RUTHFULLY YOURS

In the Obama administration’s waning days, global challenges to American interests abound. In Syria, which will be a bloody stain on the reputations of Barack Obama and John Kerry, the killing continues. The effort to free Mosul from ISIS is slowing. The rise of Iranian influence in the Gulf and the Levant, of China in Asia and the western Pacific, and of Putin’s Russia in both Europe and the Middle East, all continue. One might have thought any of these could be the subject of a final address by the president or the secretary of state.

But one would have been wrong. John Kerry delivered what is probably the last major speech of the Obama administration Wednesday, and its subject was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and especially the growth of Israeli settlements. So the Obama administration ends where it began: obsessed with Israelis and Palestinians as if their struggle were the key to peace in the entire region, and with construction of homes in settlements and in Jerusalem as if it were the major roadblock to a peace agreement.

In a speech that was remarkable for its length, its defensive and even whiny tone, its attack on the government of Israel, and for its lack of new ideas, Kerry tried to explain both last week’s failure to veto a UN Security Council resolution and eight years of failed Obama policy. His central argument was that the two-state solution is essential, is possible, and is being destroyed by Israeli settlements. The administration did not veto the resolution, he said, because it was balanced: It rebuked Israel for settlement expansion but also rebuked the Palestinians for incitement.

The latter point is significant, and shows the fundamental failure of Kerry’s argument. The resolution passed last week will do actual damage to Israel, because calling all the settlements and even construction in East Jerusalem a violation of international law opens Israel to further boycotts and to prosecution as criminals (in local courts all over the world or the International Criminal Court) of Israeli officials or of settlers. The “balance” that moved the administration to permit adoption of the resolution was non-existent: There is in the resolution no call upon the Palestinians to stop glorifying terrorism by naming schools and parks after murderers and celebrating their “achievements.” Instead the resolution does not mention the Palestinians in that context at all and merely “calls for compliance with obligations under international law for the strengthening of ongoing efforts to combat terrorism…and to clearly condemn all acts of terrorism.” Israel is condemned but the Palestinians are never criticized in that supposedly “balanced” text.

Kerry noted in his speech that “We have repeatedly and emphatically stressed to the Palestinians that all incitement to violence must stop.” Kerry actually spoke at some length about these Palestinian practices, as if repeating how much he dislikes them strengthened his point. But it does not, because the United States has been complaining about this for all eight years of the Obama administration to no effect whatsoever. The key point is that the Palestinians are never penalized for glorifying terror and the U.N. resolution doesn’t penalize them either. The resolution will harm Israel and do nothing at all to the Palestinians, which means it is not balanced and Kerry’s argument here is simply false.

Now that the smoke has cleared at the United Nations, there is little question about President Obama’s intentions; they are now crystal clear. Incontrovertible evidence exists that suggests the proposal for a return to the 1967 borders in Israel was orchestrated by the White House. By any measure that is a break from the historic ties between the U.S. and Israel and, as many commentators have noted, an act of betrayal.

It is also an act that cannot be trivialized. Of course, Israel will ignore the proposition. Netanyahu hasn’t any alternative. President Trump will regard it as an openly hostile act and may repudiate it by naming Jerusalem the capital of Israel. But what must also be realized is that even a coat of paint in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank is technically illegal and a violation of international law according to the Hague Court of International Justice. While the court doesn’t have the ability to impose its will, as was demonstrated by China’s President Xi repudiating a decision on the Spratly islands, it can bog down the Israeli government in legal harassment.

Most significantly, this proposal could be a casus belli. Suppose Palestinian activists decide to take matters into their own hands by arguing they have a legitimate claim to Samaria and Judea thereby employing force to obtain the territory they have acquired through legal decree. What Obama may not have thought through is how disruptive his proposal might be. Moreover, since the Sunni nations have put the Palestinian question behind them, it is odd that President Obama should insert it into the international equation as a front burner issue. Now terrorist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, Iranian Quds can claim a legitimate right to attack an Israeli government theoretically violating the law.

Even the insertion of a note into the Western Wall, a practice that has gone on as a Jewish religious ritual since 1967, can be declared an act violating the U.N. proposal. That Obama chose this matter as his swan song is revealing. His hostility towards Israel has been manifest in many ways, but at no point in the past has an American president acted as Obama has. This White House abstention and behind the scenes maneuvering with sponsoring states is unprecedented. The lies leading to the decision and rationalizations in the aftermath are also unprecedented.

In fact, this decision puts a slow burn on Donald Trump. Despite the number of global issues he will be obliged to digest setting foot in the White House from Syria to NATO, from the South China Sea air perimeter to North Korea, he will now be saddled with a Palestinian state issue most officials thought was on hold for the foreseeable future.

