Bolton: Obama Didn’t Stab Netanyahu in the Back; He Did in the Front, National Review via Fox News via YouTube, December 27, 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tPEWTbnwrM
Martin Karo: A Modest (Statutory) Proposal, Power Line,
(The US Congress and the UN Security Council resolution damning Israel. — DM)
Reader Martin Karo is a Philadelphia attorney. Mr. Karo has submitted a modest if lawyerly proposal for the consideration of President-elect Donald Trump and the 115th Congress. He writes:
After the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 2334, declaring that all Israeli building and activity in any territory captured in the 1967 war (the third war imposed on the Israelis) is illegal under international law, Donald Trump immediately vowed that things will be different come January 20. Virtually all Democrats in Congress immediately went on record opposing the Obama Administration’s feckless betrayal of Israel as well. Chuck Schumer purported to be particularly outraged. In order to convert outrage to action, herewith a modest proposal for the first law to be presented to and passed by the Congress under the Trump Administration:
Whereas, it is a bedrock principle of the United States, and a sound principle generally, that no peace deal may be imposed by outside parties on any party not directly involved in any conflict; and
Whereas, said principle is especially relevant in the context of Israel and the Palestinians, and the conflict that has embroiled that region since the passage of the UN plan partitioning the British Mandate;
The following provisions of law are hereby enacted:
Section 1. The United States does not recognize, and repudiates, UN Security Council Resolution 2334. Said act shall have no force whatsoever within the United States, shall in no way influence any action of the Government of the United States, and shall not be observed in any way by any company that does business in the United States, except as necessary to carry out the following provisions of law.
Section 2. The United States shall, at the next meeting of the United Nations Security Council, introduce a resolution formally revoking UNSC 2334 and reaffirming that any peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians must and shall be negotiated and concluded between those parties only. This resolution shall be reintroduced by the United States at every UNSC session until it is passed.
Section 3. The United States Treasury is directed to reduce all United States payments or transfers to the United Nations, and all constituent elements thereof, to match those of New Zealand, Malaysia, Senegal, or Venezuela, whichever is least, until UNSC 2334 is revoked. The United Nations seeks to force the United States to follow the political contributions of those nations; consequently it shall be limited to the economic contributions provided by those nations.
Section 4. The United States shall revoke and withhold any direct or indirect aid to the Palestinians, or any organization that in any way assists the Palestinians, until UNSC 2334 is revoked pursuant to Section 2.
Section 5. No bank registered in the United States shall do any business whatsoever with any country that proposed, voted for or recognizes UNSC 2334, or with any bank registered in such countries, for any purpose, without an explicit waiver from the United States Congress. No bank registered in any country which recognizes UNSC 2334 shall do any business whatsoever in the United States or with any bank registered in the United States, without an explicit waiver from the United States Congress.
Section 6. The provisions of Sections 1 – 4 of this Act shall be effective immediately. The provisions of Section 5 shall be effective six months from the passage of this Act.
I’m informally considering titling this the “Mr. T’s Prediction Was Right” Act, though other titles are solicited.
EDITOR’S NOTE: For readers who may be wondering, I think this is “Mr. T’s prediction”:
(The short video is at the link. — DM)
Dem lawmaker: Israel waging ‘war on the American government’, Washington Examiner,
(How deplorably ungrateful of wicked Israel after all that Obama has done to for her. — DM)
Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., says Israelis attacking Obama for not giving them ‘everything they want.’ (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)
McDermott added that because Israel “never could get 100 percent from Barack Obama, so they decided to attack him and use him as the reason why Trump should come in and give them everything they want.”
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A retiring Democratic congressman warned that the war-of-words over the United Nations’ vote on Israel settlements is the beginning of a rhetorical “war on the American government” by Israel.
Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., made the comments Monday in an interview with MSNBC when asked to react to accusations that the Israeli government has proof that the Obama administration helped influence the U.N. Security Council’s vote to condemn Israeli settlements.
Ron Dermer, the Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., had said earlier on MSNBC that the Israelis would be sharing the proof to the incoming Trump administration only.
“What we are seeing is the beginning of a war on the American government [by Israel],” McDermott said in response to Dermer.
“We’re seeing the air war right now, we’re seeing all these tweets, all this kind of innuendo and all these half stories, and all this stuff is to create tremendous tension,” McDermott explained.
