Saturday, December 31, 2016

Civilized savages and the lessons they teach - by Forest Rain

...Sometimes true friends are found in unexpected places. Sometimes they are the ones that pull us out of the jaws of death. Or at least they try.


Forest Rain..
Inspiration from Zion..
31 December '16..







Tel Aviv, British Mandate Palestine:

Heart pounding, a 12 year old girl Jewish girl runs down the street. Her legs pumping as fast as they can go. She looks behind her. Fear gripping her stomach, she sees that the gang of Arab men is gaining on her, their knives flashing in the sunlight.

If they catch her they will kill her.

To them it is a game. Sport. She knows that what’s at stake is her life.

She hears laughter from above. Looking up, she sees British soldiers on the rooftops.

For a fleeting moment, she thinks they will help her. They could stop the men. They could save her!

To her horror, she realizes that the British soldiers are laughing at HER. They were taking wagers, betting on the chances of the Jewish girl escaping death.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 
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The harmful and violent legacy of the Obama Administration - by Khaled Abu Toameh

...Far from moving the region toward peace, the resolution has encouraged the Palestinians to move forward in two parallel paths -- one toward a diplomatic confrontation with Israel in the international arena, and the other in increased terror attacks against its people. The coming weeks and months will witness mounting violence on the part of Palestinians toward Israelis -- a harmful legacy of the Obama Administration.

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
29 December '16..

Buoyed by the latest United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements as illegal, Palestinian leaders are now threatening to step up their diplomatic warfare against Israel -- a move that is sure to sabotage any future effort to revive the moribund peace process. Other Palestinians, meanwhile, view the resolution as license to escalate "resistance" attacks on Israel. By "resistance," of course, they mean terror attacks against Israel.

The UNSC resolution sent the following message to the Palestinians: Forget about negotiating with Israel. Just pressure the international community to force Israel to comply with the resolution and surrender up all that you demand.

Meanwhile, the Palestinians are not wasting any time by waiting for the international community to act against Israel on their behalf. Rather, they are thinking of ways of taking advantage of the UNSC vote to promote their campaign to isolate and delegitimize Israel, especially in the international arena. One thing is certain: Abbas and his Palestinian Authority cronies are not planning to return to the negotiating table with Israel. In fact, they are more belligerent, confrontational and defiant than ever.

In the days following the UNSC vote, the voices emerging from Ramallah and the Gaza Strip clearly indicate that Palestinians have put themselves on a collision course with Israel. This bodes badly for any peace process.

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Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist, is based in Jerusalem.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 
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Friday, December 30, 2016

The “international community's” Israel problem - What’s in it for them? - by Vic Rosenthal

...Even though national interest is cited – Kerry even argued in his speech that American interests were served by destabilizing Israel! – the real motivation for these policies is deep, irrational, and unfortunately, very familiar.

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
29 December '16..

I am writing on Wednesday, after the passage of UNSC resolution 2334 and John Kerry’s speech laying out his parameters for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And after that, there will or will not be another Security Council resolution, in which the so-called “international community” will continue on its path to making Israel indefensible and ultimately seeing her disappear.

Today I’m going to take a longer view and ask a more fundamental question than “how are they going to try to stick it to us tomorrow?” Today I want to know “what’s in it for them in sticking it to us?”

This is interesting, because the obvious answer seems to be “nothing.” Look at this objectively: Israel is a tiny country which actually contributes a lot to civilization in science, technology, medicine and more. The Palestinians (PLO and Hamas varieties) basically have one interest, and that is destroying Israel and taking over their tiny piece of land. Their major contribution to civilization seems to be the popularization of airline hijacking and suicide bombing. Israel tried several times to give away large chunks of its country – which it is fully entitled to keep – in order to end the conflict, but the Palestinians have refused every time. Lucky for us.

