President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference, Friday, Dec. 16, 2016, in the briefing room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
The vicious condemnation of Israel at the UN Security
Council on December 23, 2016 is a watershed moment in U.S.-UN relations –
albeit not as President Obama hoped. Following the vote of fourteen in favor
and one American abstention, Palestinian representative Riyadh Mansour and
American Ambassador Samantha Power exchanged a telling handshake. Evidently,
President Obama believes that he has put one over on Israel, Prime Minister
Netanyahu and the incoming Trump administration. But here’s another
possibility: treachery at the UN will not be cost free.
Let’s be absolutely clear about what has just happened.
The Palestinians have completed the hijacking of every major UN institution.
The 2016 General Assembly has adopted nineteen resolutions condemning Israel
and nine critical of all other UN states combined. The 2016 Commission on the
Status of Women adopted one resolution condemning Israel and zero on any other
state. The 2016 UN Human Rights Council celebrated ten years of adopting more
resolutions and decisions condemning Israel than any other place on earth. And
now – to the applause of the assembled – the Palestinians can add the UN
Security Council to their list.
Resolution sponsors Malaysia and New Zealand explained
UN-think to the Council this way: Israeli settlements are “the single biggest
threat to peace” and the “primary threat to the viability of the two-state
solution.” Not seven decades of unremitting Arab terror and violent rejection
of Jewish self-determination in the historic homeland of the Jewish people.
This is not just any lie. This is the big lie of modern
antisemitism. This is the lie that drove a Palestinian teenager in June of this
year to creep into the home of 13-year old Hallel Ariel and butcher her with a
knife in the back as she slept in her bed.
The bed was located in the “settlement” of Kiryat Arba –
on Arab-claimed territory whose ownership – by agreement – is subject to final
status negotiations instead of back-stabbing UN resolutions. So to skip the
UN-eze, today’s hate fest was diplomatic terrorism.
Obama’s failure to veto the resolution is at odds with
long-standing American foreign policy that has insisted on peace through
negotiations, and not UN-fiat, as the only way to ensure genuine and
long-lasting recognition and cooperation. His excuse for throwing bipartisan
wisdom overboard was delivered by Ambassador Power, in one of the most
disingenuous statements in the history of American diplomacy.
Power began by likening Obama’s deed to Ronald Reagan’s
treatment of Israel. She repeatedly claimed that the move was nothing new and
“in line” with the past, though “historic” is how speaker-after-speaker and the
President of the Council himself described it. She noted “Israel has been treated
differently than other nations at the United Nations” and then doubled-down on
more of the same. She complained that Council “members suddenly summon the will
to act” when it comes to Israel, after the White House had actively pushed the
frantic adoption of the resolution with less than 48 hours’ notice.
At its core, this UN move is a head-on assault on
American democracy. President Obama knew full well he did not have
Congressional support for the Iran deal, so he went straight to the Security
Council first. Likewise, he knew that there would have been overwhelming
Congressional opposition to this resolution, so he carefully planned his
stealth attack.
He waited until Congress was not in session. Members of
his administration made periodic suggestions that nothing had been decided.
There were occasional head fakes that he was “leaning” against it. He produced
smiling photo-ops from a Hawaiian golf course with no obvious major foreign
policy moves minutes away. Holiday time-outs were in full-swing across the
country. And then he pounced, giving Israel virtually no notice of his intent
not to veto.
Profound betrayal of a true democratic friend of the
United States is the only possible description.
Israel’s Ambassador Danny Danon held up a Bible in that
sanctuary of idolatry and spoke of the holiday of Chanukah, about to commence
this calendar year on Christmas Eve. He reminded his listeners that over two thousand
years ago another King had banished the Jewish people from the Temple in
Jerusalem, and tried to sever Jews from their religion and their heritage.
And he continued: “But we prevailed. The Jewish people
fought back. We regained our independence and relit the Menorah candles…We
overcame those decrees during the time of the Maccabees and we will overcome
this evil decree today.”
The Security Council and President Obama leave a trail of
devastation across the planet, with evil empowered and good forsaken. But their
record does not have to be our future. Today’s vote reminds us of what it takes
for evil to triumph.
Doing nothing is not an option for our new President and
our incoming Congress. The time has come to undertake an urgent and full review
of America’s relationship to the United Nations, and to suspend financial
support until that review can identify how best to use American dollars in the
interests of peace, security and human dignity. The perfidy of Barack Obama
will not be the last word.
Anne
Bayefsky is director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust.
Follow her on Twitter @AnneBayefsky.
