A Jackson Township Council meeting turned combative Tuesday night when a mayoral candidate attempted to put a council member on defense over a social media post — and walked away looking worse for the effort.
Elliot Shemtov, who is running for mayor later this year, used the public comment session to confront Council President Mordy Burnstein over a post in which Burnstein had criticized Shemtov for dining with Rania Hesham, a Jackson resident with a public record of expressing admiration for the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and posting Iranian regime propaganda.
“Would you go out to eat with someone who supports the biggest sponsor of terrorism and is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans?” Burnstein had written on social media. “Someone who would sell out the safety of his own family for a few votes — shame on them.”
Shemtov’s response was to accuse Burnstein of calling Hesham herself responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans — an obviously deliberate misreading of what Burnstein had actually written. He wrote that he wouldn’t go out to eat with someone who supports terrorists – not “someone who is a terrorist.”
Burnstein did not back down.
“Anyone who is going to say that Ayatollah Khamenei is a hero, and posts videos of American jets exploding — I would never go out to eat with them,” Burnstein said from the dais. “I don’t care how many votes that person would give me. There have to be red lines in politics, and I’m happy to say that there are certain red lines I would never cross.”
He continued: “To go ahead and praise Ayatollah Khamenei, who has thousands — forget about Israelis — thousands of Americans dead on his hands, that is something I would never stand for.”
Hesham had praised Khamenei as “such a wise, peaceful man” following his death in a U.S.-Israeli airstrike on February 28 — the opening strike of Operation Epic Fury. She had also publicly praised Hamas, which the United States designates as a foreign terrorist organization and which carried out the October 7, 2023 massacre in Israel, the deadliest assault on Jews since the Holocaust, killing approximately 1,200 people and taking over 250 hostage.
Burnstein’s reference to Khamenei’s American body count is grounded in a well-documented record spanning four decades. Iranian-backed Hezbollah operatives carried out the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 American servicemen in the deadliest single-day loss of American military life since Iwo Jima. The 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, carried out by Iranian-linked operatives, killed 19 U.S. Air Force personnel. During the Iraq War, Iranian-supplied explosively formed penetrators — specialty roadside bombs — were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers. More recently, Iranian-backed militias carried out dozens of attacks on American troops stationed in Iraq and Syria, killing and wounding U.S. service members as recently as 2024.
“There have to be red lines in politics,” Burnstein repeated. “I’m happy to say there are certain red lines I would never cross.”
Can’t wait to vote for him!