He added that creating the tension will help President-elect Donald Trump begin the “ground war” when he takes over the White House next month. That, McDermott said, is when “his appointees begin to carry out his actions in the departments across the government.”
“The American people are being subjected to a campaign of anxiety production,” McDermott said. “And it really is very, very disturbing to watch.”
McDermott added that because Israel “never could get 100 percent from Barack Obama, so they decided to attack him and use him as the reason why Trump should come in and give them everything they want.”
Israel is now “running their own war against us and our policies” because they are angry that Obama has pushed back against telling them to stop with settlements, McDermott said.
Bye Bye, Obama, PJ Media, Michael Ledeen, December 25, 2016
(Please see also, Is real change coming to Iran? Get ready for March 15, 2017. — DM)
What would President Trump do if Khamenei passed from the scene, and millions of Iranians took to the streets again? The president-elect has said he’s not a great enthusiast of regime change, but it’s hard to imagine he’d abandon the Iranians as Obama did seven years ago. He ought to be thinking it through.
Yes, I know good news is hard to swallow, but we are living in a revolutionary moment, of which the Trump election is a dramatic symptom. The crisis of the Islamic Republic would be a fitting end to the Obama era. He dreamt of a glorious strategic alliance with Iran, and a definitive lethal blow against Israel. How fitting with the Divine sense of humor to have the Palestinians and Iranians to wreck their own enterprises.
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As I promised, as the days of Obama draw down, the jihadis are stepping up the terror tempo. They know that there will be no reprisals from the Oahu links, and they fear Trump’s lineup of tough guys in the cabinet, so they’re in a hurry to kill infidels while the killing’s good. Therefore we, along with the other Western nations, are at maximum risk right now, until roundabouts January 20th.
And the killing’s plenty good, isn’t it? Berlin, Zurich, Ankara, Moscow, with a very nasty plot uncovered in Melbourne, and yet another involving terrorists in Detroit, Maryland, and Virginia. Not to mention the ongoing slaughter in Syria, and, on Christmas day, Cameroon.
What does the “western world” do in response? Declare the Western Wall “occupied territory.” This is no accident, since the jihadis believe that they have unleashed holy war against infidels. That war will not end, in their view, until we infidels have been crushed and subjected to the will of a caliph. They’ve got plenty of support from the Russians, without whom thousands of Iranians and Iranian proxies would have been killed in Syria and Iraq, and the Assad regime would have been destroyed.
That would have been a better world, but Obama did not want that world. Nor did the feckless Europeans, who act as if profits on Iran trade compensate for the open subversion of public order. Indeed, as Christmas arrived we were treated to the spectacle of the bishop of Rome—aka Pope Francis–blaming material misery for the jihadist assault on the West. Thus the first Jesuit pontiff surrenders the moral high ground to his mortal enemies.
Maybe Obama should convert and run for pope.
Paradoxically, the jihadis and their secular allies are launching their new assault just as they are suffering systematic setbacks on the battlefield, their own internal conflicts are intensifying, and there are signs of a religious and patriotic revival within the boundaries of their archenemy, the United States. Walter Russell Mead neatly catches the irony that, just as Obama handed the Palestinians a resounding political victory, a sober look at the situation suggests that the Palestinians have not been this weak, this divided, or this helpless in many decades.
In like manner, the Iranian regime, flush with its success in Aleppo, is increasingly riven. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has had two medical events in the past 10 days, and the scrambling for the succession has resumed. You may have noticed that General Qasem Soleimani has returned to the front pages, which invariably happens when the leader is ill; the Revolutionary Guards want him as the strongman of the next regime (he can’t be supreme leader for lack of theological standing, but he could still be a dominant figure). And it isn’t all peaches and cream for Soleimani, as recent demonstrations in Tehran against the rape of Aleppo make clear. Iranian apologists love to tell us that Persian nationalism overwhelms internal tribal and sectarian divisions, but Iran has lost thousands in Syria, and the Persian nationalists don’t like their husbands and sons dying to save Bashar Assad.
What would President Trump do if Khamenei passed from the scene, and millions of Iranians took to the streets again? The president-elect has said he’s not a great enthusiast of regime change, but it’s hard to imagine he’d abandon the Iranians as Obama did seven years ago. He ought to be thinking it through.
