its homeland count for nothing.
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.
To his great credit, Donald Trump was not. The president-elect asserted
himself on Israel’s behalf, backing up his campaign promise that
“America First” meant restoration of America’s reputation as a
dependable friend and an enemy not to be trifled with. Under the
pressure he generated, Egypt backed down, withdrawing its sponsorship of
the resolution.
But such is the disdain in which Israel is openly held after eight Obama
years of empowering Islamists that four other countries — Malaysia,
Venezuela, Senegal, and, of all places, New Zealand — revived the
resolution, knowing they had the State Department’s backing. With the
U.S. abstention, it was easily approved.
It is a disgraceful legacy of Barack Obama that his obsession over
settlements and antipathy toward Israeli prime minister Benjamin
Netanyahu — traits he shares with his old radical comrade, Rashid
Khalidi — have made the already dim prospects for peace far more remote.
At the root of the settlements controversy is the fiction that the
territory at issue is “occupied Palestinian” land. In point of stubborn
fact, no matter how tirelessly the vaunted “international community”
evokes the scurrilous image of occupation, the territory is righteously
disputed.
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