Most of the nations, if asked, would say that it has to do with the human rights of the Palestinians. This is interesting too, because the Palestinians seem to think they have a right to kill anyone Jewish they come across. Israel argues persuasively that it really has to take security measures that affect the Palestinians, because otherwise they would exercise their “right” to murder us. How do we know? Experience: the withdrawal from Gaza and the various prisoner releases. Give them a chance, and they try to kill us. It happens every time.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 
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Surprise? NY Times’ Tom Friedman Projects His Own Sins Onto Netanyahu - by Ira Stoll

...To use Thomas Friedman’s own mixed metaphors, it’s as if Obama and Kerry are giving their Israeli dog Netanyahu a scrap from the table while they are busy feasting on champagne and caviar with Ayatollah Khamenei. And Thomas Friedman, Obama and Kerry are kicking the dog for its failure to be sufficiently appreciative.

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner.com..
29 December '16..

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman likens Prime Minister Netanyahu to a “dog” and a “drunk” — and then, with a remarkable lack of self-awareness, faults President-elect Trump’s choice to be ambassador to Israel for insulting other Jews.

Sure enough, in his latest column Friedman writes that “Netanyahu is a leader who is forever dog paddling in the middle of the Rubicon, never ready to cross it.”

That isn’t even good writing. If Friedman wanted to convey the idea that Netanyahu is indecisive, or stuck, he would have done better to have written that Netanyahu is a leader who is forever treading water in the middle of the Rubicon, or forever backfloating in the middle of the Rubicon. That, however, would have avoided the opportunity to describe the elected leader of the Jewish state as a dog, and thus repeat a classic antisemitic trope last seen in the infamous New Yorker article by Lena Dunham, “Dog or Jewish Boyfriend? A Quiz.” As the Anti-Defamation League helpfully pointed out back when that New Yorker screed was published, “The piece is particularly troubling because it evokes memories of the ‘No Jews or Dogs Allowed’ signs from our own early history in this country, and also because, in a much more sinister way, many in the Muslim world today hatefully refer to Jews as ‘dogs.’”

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 
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Dear John (Kerry): No “E’s” For Effort Being Handed Out Here - by Sheri Oz

...So tell me, John, has the PLO or the PA formally recognized Israel? I know Abbas has stated that he would take back said recognition of Israel if he does not get his way, but that is a very shrewd manipulation of people’s minds to make them think that he ever recognized Israel. And you fell for it, John, did you not? I guess this shows you do not have what it takes to make a mediator or arbitrator (how that made you Secretary of State material still bewilders me, but politics is a foreign country all to itself, I guess).

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
29 December '16..

I understand you will be looking for a new job soon, John. Do you know if Tricky Dicky ever did get that position as a used car salesman? In any case, that is not what I was thinking of for you.

I know you studied law and even worked for a few years as a prosecutor before going into politics. Seeing your performance in this last speech, I can only imagine that you went into politics because you were not a very good courtroom lawyer. Long-winded, repetitious, not really sure of your facts, I have the feeling judges told you more than once to move along in your opening and closing statements and asked if there was a point to all that verbiage.

I can imagine that defence attorneys probably got bored after a while of calling out “objection”. The judge would then wearily ask you, “Is this going anywhere?” “Do you have a question for the witness?” “Can you please stop testifying on behalf of the witness.” (None of this seems to have made you unfit for a career in politics.)

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 
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Thursday, December 29, 2016

Spending 45 minutes on settlements, and 45 seconds on terrorism - by Stephen Flatow

...To portray Israeli kindergarten construction as the equivalent of Palestinians blowing up buses, stabbing women and children, or lynching Israelis who accidentally drive into their neighborhood is nothing less than outrageous.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
28 December '16..

Like many others, I sat at my computer with baited breath Wednesday waiting for Secretary of State John Kerry to explain the background to the U.S. abstention on last week’s United Nations Security Council vote. And explain he did. But there were so many things wrong with what I will call Kerry’s farewell anti-Israel speech:

Spending 45 minutes on settlements, and 45 seconds on terrorism.

Claiming the Palestinians “live under Israeli military occupation” when 98 percent of them live under the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Condemning Israeli construction even within Jerusalem.

But if I had to choose the one aspect that bothered me the most, the part that made me want to shout at the computer screen, it would be the false moral equivalence.

