Stephen K. Bannon, Breitbart News executive chairman and former White House chief strategist, will speak at the Zionist Organization of America’s (ZOA) annual gala Sunday.

“We were excited to bring Steve Bannon to the ZOA Gala,” ZOA President Morton Klein tells Breitbart News. “A well-known top-level Israeli official told me, ‘You know from the outside that Bannon is a friend of Israel.’ I can tell you, as an insider, that he is the greatest friend of Israel imaginable.”

ZOA is the oldest Zionist organization in America — instrumental in the crafting of the State of Israel, and, today, ZOA has remained one of Israel’s most steadfast defenders in American politics.

President Donald Trump, Bannon, and the ZOA found common ground on Middle East issues and combating anti-Semitism in America during the 2016 campaign, transition, and early administration. After Bannon’s exit from the White House, the ZOA has continued its close relationship with Bannon, inviting him to address its audience.

“Bannon had his Breitbart reporters protect Jewish students by calling college officials to ask what were they doing to stop and punish anti-Semites on campus,” Klein recounted, citing Breitbart News’s long-time editorial stance in favor of the Jewish state. “The basis for ZOA having Steve Bannon speak at our Gala is simple: he loves and admires Israel and the Jewish people.”

“If Steve Bannon was an anti-Semite or racist, ZOA would be at his throat, not giving him a podium to speak at our most prestigious gala,” Klein added, combating false accusations that Bannon and Breitbart News are “anti-Semitic,” adamant that such charges by other groups are mislaid.

Other speakers at Sunday’s off-the-record event include eminent law Professor Alan Dershowitz, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, former Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT), Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), and Sheldon Adelson — a lineup Klein calls “arguably the strongest group of public Zionists in America.”

One of the United States’s leading Zionist, Morton Klein is frequently a contributor to Breitbart News, commenting on issues affecting Israel and the Jewish people.