RUTHFULLY YOURS

For the past four decades, Samir Qumsieh, who hails from a large and well-respected Christian family in the town of Bet Sahour, near Bethlehem, has fought for the rights of the region’s miniscule Palestinian Christian minority. He has even dared to speak out against the subjugation of Christians living under the rule of Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

He regularly receives death threats, and he has been the target of a petrol bomb attack.

“The solution to extremism starts with the kindergarten, with elementary school. It begins with the churches, with the mosques and the school curricula. Curricula are very important – Jewish, Christian and Muslim ones. They should concentrate on accepting the ‘other.’ If this idea is adopted, the future generation will be liberal and open-minded.” — Samir Qumsieh.

“Every day we hear and see some radical Muslim clerics speaking strongly against Christians. Just recently, one of the sheiks was saying that Christian Copts should be slaughtered like sheep. Where is the Egyptian security? If I were in charge of Egyptian security, I would have this sheikh arrested immediately, and have him rot in a dark underground cell.” — Samir Qumsieh.

“To understand the severity of the situation is, let us recall that in the 1950s about 86% of the population of the Bethlehem area was Christian. Today, we are only 12%. In Israel, by contrast, we have 133,000 Christians and the figure is stable. Of course, I am worried about the future of Christians here.” — Samir Qumsieh.

“I fear the day will come when our churches will become museums. is my nightmare.” — Samir Qumsieh.

Without question, Samir Qumsieh is one of the most courageous Christian leaders in the Middle East. Qumsieh is one of the few willing to risk his life to speak out against Muslim persecution of Christians in the Palestinian territories and the Middle East, generally.

The decision by the United States to abstain from a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israel over its settlements on the West Bank is one of the most significant, defining moments of the Obama Presidency.

It defines this President’s extraordinary ability to transform matters of public policy into personal pique at adversaries. And it defines the reality of the international left’s implacable opposition to the Israeli state.

Earlier in the week, Egypt withdrew the Security Council resolution under pressure from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. President-elect Donald Trump also intervened, speaking with Egypt’s government and, via Twitter, urging Mr. Obama to block the resolution, as have past U.S. Administrations and Mr. Obama himself in 2011.

As was widely reported Friday after the U.N. vote, the White House decided to abstain—thereby allowing the pro-Palestinian resolution to pass—in retaliation against the intervention by Messrs. Netanyahu and Trump.

Mr. Obama’s animus toward Prime Minister Netanyahu is well known. Apparently Mr. Obama took it as an affront that the President-elect would express an opinion about this week’s U.N. resolution.

It is important, though, to see this U.S. abstention as more significant than merely Mr. Obama’s petulance. What it reveals clearly is the Obama Administration’s animus against the state of Israel itself. No longer needing Jewish votes, Mr. Obama was free, finally, to punish the Jewish state in a way no previous President has done.

No effort to rescind the resolution, which calls the settlements a violation of “international law,” will succeed because of Russia’s and China’s vetoes.

Instead, the resolution will live on as Barack Obama’s cat’s paw, offering support in every European capital, international institution and U.S. university campus to bully Israel with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

UNITED NATIONS—The Obama administration broke from a longstanding tradition of U.S. defense of Israel at the U.N. and allowed the passage of a resolution harshly criticizing the country’s expansion of Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories.

It was the first time in 36 years the Security Council was able to adopt a resolution addressing the issue of Israeli settlement construction, an outcome made possible by the abstention of the U.S., which had veto power.

Throughout his tenure, President Barack Obama had warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against expanding Israeli settlements in disputed lands, saying such construction poses an obstacle to peace in the Middle East. And throughout that time, he was rebuffed.

The measure on Friday was approved with 14 members voting in favor and the U.S. abstaining. That abstention, years in the making, marked what could be Mr. Obama’s final jab at an Israeli leader with whom he repeatedly clashed.

The vote followed days of extraordinary international political drama as Israel directly lobbied President-elect Donald Trump to intervene against the adoption of the resolution.

Mr. Trump and his transition team on Thursday held talks with Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi and Israeli officials. Egyptian officials originally drafted the resolution, but after the conversation between Messrs. Trump and Sisi, Egypt pulled the resolution from consideration a few hours before it was scheduled for a vote.

The move infuriated U.S. and European diplomats who saw the decision as the result of interference by Mr. Trump.

The Jerusalem Declaration of UNESCO seeks to Islamize, with the help of many governments in Europe and other Christian countries, the ancient history of the people of Israel.

But what does this declaration mean for Europe and Christianity? Wasn’t Christianity born out of Israel? Wasn’t Jesus a Judean Jew, as were the apostles and evangelists? Or was it Islam that Jesus was preaching, in Arabic and in the mosques?