Yes, I know good news is hard to swallow, but we are living in a revolutionary moment, of which the Trump election is a dramatic symptom. The crisis of the Islamic Republic would be a fitting end to the Obama era. He dreamt of a glorious strategic alliance with Iran, and a definitive lethal blow against Israel. How fitting with the Divine sense of humor to have the Palestinians and Iranians to wreck their own enterprises.
You never know. Life is full of surprises.
At the AP, Opinion Masquerades as Reporting, Power Line,
Yesterday the Associated Press published an article by its Jerusalem bureau chief, Josef Federman, on Benjamin Netanyahu’s reaction to President Obama’s betrayal of Israel in the U.N. The article is an opinion piece–a virulent one, in fact. It is suitable for publication in, say, the New York Times, as an anti-Israel op-ed. The piece is headlined Israel: humbled Netanyahu places hopes in Trump. It begins:
The Israeli government’s furious reaction to the U.N. Security Council’s adoption of a resolution opposing Jewish settlements in occupied territory underscores its fundamental and bitter dispute with the international community about the future of the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists that there is nothing wrong with his controversial policy of building Jewish towns in occupied areas that the Palestinians, with overwhelming world support, claim for their state. But Friday’s U.N. rebuke was a stark reminder that the rest of the world considers it a crime. The embattled leader is now placing his hopes in the incoming administration of Donald Trump, which is shaping up as the first major player to embrace Israel’s nationalist right and its West Bank settlements.
Those are perhaps defensible statements of opinion, although I would argue that they are mostly incorrect. The overall thrust of the opening paragraphs–that the entire world other than Netanyahu’s administration and “Israel’s nationalist right” considers it a “crime” for Jews to live in their Biblical home of Judea Samaria, and that Donald Trump is the first “major player” to disagree, is blatantly false.
There is much more, for example:
In a series of statements, Netanyahu has criticized the Obama Administration for letting Resolution 2334 pass Friday by abstaining, using unprecedented language that has turned a policy disagreement into a personal vendetta.
Netanyahu’s language was unprecedented? What, did he call Obama a “chickens*t”? And was not Obama’s betrayal, coordinated with the Arabs and timed to avoid accountability to Congress or the voters, the culmination of a vendetta that included interference in Israel’s election to try to defeat the Prime Minister? That wasn’t a vendetta because, I suppose, Federman welcomed it.
Federman has opinions about Trump, too:
The recent diplomatic defeat would be much more damaging if not for a potential remaining and rather major ace in Netanyahu’s hand: the incoming Trump Administration.
In a striking departure from past policy of incumbent [Ed.: sic] presidents waiting on the sidelines, Trump tried to scuttle the resolution and called for a U.S. veto. After the vote, Trump vowed that “things will be different after Jan. 20th.”
So it’s Netanyahu and Trump who have disrupted the natural order of things by smashing precedents. How about this, Mr. Federman: what’s the precedent for a lame-duck president executing a major change in American foreign policy, against the wishes of Congress and the American people, less than 30 days before leaving office, in the face of no crisis or emergency, or even a change in circumstances?
Critically, he has appointed an outspoken supporter and donor to the settlements, his longtime attorney David Friedman, as ambassador to Israel. And aides say Trump is serious about a promise to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which even many Israelis fear could spark violence. The Palestinians claim east Jerusalem, home to sensitive religious sites, as the capital of the future state to which they aspire.
Sensitive religious sites like Temple Mount, the Mount of Olives and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. Moving the U.S. embassy to Israel’s capital has been part of the Republican Party’s platform for a long time. The suggestion that having the U.S. embassy on Jerusalem, along with the Knesset, Israel’s Supreme Court and other organs of Israel’s government “could spark violence” is sheer editorializing.
Mr. Federman’s article is a typical expression of the international Left’s pro-Palestinian view of the situation in Judea and Samaria. It is, as I said, an op-ed that could easily appear in a liberal organ like the New York Times. But there is not a shred of news anywhere in it. It is merely a recitation of Federman’s opinions, with the opinions of Netanyahu, Trump and their allies erected as straw men to be struck down by others.