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Stephen M. Flatow, a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, is an attorney in New Jersey. He is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 
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Unless you count the Palestinian Authority stopping terror attacks to be a "concession"

...The Palestinians have responded with suicide bombings, stabbings, shootings, rocket fire, more incitement and more overt support of terrorists. Israel has made all the concessions. (Unless you count the Palestinian Authority stopping terror attacks to be a "concession," which mean you consider Palestinians to be murderers by nature and want to reward them for acting like normal humans.) 

Elder of Ziyon..
28 December '16..

John Kerry's speech on Wednesday gave Palestinians two more gifts from the US today - rewards for their adamant refusal to compromise.

Kerry said that Israel must do more concrete moves for peace - stopping building, giving more power to the PA - in order to build confidence towards a two state solution. There were no such concrete demands on the Palestinian side, only wishy washy requests to stop incitement and terror - with no consequences if they refuse.

As has been pointed out before, Mahmoud Abbas has bragged on multiple occasions that he has not changed the Palestinian position one bit since 1988.

Since then, the Israeli side has given the Palestinians autonomy, land, and allowed them to arm themselves. It has released scores of murderers and terrorists from prison.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 
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Question. How Many Jewish Children Are Too Many for the NYT, Obama?

...If the issue that so disturbs President Obama is that the Jewish mothers and fathers of East Jerusalem are having too many children, maybe he wants to propose a solution rather than simply allow the United Nations Security Council to condemn the newborns? What’s his answer? An old-fashioned Chinese Communist-style one-child policy, with state-enforced abortions?

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner.com..
28 December '16..

In a lead, front-page news article headlined “Defying U.N., Israel Prepares to Build More Settlements,” the New York Times conveys an explanation for the United States failure to veto an anti-Israel resolution at the United Nations Security Council.

“The addition of more than 100,000 settlers during Mr. Obama’s tenure convinced him that it was time to change the approach at the United Nations, aides said,” the Times reports. The Times doesn’t identify who these “aides” were or otherwise explain why limiting Jewish population growth in the West Bank is a project worthy of presidential attention

A deeper look at some of the math in the Times article makes Obama’s action seem even more peculiar. The Times reports:

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 
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Wednesday, December 28, 2016

A Colonialist state founded on the theft of Maori land blames Israel for its own crimes - by Liel Leibovitz

...Given the brute ugliness of its colonial past, New Zealand seems like an excellent place for the diplomats in Israel’s Foreign Ministry to try out a new model that puts solidarity with other indigenous peoples on an equal footing with traditional government-to-government relations. Israel might start by sending some of the money it cut from the aid budget to Senegal—which joined New Zealand in sponsoring the anti-Israel vote at the UN—to help the impoverished Maoris build the capacity to organize themselves politically against centuries of dispossession.

Liel Leibovitz..
Tabletmag.com..
26 December '16..

Last Friday, New Zealand introduced a resolution in the UN Security Council that pronounced “settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967” to be illegal, a definition that includes the Western Wall, the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem, and other historically-recognized parts of the Jewish State. While the United States made headlines by abstaining from the 14-0 vote, less attention was paid to the resolution’s sponsor—and to the dark history that lies behind a small South Pacific nation’s passionate feelings about a property dispute in the Middle East.

New Zealanders are no strangers to settlements—or to the cavalier denial of the rights of an indigenous people in their historic homeland. Coincidentally or not, this December marks the 153rd anniversary of The New Zealand Settlements Act, which shows that the denial of indigenous rights, and the deliberate destruction of a two-state solution in favor of an illegal land grab, are the bedrock on which the modern state of New Zealand was founded. Given that history, and the current realities of New Zealand’s treatment of its indigenous Maori population, the country’s steering of a UN Security Council resolution pronouncing the Jewish connection to our historic homeland to be illegal passes well into the territory of historical denialism.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 
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The UN’s Attempted Land Grab in Israel - by Barry Shaw

...When the Security Council calls the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem — with its synagogues, yeshivot, Jewish population and businesses, the Jewish Temple Mount and the Western Wall, the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, the Hadassah Hospital and other profoundly Jewish Israeli institutions — “Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem,” this is a surrender that no Israeli government or any caring Jew is prepared to accept. The fact that the United States, New Zealand, the UK and France lent their hand to this infamous act is appalling.