Where are the great Catholic or Protestant voices to protest against this Islamization of Christianity? This passivity, this indifference makes you think that Europe will soon look more like Lebanon.

European countries recognize terrorism everywhere except in Israel, where they themselves are allies of these terrorists whom they call “freedom fighters” or “militants”, against “occupation”.

This alliance has ruined Europe — because the enemies of Israel are also enemies of Christianity and of Europe. How can you ally yourself with those who want to destroy you, without in fact dying yourself?

The same obsessive hatred Hitler had for Israel, which led to the ruin of Europe, has persisted today in the European Union against the Jewish State. The great irony is that in trying to destroy Israel, Europe has destroyed itself.

Today we are witnessing the coming of the worldwide caliphate. This expression means that the Muslim view of history is currently prevailing in international institutions. We see it with the Jerusalem Declaration of UNESCO, this palace of revisionism. The Jerusalem Declaration seeks to Islamize, with the help of many governments in Europe and other Christian countries, the ancient history of the people of Israel.

The Venice Declaration of 1980, issued by the European Community, which tried to force Israel to survive in an indefensible territory, already prescribed its disappearance and replacement with a people that had never even manifested itself before 1969 — and all with the assistance of the Soviet Union and especially France. The Islamization of Jerusalem and the delegitimization of the State of Israel were already set out in the Venice Declaration, which to this date the European Union has continued to view as valid.

The Venice Declaration of 1980 was a gift from the European Community to the Arab League, aimed at reestablishing good economic relations with Arab countries, which had been angered by the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in 1979, a peace Europe had not been able to prevent. Jewish holy sites and the survival of the Jewish State were sacrificed by the European Community in exchange for petrodollars.

Since that time, the European Union has expressed remorse for the Holocaust and love and compassion for Israel, but has continued to support, fund and encourage a population whose mission is the destruction of Israel, as proclaimed in its doctrine, and with which Europe is quite familiar. European countries zealously spend billions to promote a worldwide Palestinian campaign of hatred against the State of Israel. They recognize terrorism everywhere except in Israel, where they themselves are allies of these terrorists, whom they call “freedom fighters” or “militants”, against “occupation”. The so-called “Jewish occupation” of Judea and Samaria refers to land that was conquered by war and occupied by Jordan from 1949 to 1967, and from where Palestinian Jews were killed, or dispossessed and expelled.

Israeli government officials requested that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump intervene in deliberations at the United Nations focused on passing a new resolution on the Arab-Israel conflict, thrusting him into the center of one of the world’s most intractable conflicts even before taking office, according to Israeli officials briefed on the discussions.

Top Israeli officials had come to believe that the Obama administration wasn’t going to block a U.N. resolution that seeks to define Israeli construction in disputed territories as “illegal” when the measure came up for a scheduled vote by the Security Council on Thursday, according to the officials.

Instead, they turned to the incoming president, who has staked out positions more favorable to conservative Israelis and at odds with Palestinians.

Mr. Trump responded Thursday morning by issuing a Twitter message calling for U.S. opposition to the U.N. resolution. He also held a phone conversation with Egypt’s President Abel Fatah al-Sisi, whose government had drafted the U.N. resolution. Cairo proceeded on Thursday to call for a delay on the vote.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump’s transition team said Mr. Sisi initiated the call. Transition officials didn’t respond to questions about Israeli government contacts.

Obama administration officials declined to comment on how it would have voted on the U.N. resolution. State Department spokesman John Kirby confirmed that Secretary of State John Kerry talked with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday morning.

Palestinians and their allies favor a resolution such as the one that was under consideration, and may yet push for another vote on the measure. But the unusual developments Thursday, pitting an incoming administration directly against the sitting president, accentuates the uneasiness in the U.S. political transition, particularly on such a key foreign-policy issue.

In Mr. Obama’s final year in office, the White House has considered ways to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, and in recent months has considered supporting a U.N. resolution, according to White House officials.

Mr. Trump is expected to significantly shift U.S. policy on Israel, condoning the construction of settlements in disputed areas and proposing the move of the American embassy to Jerusalem.

Egyptian officials said that the phone call between Messrs. Sisi and Trump was the start of a new, U.S.-led approach in the Middle East.

“They have agreed to lay the groundwork for the new administration to drive the establishment of a true peace between the Arabs and the Israelis,” an Egyptian official said. “Moreover, President-elect Trump strongly supports the Egyptian leaders efforts to seek a satisfactory resolution to the issues across the Middle East.”

In his Twitter message about the U.N. resolution, Mr. Trump held to one longstanding tenet of U.S. policy—that any agreement must be decided by Israelis and Palestinians. CONTINUE AT SITE