This conclusion was so obvious that I thought the AP must have designated the Federman article an opinion piece. But no: it went out on the wire as a straight news story. In fact, as I understand the AP’s position, it doesn’t publish opinion pieces. In fact, it cautions its reporters against expressing opinions at all:
EXPRESSIONS OF OPINION:
Anyone who works for the AP must be mindful that opinions they express may damage the AP’s reputation as an unbiased source of news. They must refrain from declaring their views on contentious public issues in any public forum, whether in Web logs, chat rooms, letters to the editor, petitions, bumper stickers or lapel buttons, and must not take part in demonstrations in support of causes or movements.
How about expressions of opinion in AP news stories? That, apparently, is fine, as long as the opinions are on the left.
The UN vote teaches much but changes nothing and affects even less, Israel National News, Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer, December 25, 2016
The so–called “Two-State Solution” died years and years ago. No one told Obama that he helped kill it by siding so unilaterally with Arab demands against Israel. Obama induced Mahmoud Abbas almost a decade ago to stop talks with Israel, leaving Obama and Hillary, succeeded by Kerry, to do the dirty work. As a result, stasis ensued, and Jews continued moving in. There now are more than 750,000 Jews in Judea and Samaria, including Jews living in East Jerusalem. The Arabs will not allow them to remain there, and Israel cannot logistically relocate them. Israel could not even relocate or successfully re-employ 10,000 Jews from Gush Katif who were forcibly uprooted and displaced during Ariel Sharon’s Gaza give-away. Israel cannot remove 800,000 people, place them in alternate homes and find them productive jobs. It is logistically impossible. Only Adolf Hitler could remove a million Jews from their homes and ‘resettle’ them.
***********************************
1. The U.S. Jewish organization J Street applauded the move, saying the resolution advances the goal of a two-state solution, also a longtime U.S. objective. “This resolution conveys the overwhelming support of the international community, including Israel’s closest friends and allies, for the two-state solution, and their deep concern over the deteriorating status quo between Israelis and Palestinians and the lack of meaningful progress toward peace,” the organization said.
2. Obama will be out in 28 days. Had Hillary Clinton been elected, this United Nations vote now would launch a real long-term headache. Not a disaster, but a real headache. Nothing ever can obstruct the will of G-d, certainly not those in Migdal Bavel — the Tower of Babel — but they still can cause headaches. However, Hillary instead is an asterisk to history. A minuscule small asterisk, best remembered as a Public Liar who lost two “Can’t Miss” elections, first to Obama and then to Donald Trump.
3. It was a miracle that Donald Trump ever was elected. Even on Election Day the exit-poll reports were that he was in big trouble in Florida and elsewhere. The miracle goes back generations. His grandfather never wanted to be in America in the first place, but the Kaiser would not let him back in after the grandfather traveled to America without paying a mandatory fee that permitted people to leave and then to return. So the grandfather got stuck in America against his will. Two generations later, Trump emerges as President of the United States. Before that, his elegant and refined daughter converts to Judaism and undertakes to live a Modern Orthodox Jewish life, and she marries into an Orthodox family with long-standing ties to Israel and with demonstrated sympathies to Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.
President-elect Trump has been a friend of Israel and of Jews all his life. He has been awarded for his friendship, has been a Grand Marshall of an Israel Day Parade, has donated to Bet El. He surrounds himself with Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews who are deep and committed friends of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. His front-line non-Jewish supporters, including Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, Dr. Ben Carson, Steve Bannon, and others are huge supporters of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, and they all support moving the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Mr. Trump is very close with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and he deeply admires scrappy, strong men who do not back down in the face of adversity.
4. Obama now goes out — along with Kerry — with exactly the legacy they have earned but camouflaged from the public’s view. By acting against Israel, Obama revealed his enmity and small churlish pettiness in his last month of the eight years, so that all could see and know what so many liberal Jews refused to acknowledge. His legacy with the Jews is sealed, and his churlish pettiness will define him for the rest of his life as Jimmy Carter’s anti-Semitism has defined him.
5. If Mr. Trump contemplated wavering on fulfilling his pledge to move the embassy, as so many other American Presidents before him have done, now he himself will be self-motivated to move the embassy — “just because” — because that is how Donald Trump is in the core of his being: “You push me, and I hit you back twice as hard.” That is Donald Trump. Thus, the short-term anti-Israel moment in which Israel’s enemies exult will guarantee Israel a much more satisfying long-term result. This U.N. vote virtually assures that President Trump will move the embassy to Jerusalem.