Barry Shaw..
Algemeiner.com..
27 December '16..

The UN Security Council’s recent vote on Israel was not about “settlements.” It was a ruse to steal parts of Israel by calling these areas “illegally occupied Palestinian territory.”

Obama latched on to the idea, and helped lobby other countries to support the Resolution. Not too many people noticed John Kerry’s November New Zealand visit. Despite Kerry’s claim that the visit was about the Syrian conflict, I believe the true purpose was to discuss the impending Security Council meeting (New Zealand has a seat in the Security Council).

Egypt withdrew its sponsorship of the anti-Israel resolution due to Donald Trump. But it could have taken a quick phone call by Obama (or Biden) to get New Zealand to step in and join Malaysia, Senegal and Venezuela as co-sponsors of the treacherous act.

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Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies and the author of the upcoming and timely book ‘1917. From Palestine to the Land of Israel.’

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 
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Orwellian terms, administration spokesmen, and the UN resolution on Israel - by Elliott Abrams

...In 2009 Hillary Clinton said “What the prime minister has offered in specifics on restraints on a policy of settlements … is unprecedented.” What has been the Obama reaction to his restraint, to his freeze, to the PLO refusal to negotiate? The reaction has been to blame Israel and assault Netanyahu year after year, including with childish epithets. And this attitude culminated finally in the abandonment of Israel at the United Nations. Supporters of strong Israel-American relations can only be glad that the 22nd Amendment limits presidents to two terms in the White House.

Elliott Abrams..
Pressure Points..
27 December '16..
Link: http://blogs.cfr.org/abrams/2016/12/27/the-united-nations-resolution-on-israel/

Since the adoption last week the Security Council resolution on Israel, I’ve had my say in The Weekly Standard and The Washington Post condemning the Obama administration’s decision to allow the resolution to pass. The resolution rewards the PLO for refusing to negotiate and adopts its tactic of replacing serious, face-to-face negotiations with useless dramas in New York. It is a danger to Israel. And by refusing to veto, the Obama administration abandoned the usual American practice of defending Israel from what Jeane Kirkpatrick called “the jackals” at the United Nations.

Over this past weekend, administration spokesmen have tried to defend this abandonment of Israel in truly Orwellian terms, inverting the meaning of their action. This was done to help Israel, you see, and to defend it; we know better where its interests lie than does its elected government (and main opposition parties); we abandoned Israel because we are its friend.

These were main themes of the President’s aide Ben Rhodes when he spoke to reporters Friday, and among other things said the following, describing:

a resolution that expresses the consensus international view on Israeli settlement activity….this is consistent with longstanding bipartisan U.S. policy as it relates to settlements….one of our grave concerns is that the continued pace of settlement activity — which has accelerated in recent years, which has accelerated significantly since 2011….

let’s be clear here: We exhausted every effort to pursue a two-state solution through negotiations, through direct discussions, through proximity discussions, through confidence-building measures, through a lengthy and exhaustive effort undertaken by Secretary Kerry earlier in the President’s second term. We gave every effort that we could to supporting the parties coming to the table.

So within the absence of any meaningful peace process, as well as in the face of accelerated settlement activity that put at risk the viability of a two-state solution, that we took the decision that we did today to abstain on this resolution….

where is the evidence that not doing this is slowing the settlement construction?

If you enjoyed the children’s exercise where the child is asked to find all the things wrong in a picture–signs upside down, dogs with horns, etc–you will enjoy pondering Mr. Rhodes’s misleading narrative.

Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Not only legally incorrect, but morally incoherent and racist - by Richard L. Cravatts

...in fact, Professor Stone observed that those enemies of Israel who point to the Fourth Geneva Convention as evidence of Israel’s abuse of international law and wish to use it to end the settlements are not only legally incorrect, but morally incoherent and racist. Stone suggested that in order to recognize the validity of using the Fourth Convention against Israel, one “would have to say that the effect of Article . . . is to impose an obligation on the state of Israel to ensure (by force if necessary) that these areas, despite their millennial association with Jewish life, shall be forever judenrein.