Obama has virtually destroyed any legacy he hoped to transmit to future historians about his eight years in office. He has left in ruins all he tried to manage.

The world is in disarray in large part because of his mismanagement or ignoring any management.

His ego won’t allow a dispassionate assessment of the Obama presidency, but if one were to do so after this recent U.N. fiasco, Barack Obama would have to be considered among the worst presidents in American history.
Dr. Herb London is president of the London Center for Policy Research and is co-author with Jed Babbin of “The BDS War Against Israel.”

Before Obama decided to “abstain” from standing with Israel in a UN vote condemning the Jewish State, he hadabstained from voting in defense of America in a UN resolution condemning the United States.

Obama, like Power and Kerry, have treated Israel just like they treated the United States.

John Forbes Kerry began his miserable career as a traitor seeking “peace” by pandering to the Communist leader negotiating on behalf of the Viet Cong. He concludes his miserable career in the Senate and as Secretary of State by going to war in the name of “peace” against the only democracy in the Middle East on behalf of a totalitarian Islamic ideology and its terrorist bands of killers.

Half a century has passed. The Berlin Wall fell. So did the Soviet Union. But John Kerry remains the same.

A few months after he slimed his way into the Senate, Kerry flew to Nicaragua to meet with the ruling Communist thugs to try and sabotage aid to the resistance against their regime in the name of “peace”. The Sandinistas treated Kerry like a pathetic patsy, humiliating him by allying openly with the USSR right after their man in Washington D.C. had successfully pleaded their case to his colleagues.

Comandante was only the first of many dictators and terrorists to humiliate John Kerry. But Kerry has never resented any of his Communist or Islamist tormentors. You can set Kerry’s hair on fire and dunk his head in the toilet to put it out… and he will still come crawling back to take your side of things.

But there is one thing that Nantucket’s greatest windsurfer will not forgive or forget. Freedom.

For the worse part of five decades, Kerry has waged a vicious war against countries that have freedom on behalf of those that don’t. Nothing gets his goat like a civilized country, his own or any other, staving off a murderous band of thugs and terrorists. And no country has endured so well in that fight as Israel.

President Obama chose the Friday afternoon of Christmas weekend, less than a month before he leaves office, to try to do lasting damage to the State of Israel. He refused to veto a UN Security Council resolution that will serve to intensify Israel’s conflict with Palestinian jihadists.

In other words, as with so much of the Obama foreign policy legacy, we are left reaping the whirlwind sown by a President whose odious doctrine has been characterized by nine words: Undermine our allies. Embolden our enemies. Diminish our country.

The fact that Mr. Obama took this step over the express objections not only of our Israeli allies, but also of his successor, ensures that this action will be repudiated as soon as President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in. It should also decimate U.S. funding for the United Nations.

Good riddance, Barack Obama.

Many Americans and Israelis are outraged at President Obama for betraying the state of Israel yesterday by refusing to veto a Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank and calling Israel’s settlements and continuing construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem a “flagrant violation of international law.”

By allowing this resolution to pass, Obama broke with a long tradition of the United States standing with Israel on council resolutions concerning the Israel–Palestinian conflict and ignored a plea by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to veto the resolution.

What is the significance of this resolution for Middle East security and U.S.–Israel relations? Absolutely nothing. The world knows this resolution was approved because a U.S. president with just a few weeks left in office chose to abandon Israel. They know this president’s positions — especially his hostility to Israel — are not shared by a majority of Americans and will be quickly reversed by President Trump.

Israelis and the American people know what a cowardly act this Security Council vote was by President Obama since it was deliberately delayed until after the presidential election to ensure Hillary Clinton and congressional Democrats would not pay a political price. The vote also took place on Friday afternoon two days before Christmas to limit negative press coverage.

President-elect Trump called on the Obama administration to veto the resolution and indicated he will ignore it when he tweeted: “Things Will Be Different After Jan. 20.” Democratic and Republican congressmen are already siding with Trump on the vote. In an unprecedented statement, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office directly condemned the Obama administration in response to the passage of the anti-Israel resolution and expressed its eagerness to work with President Trump: The Obama administration not only failed to protect Israel against this gang-up at the UN, it colluded with it behind the scenes. Israel looks forward to working with President-elect Trump and with all our friends in Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, to negate the harmful effects of this absurd resolution.

Last week the Obama administration defied both history and international law to grant Palestinian terrorists a grand victory. At a stroke, the administration purported to declare any Israeli claim to any portion of the West Bank — including the Western Wall — illegitimate, and empowered Palestinian terrorists to press for their next round of concessions. It’s a betrayal that will echo far beyond any arms deals with Israel and could conceivably endanger the Jewish state’s very existence.