6. Notably — and excellently for those who love Israel — the U.N. vote also equates East Jerusalem completely with all the rest of Judea and Samaria, putting all Jewish communities there in the same category. This is excellent because even most of the Israelis who are prepared to compromise on parts of Judea and Samaria are not prepared to compromise on East Jerusalem. Although people anticipated that President Trump would move the embassy to West Jerusalem if he would honor his promise, this vote even may induce Trump miraculously to move the embassy to East Jerusalem. I do not know whether he would go that far, but now he might.
7. If Prime Minster Netanyahu wants to remain in office and not see the utter break-up of his coalition, this U.N. vote will induce the Israeli Government to expand Jewish populating of Judea and Samaria (“West Bank settlements”) as a response of defiance, particularly once Trump is in.
8. The U.N. voted in 1975 that Zionism is Racism. In time, they voted to retract the measure because it cost them dearly. Mr. Trump is the sort, and he has the Republican Congress to back him, to cut American dollars to the United Nations so significantly — and he already believes that America spends far too much on too many overseas commitments — and that itself may be useful.
9. More than 70 percent of American Jews voted foolishly for Hillary against Trump. G-d blessed Israel that, at her time of need, there is a Christian community in America — the conservative Evangelicals — who back Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria fully and who made clear to Mr. Trump that, along with religious and social issues dear to them (and, by the way to Orthodox Jews) — opposition to abortion, issues regarding the traditional family, Government interference in religion — they insist on supporting Israel, support moving the embassy to Jerusalem, and support the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria (the so-called “Jewish settlements in Occupied Palestine”).
10. The so–called “Two-State Solution” died years and years ago. No one told Obama that he helped kill it by siding so unilaterally with Arab demands against Israel. Obama induced Mahmoud Abbas almost a decade ago to stop talks with Israel, leaving Obama and Hillary, succeeded by Kerry, to do the dirty work. As a result, stasis ensued, and Jews continued moving in. There now are more than 750,000 Jews in Judea and Samaria, including Jews living in East Jerusalem. The Arabs will not allow them to remain there, and Israel cannot logistically relocate them. Israel could not even relocate or successfully re-employ 10,000 Jews from Gush Katif who were forcibly uprooted and displaced during Ariel Sharon’s Gaza give-away. Israel cannot remove 800,000 people, place them in alternate homes and find them productive jobs. It is logistically impossible. Only Adolf Hitler could remove a million Jews from their homes and ‘resettle’ them.
So there is no “Two-State” solution because, except for displacing a few families in Amona, who will one day live in even better homes, it will not happen anyway because Israel is not going to put a million Jews in cattle cars and ship them to camps of concentration. Israel simply does not have alternate housing and employment for a million people. It simply will not happen because it now is logistically impossible.
11. Israel made major concessions in past negotiations, reaching agreements under Clinton and George W. Bush to make major concessions in return for American assurances and guarantees that included assurances that America would recognize the legality of certain major populations of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.
Today’s experience at the U.N. marks America reneging fundamentally on its pledged commitments made in these deals, thus nullifying the legal binding of those deals. It also reminds Israel that only she can watch out for her survival because other countries have their own interests, and government leaderships change. Even President Trump will not be forever, though he does have four years ahead with a good chance of eight years if he jump-starts the economy successfully, and there is a reasonably good chance for some extra time afterwards with Vice President Mike Pence succeeding him in eight years if the Republicans rule properly, effectively, and generously.
12. It is particularly satisfying the Myth of Obama in the American Jewish community to be exposed and remembered. Israeli Jews already “had his number” eight years ago. This is an effete who characterized the Radical Islamist terrorist murders of Jews in France, in the immediate aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo murders, as having been the result of some violent people attacking a “random grocery store.” That world view accorded with Obama characterizing the Radical Islamist murders at Fort Hood as “workplace violence.”
American Jews, more than others, need to remember whom they supported and what he and his ilk are. Jews also need to know now that Charles Schumer, Democrat Senator from New York and the Democrats’ Senate Minority Leader, is not their savior but rather is their deep embarrassment, and Schumer has no influence on matters concerning Israel’s survival. He is utterly useless. Likewise, the Orthodox Jew in Obama’s cabinet — Jack Lew, Obama’s Secretary of the Treasury — could not influence the day. He, too, was utterly useless, and it is valuable that he be remembered that way, now that his uselessness has been exposed.
