Subject: JOEL POLLAK : WE SHOULD NOT DICTATE TO ISRAEL AT UN SEE NOTE PLEASE!
http://www.facebook.com/notes/joel-pollak/why-we-shouldnt-dictate-to-israel-at-the-un/429815594400
JOEL POLLACK IS RUNNING AS THE GOP CANDIDATE FOR CONGRESS IN DISTRICT 9 ILLINOIS AGAINST JAN SCHAKOWSKY THE PIN UP GIRL OF J STREET.
www.pollakforcongress.com/about/
Why we shouldn’t dictate to Israel at the UN
The Obama administration has made a habit of putting pressure on friends, and bowing to enemies. The days of Democrats like Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who stood up against the tyrannies of the world, are long gone. Today, the administration consoles America’s enemies and allows our allies to be isolated. It has, for example, elevated the prestige of the UN Human Rights Council, which just welcomed Libya as its newest member.
Yesterday, at the urging of Ambassador Susan Rice, the Israeli government agreed to participate in a UN investigation into the Gaza flotilla incident. In late May, a convoy of six ships had attempted to run the blockade of the Hamas-controlled territory. Passengers on one of the ships attacked Israeli troops who had boarded the other five ships without incident. Israel was well within its rights to respond as it did to the attack.
I believe that the Israeli government’s decision, made under pressure from the Obama administration, is wrong. The UN has shown it is incapable of treating Israel fairly. The recent UN “fact-finding†mission on the Gaza war, which produced the Goldstone Report, found Israel guilty in advance. Allowing the UN to judge the responses of democracies to terror is also a bad precedent, both for Israel and the United States.
Yet it is not my place, as an American politician, to tell the Israeli government what to do. Nor it it my place to tell the Polish government, or the Indian government, or any of our allies how to govern themselves. I may be critical, even publicly so, but the most important thing is for our allies to know that the United States and the American people stand with them against shared threats, and in defense of common values and interests.
J Street, the far-left organization that supports my opponent, believes otherwise. It believes the U.S. should dictate peace terms to Israel. It openly opposes Israel’s current government and claims to support Israel’s opposition, led by Tzipi Livni. J Street refused to denounce the Goldstone Report, and opposed a congressional resolution against it. It also refused to stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself in facing the Gaza flotilla.
Yet Tzipi Livni has come out strongly against Israel’s participation in the new UN probe. She has demanded that Israel’s actions should be judged by Israel alone, and that the UN probe will impact the ability of the Israeli military to respond to threats in the future. That places J Street in an awkward position: does it support Livni, even though she is against a UN investigation? Or does it support the Netanyahu government it detests?
The whole episode illustrates the folly of J Street’s approach, and the posture of the Obama administration. Our government should not dictate terms to our allies. We can recommend, and we can even criticize (appropriately). But we should not decide that we know what is best for them, any more than they know what is best for us. And at the UN, we should stand together against the cynical manipulations of our shared enemies.
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