To put this staggering betrayal into context, one has to understand the long, bloody history of Arab efforts to destroy Israel, efforts that have been aided at every turn by the eternal anti-Semitism of huge swaths of our much-vaunted “international community.”

For the first 25 years of its existence, Israel endured multiple brute-force attempts at its destruction, as Arab powers mobilized large land armies for direct invasions of Israeli territory. That effort failed on a grand scale: Against all odds, Israeli forces prevailed time and again, leaving Israel in control of far more land than it initially possessed on its birth as a state. Undeterred by its conventional military losses, the Arab world turned to different methods, using a combination of lawfare and terrorism to slowly erode Israel’s ability to sustain its nation and culture. It is through the former tactic — the abuse of international law toward ends not achievable on the battlefield — that the international community seeks to deligitimize Israel’s territory and demography.

In other words, anti-Semites define “true” Israel (the only one they’ll recognize) as a much smaller nation that is swollen with literally millions of Palestinian “refugees” who pose an existential threat to the world’s only Jewish state. An Israel jammed into indefensible borders with a majority-Arab population wouldn’t be Israel at all. It would be Palestine, and its Jewish residents would be entirely dependent on the good graces of their enemies to live peacefully in their own ancestral homeland.

No rational nation would agree to its own extinction, though, so a hammer is necessary — one strong enough to drive a nation to make compromises it would never otherwise make. That hammer is terrorism. Whether it’s rockets from Gaza, incursions from Lebanon, or crazed knife attacks in Jerusalem, terrorism is the force that’s supposed to make Israelis ultimately beg for mercy. Of course it’s all “condemned” by the international community. They tut-tut when Jewish children die, but all that violence has to be “understood.” Oppressed people lash out against their oppressors, you see.

One can’t understand the international community’s anti-Semitism without understanding the three great double standards that together gin up fake outrage against Israel and dupe the gullible into believing the Big Lie that Israel is the oppressor and Palestinians its chief victims.

The first double standard deals with the status of land acquired as a result of waging defensive warfare. Traditionally, when aggressors launch losing wars, they are not permitted to reclaim all the territory they lost without cost or consequence. This truth is uncontroversial and apparent from the distant and recent past. Germany does not control the same land that it did in August 1939, nor does Japan. Yet time and again, the “international community” has taken the view that nations such as Egypt and Syria could and should claim the lands they lost in their own aggressive wars with Israel, including the very lands used as launching pads for those wars. The international community maintains that view in spite of the fact that applying the same reasoning worldwide would cause instability and chaos. Israel, alone among all countries, is thus bound to bear the burden of unwinding its past wars.

Obama Administration’s Betrayal of Israel:

Adding a final shameful chapter to a foreign-policy record that already runneth over with them, Barack Obama on Friday abandoned America’s commitment to Israel’s security, and to the vindication of democracy over sharia-supremacist aggression. In an act of cowardly venom, the president had the United States abstain from — and thereby effectively enact — a United Nations Security Council resolution that condemns Israeli settlement activity. At least, that’s what the resolution ostensibly does. The reality is much more than that. The resolution undertakes to render our ally indefensible. It was a black day in modern American diplomatic history, a flurry of sinister wheeling and dealing while the nation — exhausted by the election, anticipating a weekend of Christmas and Hanukkah celebration — was looking the other way.

Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz calls it “Obama’s ill-advised, lame duck, and undemocratic effort to tie his successor’s hands.”

This is what President Obama has wrought in his ill-advised refusal to do what American presidents have done for decades: exercise their veto in preventing biased, destructive, and one-sided resolutions from being enacted against Israel by the automatic anti-Israel majority that exists in every institution of the UN.

The bad news is that no future president, including President-elect Trump, can undo this pernicious agreement, since a veto not cast can never be retroactively cast. And a resolution once enacted cannot be rescinded unless there is a majority vote against it, with no veto by any of its permanent members, which include Russia and China, who would be sure to veto any attempt to undo this resolution. Obama’s failure to veto this resolution was thus a deliberate ploy to tie the hands of his successors, the consequence of which will be to make it far more difficult for his successors to encourage the Palestinians to accept Israel’s offer to negotiate with no preconditions.

There are a few things President Trump can do to ameliorate the effects of this “bigoted resolution,” Dershowitz says, including “officially recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving its embassy there,” but the damage Obama has done is grievous and will be hard to undo.

There are 22 days left in Obama’s second term. Let’s cross our fingers that there will be no more nasty surprises.