In the end, Jews need to know who their friends are, who their obvious enemies are, who their covert enemies are, and most importantly, as we embark on commemorating the Hanukkah miracle in the Beit Hamikdash — the Holy Temple — Jews need to know that their survival is in the hands of G-d.
13. I conclude as I began. J Street is an organization supported in no small measure by George Soros. There has been some public discussion the past ten days in America as to whether it is fair to call the pathetic self-hating back-stabbers in J Street “worse than Kapos.” The record will show that, on the day that Obama ineffectually took one last swipe at Israel, J Street issued the statement it did. Res Ipsa Loquitur. The thing speaks for itself.
The poetry of UN politics, Israel Hayom, Annika Hernroth-Rothstein, December 25, 2016
Obama has cemented his legacy, and now we can focus on our own. What should we do, what act of Jewish defiance should we partake in, to show the world what’s what? They can write words on paper and shake their fists while we settle our land and say our ancient blessings. One side is a paper tiger; the other is a lion that roars.
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I actually think it’s poetic. Just as Hanukkah, a festival of Jewish resistance, was approaching, the world turned on the Jewish state and an “ally” showed its true colors.
Much is being said about U.S. President Barack Obama’s choice to have his country abstain from voting on the U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements as illegal, and much will continue to be said, but none of us can really be that surprised. This was an obvious move by Obama, a last hurrah from a man who from day one set himself apart as a breaker of ties and holder of grudges. He was never a friend of Israel, and combined with his not-too-subtle need for pompous pageantry, this last kick in the gut toward Israel was a given.
The emotional upheaval notwithstanding, this act actually means very little for the outgoing president. But for others, it means all the more. What Obama did by choosing not to veto the vote was to re-elect Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and throw support behind Donald Trump that the president-elect could have never expected to receive otherwise.
Until now, liberal Jews have supported and defended Obama and his policies, but when he set out to humiliate Israel, he also ended up shaming and humiliating a lot of Jewish Democrats, thus losing his party a whole host of voters to settle a personal score. Liberal Jews stuck by him through foreign policy blunders, anti-religious policies and personal spats with the Israeli leadership, but his ego got the best of him one too many times, and now minds are opening to Trump that otherwise would have stayed closed. As for Netanyahu, he is much too smart to be outraged over this resolution without teeth, and he knows that such biased bullying will do nothing to lessen the strength of the Jewish state but will only give him a more powerful mandate to lead.
And what this vote mean for us, the Jewish people? Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, once said that our future does not depend on what other nations say, but what Jews do, and what better time to be reminded of that than now, in this holiday season? These bills, proposals and outrageous resolutions do not attack the Jewish state; they attack our Jewishness, and it is with Jewishness we need to respond. Rather than focus outward, with anger at the obvious, we should focus inward at the core of what they hate and the heart of what we could be.
As I light my Hannukah candles and say the blessing in the words of my forefathers, I keep the codes and laws given to us through the original deed to our land. While some choose to cry out for our delegitimization, my actions and choices award me legitimacy, and the more they try to make me less of what I am, the louder and stronger I become.
This resolution was passed to delegitimize the State of Israel, but chances are it will lead to the delegitimization of the United Nations. They overplayed their hand and will ultimately end up losing. The only question is what we as Jews choose to do, and what choices we make when it comes to our survival.
This vote was not about Obama, Netanyahu or Trump, and it is neither more nor less important than any of the others before it. The more we shout and cry about it, the more we give Obama what he wants and enable him to feel like a trailblazer, when he is little more than a petulant child. This vote is about us, and we should keep it that way, honoring the message of the Maccabees and the struggle that brought us here and has kept us here until this day.
Obama has cemented his legacy, and now we can focus on our own. What should we do, what act of Jewish defiance should we partake in, to show the world what’s what? They can write words on paper and shake their fists while we settle our land and say our ancient blessings. One side is a paper tiger; the other is a lion that roars.
Happy Hanukkah.
Ted Cruz: No US funding for UN until Israel vote ‘reversed’, Washington Examiner,
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz put the United Nations on notice Saturday evening, issuing his toughest statement yet in response to Friday’s vote to condemn Israeli settlement building.
In a tweet, the Republican lawmaker said he spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Saturday evening to not only wish him a happy Hanukkah, but also to “assure him of strong support in Congress.”
Spoke w/ Israeli PM @netanyahu tonight to wish him Happy Chanukah & assure him of strong support in Congress. No US $ for UN until reversed.
