IN A MOVE TO MAKE THE U.S. State Department trolls happy, soon-to-be ex-president Obama told his rep to the UN Security Council to abstain on an anti-Israel vote, assuring that his friends in the PA would remember him as if he was a shahid to their cause.
Israeli media seems “shocked” by Obama’s order, yet any Israeli — certainly any Israeli in politics or the media — knew the abstention was in the works. It was the culmination of the almost ex-presidents anti-Israel bias over the last eight years.
Blame it on the personal feud between Obama and Netanyahu, but don’t act surprised.
According to media reports,
- The Obama administration’s decision to abstain from a United Nations Security Council vote on Israeli settlements on Friday was the subject of intense opposition from lawmakers in the president’s own party, with Democratic leaders warning that the resolution will damage efforts to advance peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
Incoming Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said hours before the vote that “the proposed resolution does not bring us any closer to the goal of a two-state solution. Peace must come from direct negotiations between the two parties.”
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) similarly condemned the resolution on Thursday, saying that the vote “seeks to place responsibility for continued conflict fully on Israel and ignores violence and incitement by Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority and Hamas leaderships. Any workable and long-lasting solution to this conflict must come about through direct, bilateral negotiations, and this resolution undermines that effort.”
Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, added on Thursday that “the UN should stop wasting its time trying to embarrass Israel, and the United States should continue the policy of vetoing anti-Israel resolutions.”
The ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), said on Friday that the resolution “does nothing to move forward the shared goal of two states living side-by-side in peace and security. This resolution is one-sided and unfairly calls out Israel without assigning any blame for the Palestinian role in the current impasse.” Cardin emphasized his support for “direct negotiations between the parties” and criticized the speed with which the resolution was pushed to a vote, saying that “by introducing the resolution yesterday and scheduling a vote this week, other members of the Security Council have not had sufficient time to consider the text.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) warned on Thursday that the “resolution would undermine, if not undo, the chances for productive discussions between the two sides,” remarks echoed the following day by Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), who also called the resolution “unconstructive.” Sen. Sherrod Brown called (D-Ohio) stressed on Friday that “any lasting peace must be negotiated between Israelis and Palestinians, not imposed by the international community.”
Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) noted that “longstanding U.S. policy has been to stand with Israel against attempts to use the United Nations to internationalize the peace process, and that policy should be maintained.”
“I am concerned that some delegations to the United Nations continue to advance counterproductive resolutions such as the one introduced this week, while they turn a blind eye to international crises that should demand our immediate attention and action, including the conflict in Syria and Russian aggression in Ukraine,” he added.
Perhaps those who agree with the almost ex-president — including many of Hollywood’s luminaries, even those who forgot their promise to leave America — continue to ignore the reason why there cannot be a peace treaty between Israel and the so-called Palestinian Authority.
The Arabic language media reports that Fatah, the party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, praised its “most outstanding” terrorist attacks in two posts over two days on its Facebook page, according to the monitoring group Palestinian Media Watch. One post highlighted the “10 most outstanding operations” in the entire history of Fatah; the other the “10 most outstanding operations in the Al-Aqsa [Second] Intifada”, the wave of Palestinian violence lasting from 2000-2005 and killing more than 1,000 Israelis. The former post showed a flag of “Palestine” depicting all of Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Incitement to violence by Fatah and Palestinian leaders has been a constant driver of the conflict, and was responsible for a wave of stabbings and car rammings that has killed more than 40 Israelis since September 2015. Fatah boasted in August that it had “killed 11,000 Israelis.” Abbas praised a Jordanian who was shot while attempting to stab Israeli Border Police officers as a “martyr” in a condolence letter to his family last month. He has consistently refused to condemn acts of terrorism. A senior adviser to Abbas stated this past June, “Wherever you find an Israeli, slit his throat.” When a Palestinian terrorist went on a stabbing spree in Jaffa that killed American Army veteran Taylor Force, the PA’s official TV news station called the terrorist responsible a “martyr” and on Twitter, Abbas’s Fatah party hailed him as a “martyr” and a “hero.” Last February, Abbas met with families of terrorists who carried out attacks against Israelis, telling them: “Your sons are martyrs.”
Inciting terrorist acts is the PA “leadership’s” idea of pressuring Israel to commit national suicide. The single democratic state in the region has repeatedly caved to Arab pressure only to find the Arabs’ promises of peace were not worth the paper on which they were printed.
Why Israel remains a member of the UN, in which it is the only nation condemned for “human rights” violations when even the left-wing media occasionally reports on atrocities around the globe , while “PA” terrorists daily attack Israelis and the “PA” leadership incites hatred of Jews and Israel from pre-kindergarten until the grave, is beyond my ken.
Why the U.S., which soon thankfully will have a new president, continues to fund an organization that unfairly condemns its ally and that often berates the hand that feeds it, likewise if beyond my ken.
There will soon be three countries that can deal with each other and all other states without need of the (dis)United Nations: China, Russia, the U.S.
The UN failed in its mission to avoid wars. The UN failed in its mission to protect human rights (consider Africa, consider China and North Korea, consider Muslim-dominated nations). The IDEA of the UN -– a later-day League of Nations whose failures soon were recognized and the League disbanded — was good; the implementation is found lacking.
As for Israel, even the retiring UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon, admits to the world press that (T) he organization has a “disproportionate” volume of resolutions against Israel, which he believes has “foiled the ability of the UN to fulfill its role effectively”.
Addressing the UN Security Council, Ban said: “Over the last decade I have argued that we cannot have a bias against Israel at the UN.
"Decades of political maneuvering have created a disproportionate number of resolutions, reports and committees against Israel.