Richard L. Cravatts..
Frontpagemag.com..
26 December '16..
Link: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/265264/defective-law-and-morality-un-security-council-richard-l-cravatts

The shameful and morally incoherent December 23rd resolution vote by the UN Security Council demanding that “Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem,” also includes dangerous language that proclaims that Israeli settlements, which are “dangerously imperiling the viability of the two-state solution,” have “no legal validity.”

The United States, contrary to its customary role, abstained from the vote, which passed by a vote of 14 in favor out of 15 countries, and this departure marks in a new low in the U.S.’s relations with Israel, even though the State Department under President Obama has, during the last eight years, promiscuously referred to the Israeli settlements as “unhelpful,” “obstructions to peace,” and “illegitimate.”

The problem with this defective diplomacy, as is often the case when Israel is concerned, is that operates in what commentator Melanie Phillips has called “a world turned upside down,” where the perennial victim status of the long-­suffering Palestinians trumps any sovereign rights of Israel regarding its borders, security, and even its survival in a sea of jihadist foes who yearn for its destruction. The settlement debate has now also been hijacked by the Arab world and its Western apologists who, willingly blind to history, international law, and fact, continue to assign the blame for the absence of peace on the perceived offenses of occupation and Israeli truculence. As a result of this latest UN resolution, even those Jewish Jerusalem neighborhoods which everyone has agreed would be folded into Israel upon the creation of a Palestinian state can now be deemed “illegal” and their inhabitants criminal trespassers; more grotesquely, the Western Wall and Temple Mount can now be considered “occupied” Palestinian sites.

It is, of course, completely fallacious to overlook the fact that not only all of the land that is current­-day Israel, but also Gaza and the West Bank, is part of the land granted to the Jews as part of the League of Nations Palestine Mandate, which recognized the right of the Jewish people to “close settlement” in a portion of those territories gained after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. According to Eugene V. Rostow, the late legal scholar and one of the authors of UN Security Council Resolution 242 written after the 1967 war to outline peace negotiations, “the Jewish right of settlement in Palestine west of the Jordan River, that is, in Israel, the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, was made unassailable. That right has never been terminated and cannot be terminated except by a recognized peace between Israel and its neighbors,” something which Israel’s intransigent Arab neighbors have never seemed prepared to do.

Moreover, Rostow contended, “The Jewish right of settlement in the West Bank is conferred by the same provisions of the Mandate under which Jews settled in Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem before the State of Israel was created,” and “the Jewish right of settlement in the area is equivalent in every way to the right of the existing Palestinian population to live there.” The Six Day War of 1967, in which Israel recaptured Gaza and the West Bank, including Jerusalem, resulted in Israel being cast in another perfidious role—in addition to colonial usurper of Arab land, the Jewish state became a brutal “occupier” of Arab Palestine, lands to which the Jews presumably had no right and now occupied, in the opinion of many in the international community, illegally.

When did the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem become Palestinian land? The answer is: never. In fact, when Israel acquired the West Bank and Gaza and other territory in the defensive war 1967 after being attacked by Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, the Jewish state gained legally-recognized title to those areas. In Israel’s 1948 war of independence, Egypt, it will be recalled, illegally annexed Gaza at the same time Jordan illegally annexed the West Bank—actions that were not recognized by most of the international community as legitimate in establishing their respective sovereignties.

Plus the not so thinly veiled endorsement claiming Jerusalem’s holy places are exclusively Muslim

...This betrayal won’t cause Israel to surrender its rights or its security and it may well encourage President-elect Trump to take actions to retaliate against the UN and the Palestinians in order to restore some balance. But whatever else happens, it cannot be denied is that on Jerusalem and on peace, Barack Obama has done more to damage the U.S.-Israel relationship that any president in the last 60 years.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
26 December '16..
Link: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/why-this-resolution-was-different-obama/

In the wake of President Obama’s decision to abandon Israel at the United Nations Security Council last week, some administration apologists have sought to spin the vote on Resolution 2334—which “condemned” as illegal the Jewish presence in any part of the West Bank or parts of Jerusalem—as being in keeping with decades of American foreign policy positions. It is also defended as being balanced in its criticisms of Israel and the Palestinians and thus a necessary prod to peace. The White House and left-wing Jewish groups are also seeking to shift the blame for the decision from the president to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.

