wing villain. He both criticized the commercial and defended Stefanik, a formerly moderate Republican from upstate New York who’s now viewed as an unhinged right-wing radical by many on the left.

Regardless of her history as a moderate or her standing as a radical, Stefanik’s grilling of college presidents, at a House hearing in December, raised her to hero status among fighters against campus antisemitism.

“I think she did an excellent job in her inquiries regarding antisemitism on college campuses,” he said. “I’m not happy with the way she’s changed as dramatically as she has on other issues and has gotten so extreme on certain things — but as far as her performance regarding the college campuses I thought she did an excellent job.”

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TV commercials supporting Pilip attack Suozzi as a partner with President Joe Biden in opening America’s southern borders to unchecked migration.

“Tom Suozzi helped create our immigration crisis,” asserts one commercial. “In Congress, he’ll make it worse.”

Another begins, “Biden’s policies are opening the border, ruining the economy, destroying America. Tom Suozzi voted with Biden every single time.”

But Suozzi told The Jewish Star that “we have to secure the border,” and while in Congress he worked across the aisle to craft “a grand compromise on immigration.”

He said he jointly published an op-ed piece in the New York Times with former Long Island conservative Rep. Peter King.

The op-ed — “which I still stand by” — “had three elements: border security, treat people like human beings, and pay for it.

Peter King’s “not endorsing me, but we made a deal to get it done,” Suozzi said.

One of Suozzi’s ideas involves building an Ellis Island-type site to screen and process immigrants entering along the southern border.

“Let’s say you don’t like my idea, something’s wrong with my idea or my compromise with Peter King. When was the last time you heard anybody talking about a solution? All it is is attacking — ‘Suozzi is the godfather of the migrant crisis,’ ‘Suozzi’s in the Squad,’ ‘This one’s no good.’ Let’s talk about solutions!”

Pilip’s offered no detailed plan on immigration, he said.

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On the hot-button topic of crime, things may not be as bad as perceived, but “you can’t you can’t tell people to perceive something that they perceive [one way] differently than they perceive it,” he said. “People are worried.”

“I campaigned for governor on crime, taxes and corruption. I’ve always been pro law enforcement. In the middle of the George Floyd protests, I did ceremonies honoring the cops in Queens, Glen Cove, Nassau and Suffolk.”

As Nassau County Executive, “I ran the twelfth largest police department in the United States; when I left we had the lowest crime rate in the country for any community over 500,000 people. When I was mayor of Glen Cove, I reduced the crime rate to half of what it was in Nassau County, and Nassau County had a low crime rate.”

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Why is she hiding?” Suozzi asked of Pilip, who has declined all but one opportunity to participate in a debate — a News 12 event five days before the election and five days after early voting starts.

“I have the higher name recognition. I’m the one who should be denying the debates. … She should be clamoring for debates, to get people to find out who she is. She’s hiding.

“She’s relying upon the Republican machine — which is very strong in Nassau County, the strongest Republican machine in the country. … They have 400 people that go out every weekend, campaigning door to door with literature. I don’t have that type of organization. And she’s hiding behind that and hoping that she’ll win the same way the Republicans have won everything else on Long Island.”