Obama’s shameful parting shot at the Jewish state

As if the Iran nuclear deal in 2015 was not enough of a stab in Israel’s back, indeed a very risky endeavor for the world itself if you think fairly about it, the United States’ abstention of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 – addressing communities built or rebuilt by Israel on lands captured during the 1967 Six-Day War, was a disgraceful and spiteful twisting of the knife.

Ask yourself, what was the point of the resolution? Is Israel not aware of President Barack Obama’s distain for Israeli settlements built outside the pre-1967 Green Line? Even if the Obama administration had nothing to do with the resolution’s late 2016 re-inception, and I trust Obama et. al. as much as I trust, well, Obama et. al., the US could have made sure the resolution wouldn’t come to a vote. Let alone allow it to pass.

But why grant others the ability to bring up the resolution at all? It is not as if Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry are to begin anew any peace talks or negotiations. They are leaving, and very soon. (Thankfully.)

Now I know John Kerry believed passage of the resolution preserved the possibility of peace, or so he said, but it does the opposite, making things more difficult. Kerry himself admitted the Obama administration did not agree with every aspect of the resolution (which ones?), so why allow it to pass?

The main reason for pushing through the resolution at this time was to punish Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and by extension whether they think so or not, the State of Israel. Even the left in Israel recognizes that. They have their criticisms of Netanyahu for sure, blaming him for the US action – the left is the opposition, after all, but it also strongly opposed the resolution and the US decision to abstain.

Another reason, one not as nefarious perhaps, but no less unnecessarily disruptive, was to saddle the incoming Trump administration with a US policy change around which it must navigate as it formulates its own foreign policy.

Generally, it was the far left inside and outside of Israel, and the Israel and Jew-haters around the world that supported this break from the longstanding US policy of protecting Israel from the last place on earth that should have anything to do with peace in the Middle East. Or anywhere else for that matter.

And what is that noxious venue? It is the United Nations, that useless, revolting, anti-Semitic cesspool of despots and dictators, and self-righteous, pontificators, who year after year, spend the better part of pompous deliberations condemning Israel even as the world burns, continuing to spin in an explosive death spiral of terrorism and nation destruction with hundreds of thousands slaughtered and millions more running for their lives.

It was no wonder the UN Security Council and those present broke out in loud applause when the resolution vote was tallied. Thanks to the US pulling its cover, the haters were finally able to stick it to the Jews. I wonder if US Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, was embarrassed as she watched the celebration.

Just ten days earlier, on December 13, Ambassador Power, a Pulitzer Prize winner for her book, “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide, within which she condemns American passivity and inaction in the face of mass atrocities and genocide – who, had she a conscience would have resigned her position long ago as she has watched her boss for the last almost six years do exactly what she criticized so passionately – lambasted those responsible for the carnage of the Syrian Civil War.

Power: “Aleppo will join the ranks of those events in world history that define modern evil, that stain our conscience decades later. Halabja, Rwanda, Srebrenica, and, now, Aleppo. To the Assad regime, Russia, and Iran, your forces and proxies are carrying out these crimes. Your barrel bombs and mortars and airstrikes have allowed the militia in Aleppo to encircle tens of thousands of civilians in your ever-tightening noose… Are you truly incapable of shame? Is there literally nothing that can shame you?”

Explaining her abstention of the condemnation resolution against Israel, in effect a yes vote, Power said this: “But in reality this vote for us was not straightforward, because of where it is taking place – at the United Nations. For the simple truth is that for as long as Israel has been a member of this institution, Israel has been treated differently from other nations at the United Nations.

“And not only in decades past – such as in the infamous resolution that the General Assembly adopted in 1975, with the support of the majority of Member States, officially determining that, “Zionism is a form of racism” – but also in 2016, this year.

“One need only look at the 18 resolutions against Israel adopted during the UN General Assembly in September; or the 12 Israel-specific resolutions adopted this year in the Human Rights Council – more than those focused on Syria, North Korea, Iran, and South Sudan put together – to see that in 2016 Israel continues to be treated differently from other Member States.”

So what did the pitiable Power, in the name of Obama, and sadly, the US, do? She surrendered the Jewish state to the UN jackals she identified so clearly.

Words at times have consequences, and words at times don’t.

ISIS, Syria, Russia and Iran know the US has become a paper tiger under the stewardship of Obama. ISIS continues to wreak havoc around the world, even here in the US. Bashar al-Assad butchers his people, and with the US abdication of international responsibility (remember Obama’s red line?), Vladimir Putin and Ali Khamenei assist Assad with the killing.

Putin and Khamenei know from their own crimes that they can push Obama around. And in Iran’s case, even get rewarded for doing so – the nuclear agreement abomination that enriched the world’s foremost sponsor of terror’s coffers so it could continue to fool the gullible and export its toxic brand of chaos and death.

Obama turned a blind eye toward the Syrian conflict, even at the beginning when it wasn’t out of control, enabling the non-stop massive bloodshed and destabilization, and he continues to make excuses, as he, through his UN surrogate Power, pays lip service to the atrocities.

But with Israel, for some reason, all through his presidency, he has been obsessed with settlements. And Friday last week, as the children of Aleppo, Syria continued to die, and as ISIS burned two Turkish soldiers alive, the feckless US president sent the hypocrite Power out to pick on Israel and at the same time, cheer on the Israel haters.

Are you truly incapable of shame, Mr. Obama?

I have seen the argument that the resolution does nothing because it has no teeth – no enforcement mechanism, and because it really wasn’t anything new. I most strenuously disagree. In this matter, words do have consequences.

Let’s take a look at a few of the words of Resolution 2334:

“3. Underlines that it will not recognize any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations;”

The Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem includes the Western Wall. How can anyone in their right mind not recognize the obvious, what has been known for three millennia? Was this one of the John Kerry’s resolution problems? Does even Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter and the Western Wall have no “legal validity” as noted in paragraph 1 of the resolution? Are the Jewish Quarter and the Western Wall “occupied territory?” Really? Should Israel take down its flags that proudly adorn the Wall plaza? What could be more Jewish?

“5. Calls upon all States, bearing in mind paragraph 1 of this resolution, to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967;”

One result of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the anti-Semitic BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement. Forcing product area identification in “relevant dealings,” telling the world to differentiate between goods manufactured a few miles this way or that, is tantamount to giving license to countries and peoples around the world to just boycott all Israeli products as punishment, or to avoid any confusion. Words on labels matter too.

Democrats as well as Republicans strongly castigated the Obama administration for the US abstention. Agree or not with Israeli settlements, some US lawmakers made clear that one-sided, anti-Israel resolutions in the snake pit of the UN would make peace less, not more, achievable.

And if Obama thought he was hurting his nemesis Netanyahu, he probably strengthened the Prime Minister in a country that does not like to be unfairly pressured. The reckless withdrawal from Gaza was enough of a lesson in unilateral trust.

The petulant Obama and his abettors, trying to impose a peace via the corrupt UN, are on the way out. Their exit cannot come soon enough.