All of these arguments are patently false.

They also deliberately miss the point of Obama’s decision to not merely abstain on a measure that was blatantly biased against Israel but to actually help draft the document and to push hard for its passage, even after one of its initial sponsors sought to pull it back. The resolution was the culmination of an eight-year effort to distance the United States from Israel. That process began in January 2009, when the new president openly stated that one of his top foreign policy priorities was to create more “daylight” between the two allies. It continued through years of ginned up fights with Netanyahu over settlements, borders, Jerusalem, and the president’s push for a rapprochement with Iran that culminated in the nuclear deal in 2015. This UN resolution, one that could escalate diplomatic and economic attacks on Israel at a time of rising anti-Semitism around the globe, represents the capstone on Obama’s effort to isolate Israel.

There is a fundamental difference between this and other anti-Israel resolution that previous administrations allowed to be passed. The United States has always opposed the settlements and never recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. But while other resolutions unfairly criticized the Jewish state, none of them specifically labeled the Jewish presence in territory Israel took control of in the 1967 Six Day War as illegal. This is significant because it means that hundreds of thousands of Jews living in decades-old Jewish neighborhoods in the city of Jerusalem or in settlement blocs that even Obama has conceded would remain inside Israel in the event of a peace treaty are now international outlaws. It will also mean that Jews living in the disputed territories or Israeli officials may be hauled into the International Criminal Court. It will put air in the sails of an anti-Semitic BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) movement that had seemed to be losing ground in recent years. Now, for the first time, it can claim to have the backing of the UN.

Zogby: Here’s Why Obama Treats You Like This, Israel! - by Sheri Oz

...In short, the Middle East is regarded as a nursery that must be handled as if they are a bunch of kids by the more mature and knowing adults of the West, with Obama as the father and the others playing the part of the mother....This situation apparently satisfies the Arab (and Iranian) children, but I do hope they wake up soon to realize that they are not anyone’s kids but fully grown adults capable of deciding what is truly best for them. Perhaps they will see that their best interests are probably not far different from those of their sibling, Israel.


Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
26 December '16..

In a previous post I showed that James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, predicted two months ago that UNSC Resolution 2334 would happen.

In that same article, after a litany of complaints against Netanyahu’s arrogant misbehaviour toward Obama, Zogby finally makes it clear how Israel is truly regarded by Obama. He does this while talking about the reaction he expects from Israel following the predicted UNSC resolution:

As long as the U.S. allows this pattern to continue, the spoiled child will take advantage of the situation — taunting, acting out, and getting his way. [emphasis mine]

And:

Israel will throw a tantrum (as spoiled children are wont to do).

So, if Israel is the spoiled child, then the adults need to keep us in line.

Is Israel a spoiled child because of Netanyahu? Those who do not like Bibi would probably answer in the affirmative. I do not agree. I think if even the most appeasing Israeli prime minister were to balk at obeying an Obama diktat, he or she would end up being treated like a child.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 
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Monday, December 26, 2016

Q&A about UN Security Council resolution 2334 - by Vic Rosenthal

...perhaps most important in the short term – at a time that worldwide hatred and threats against the Jewish people and the “Jew among nations” are greater than ever before, it will encourage Israel’s enemies, who will take it as a sign that the international community, including the US, is behind them.

A cartoon posted by Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah
party, which bloodily thanks the 14 nations
that voted for UNSC resolution 2334. 

Courtesy Palestinian Media Watch.
Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
26 December '16..

On Friday, December 23, 2016, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2334 with a vote of 14 in favor and one abstention – the US.