“No US $ for UN until reversed,” he added. That comment suggests that Cruz has made his mind up since Friday, when he said he looked forward to working with Sen. Lindsey Graham and President-elect Trump “to significantly reduce or even eliminate U.S. funding of the United Nations, and also to seriously reconsider financial support for the nations that supported this resolution.”
In a 14-0 vote on Friday, the U.N. Security Council condemned Israel for settlements in areas of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The Obama administration abstained on the measure, marking a significant shift of U.S. policy just weeks before Obama completes his second term in the White House.
Obama ordered the veto of a similar resolution in 2011, but his administration has grown increasingly critical of the settlements in the past year and frustrated with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, which the Obama team sees as partially responsible for the failure of recent Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Friday’s abstention prompted a wave of criticism from Trump, Republicans and even members of the Democratic Party.
“It is extremely frustrating, disappointing and confounding that the administration has failed to veto this resolution,” said incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York. “[I]ts actions will move us further from peace in the Middle East.”
Graham revealed Saturday that he plans to introduce a measure to cut funding to the U.N. unless it repeals the resolution about the Israeli settlements.
Why Obama Has Hurt the Palestinian People Far More Than Israel, PJ Media, Roger L. Simon, December 24, 2016
By allowing and indeed instigating – it was apparently entirely his decision – the United States to “abstain” from the UN Security Council’s censure of Israel on the settler issue Barack Obama has certainly hurt Israel, but he has hurt the Palestinian people far more.
Obama’s action was entirely one of moral narcissism, coming as it did from his longtime pseudo-leftist distaste for Israel (see the Khalidi Tape) augmented by personal pique at its leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, leavened by self-regarding, actually quite destructive, virtue signaling. Obama’s unresolved anger about Donald Trump’s victory was undoubtedly also part of the mix.
The destructive aspect is the most significant in the long run, though it’s questionable whether the lame duck president sees it or even cares. Obama has encouraged Palestinian irredentism. He has given their leaders and the misbegotten Palestinian people a propaganda victory they don’t need that misleads them into thinking they have been following the right path.
Over the more than two decades since the Oslo Accords, the Palestinians have been given several chances at a two-state solution and have rejected all of them. In all those cases over ninety percent of what they asked for was on the table. In the instance of Ehud Barak and Arafat, some say it was a hundred percent. Arafat famously walked away – to Bill Clinton’s great, and in this case justifiable, chagrin.
Something wrong? Of course. Maybe the Palestinians, at least their leaders, didn’t and don’t really want a two-state solution. Those leaders have been on a gravy train, in many instances having become billionaires via international aid during the negotiations. They have had less than zero incentive to make a deal, especially since they suspected their more bloodthirsty brothers and sisters would kill them if they did. (A recent investigation shows that Arafat may actually have been poisoned by a competing Palestinian leader. We all know what happened to Gaza after the Israelis left voluntarily, when Hamas turned what was supposed to be the next Singapore into a free-fire zone.)
Meanwhile, the Palestinian people have been ginned up by those leaders – and jihadists world wide – to hate the Jewish people and dream of the Jewish state being pushed into the sea. Interesting in all this is the supposedly terminal settler issue. Palestinian Authority president Abu Abbas has declared that no Jews would be allowed to live in a future Palestinian state, while a million and a half Arabs already live in Israel. Is that, as Obama would say, “fair”? Since 1948, the entire Islamic world has virtually achieved Hitler’s goal of being Judenrein.
Nevertheless, the destruction of Israel is less likely than ever to occur, yet Obama decided to give at least tacit encouragement to that tired dream and give the Palestinians a false victory through his last minute chastisement of Israel. He did this in full knowledge that Donald Trump would take an opposite position within weeks. Obama’s action was basically a “grandstand play,” but not a harmless one because it undermined what Trump and his people may ultimately be trying to do more quietly. The Palestinians need nothing more than”tough love,” solid inducement to look at their situation realistically rather than through the highly-neurotic, always self-destructive lens of victimhood.
It’s no surprise that Trump is now calling for reduced US financial support for the UN. Did Obama want that? Did he really care about that either or was that all too just for show?
So Obama moves off stage as he has always been – the Moral Narcissist in Chief. His entire presidency has been about him, and on a global stage. And they say Trump is the narcissist.
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