What does the resolution say? A lot of things (full text is here), but some of the important ones are

- The statement that Israel’s establishment of settlements across the Green Line (including eastern Jerusalem) “has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace,” and the demand that Israel “cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.”
- The condemnation of attempts to change the “demographic composition, character and status of the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967.”
- The statement that the UN will recognize no changes in the pre-1967 lines except those agreed upon by both sides.
- The call for “all States … to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.”
- The condemnation of violence, terrorism, incitement, etc. (The “fig leaf” that allowed the US to abstain on what was originally a 100% anti-Israel resolution).
- The request that the UN Secretary-General report on the progress of implementing the resolution every three months.

Is the resolution binding? No. It is a Chapter VI resolution, which is defined as a “recommendation.” So the UN can’t impose sanctions on Israel for violating its provisions. Only a Chapter VII resolution would be binding and would allow the imposition of economic sanctions or even the use of military force.

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The United Nations vs. History: This is Not 'Palestinian Territory' - by Stephen M. Flatow

...It may be unfashionable to talk about the Jewish claim to the Land of Israel when the whole world is so determined to give that land a different name and award it someone else. But the truth is the truth, whether the rest of the world likes it or not.

Stephen M. Flatow..
Jewishlinknj.com..
25 December '16..
Link: http://jewishlinknj.com/op-eds/16348-the-un-vs-history-this-is-not-palestinian-territory..

The United Nations Security Council resolution condemning “Israel’s establishment of settlements in Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem” was one-sided and unfair. That’s obvious.

The resolution certainly won’t encourage the Palestinians to negotiate, since they see they can get what they want without negotiating. No doubt about that.

And the countries that voted for it are brazen hypocrites, since every one of them is occupying territory to which they have much less claim than Israel has to Judea-Samaria and Jerusalem.

But I think the most important point in this debate is being overlooked: The UN is condemning Israeli settlements in “Palestinian territory”—but the territory in question is not “Palestinian.”

It may be unfashionable to talk about the Jewish claim to the Land of Israel when the whole world is so determined to give that land a different name and award it someone else. But the truth is the truth, whether the rest of the world likes it or not.

And For That Disgraceful Anti-Israel UN Security Council Vote the Winner Is?

...come to think of it, with the cash-pressed New York Times looking to vacate and sublet eight floors of its headquarters as a way of cutting costs and increasing revenues, perhaps there’s a win-win to be had. Let Hamas move out of Gaza, out of the West Bank, and into the Times building in Manhattan. Cut out the middlemen, and have the terrorists take over the editorial- and column-writing duties directly. After all, they’re advocating essentially the same thing, an approach that the Israeli government aptly describes as disgraceful.

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner.com..
25 December '16..

In the aftermath of Friday’s disastrous and disgraceful UN Security Council vote condemning Israel, a competition has emerged over who deserves the blame.

Prime Minister Netanyahu blamed the Obama administration. He said it “not only failed to protect Israel against this gang-up at the UN; it colluded with it behind the scenes.”

The American permanent representative at the United Nations, Samatha Power, who works for President Obama, blamed Prime Minister Netanyahu, ...

...I’ve got a different view of it. In my view, the guilty party here isn’t so much either President Obama or Prime Minister Netanyahu, but the New York Times. The UN vote — “disgraceful,” as Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon put it — was in fact the culmination of a successful, year-long editorial campaign by that newspaper. It was a campaign aimed precisely at taking Israel’s security decisions out of the hands of Israel’s democratically elected leaders and placing those decisions, instead, in the custody of a council whose members include Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Communist China and Venezuela.

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Obama’s Anti-Israel Tantrum: A defining act of Obama’s Presidency

Tweets won’t change this now-inbred hostility to America’s oldest democratic ally in the Middle East. Mr. Obama’s pique, however, has made it crystal clear to the new Administration where the lines in the sand are drawn.


Wall Street Journal..
23 December '16..
Link: http://www.wsj.com/articles/obamas-anti-israel-tantrum-1482533330..

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.

Sunday, December 25, 2016

Jews Living in Judea and Samaria: A realization of both justice and natural rights - by Nadav Shragai

...What Shimon the Hasmonean understood more than 2,000 years ago, and what our sage Rashi understood in his interpretation of the first verse in Genesis some 1,000 years ago, followed by Israel's first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and later Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and certainly Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is that we exist here by way of force and of diplomacy, but, above all, we exist here by right.


Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
25 December '16..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=17979

We can continue the argument over the settlements with the world of U.S. President Barack Obama and his supporters in legal and diplomatic language, rightfully protesting his hypocrisy and hoping for better under incoming President Donald Trump.

But all this cannot be done without screaming in the ears of the world -- especially during Hanukkah -- a single basic truth, as Shimon the Hasmonean put it some 2,200 years ago: "We have not taken foreign territory or any alien property, but have occupied our ancestral heritage, for some time unjustly wrested from us by our enemies; now that we have a favorable opportunity, we are merely recovering our ancestral heritage" (Maccabees 1, 15:33-34).

Our real and imagined friends in the United States and all over the world must finally hear that the historical, religious, legal and emotional links the nation of Israel has to Hebron, Beit-el, Shiloh and of course, Jerusalem, is no less than that of the Palestinians. They must hear that we are not occupiers in our own land, and that we are connected to it with bonds of love, the Bible, heritage and nature; that the settlements in Judea and Samaria, as elsewhere in the Land of Israel, are the realization of justice and natural rights.

UN resolutions and Hanukah: we will always shine our light to the world - by Rain Forest

...The nations of the world have, yet again, a choice. This time, what will you do? Your ancestors sat silently by… will you do the same? Do you want to be part of the darkness tries desperately to smother the light? Or would you rather add your own light to ours? All it takes is one candle to chase away the darkness.

Rain Forest..
Inspiration from Zion..
24 December '16..

Throughout our history there have been times when it’s been illegal to be Jewish, when our land has been occupied by foreign powers who tried to force us to bow to their gods and make us forget about ours.

We’ve been scattered, enslaved, accused of every evil in the world, tortured and slaughtered.

There have been times when it’s been illegal for Jews to work in the field of their choice. When Jews were not allowed to create anything. When Jews could not own land (were they afraid of the power in the connection between Jews and their land?).

Jews had to be marked as Jews when they were in public –
the Nazi yellow star wasn’t the first time that happened, it was the most recent.

Outcast, downtrodden, almost exterminated.

Every nation that has risen up against the Jewish people has ultimately failed.
The greatest empires the world has ever seen have dwindled and fallen.

But the Jewish people have remained.

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I Am Glad The US Abstained on UNSC Resolution 2334 And Here Is Why - by Sheri Oz

...So thank-you President Obama. I am not upset with your instructions to the American UN ambassador to abstain. I am not upset by the fact that you were probably instrumental in the preparation of the resolution (according to Alan Dershowitz). Quite the contrary. I am glad that you allowed the UN to shine once more in its aura of duplicity and stupidity and turn up the light, not on foes but on friends who are foes.

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
24 December '16..

The US has served as a fig leaf for the UN Security Council (UNSC) for far too long. When the US would veto resolutions, the names of all those countries who voted in favour of the resolution would fade into the dungeons of unnecessary details that need not be filed or remembered.

Not so now!

We will remember that Egypt obliged US President-Elect Donald Trump and Israel (most likely the former rather than the latter) by backing down from raising the resolution proposal to the UNSC floor. Kudos to Egypt!

We will remember that Senegal, Malaysia, New Zealand and Venezuela placed the resolution back on the agenda the very next day, the last working day before Christmas and probably the last working day of 2016.

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Saturday, December 24, 2016

The perfidy of Barack Obama will not be the last word - Anne Bayefsky

...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.


Anne Bayefsky..
Human Rights Voices..
info@humanrightsvoices.org..
24 December 16..

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 Maccabees cherished Judea, Samaria and Gaza, the entire Land of Israel - by Michael Freund

...Both in ancient and modern times, the miracles of Hanukka have been directly associated with Judea, Samaria and Gaza, those portions of the Land of Israel that the world is so keen to take away from us. Now, in particular, when international pressure is mounting on the Jewish state to forgo these areas, it is all the more important that we appreciate the deep connection between the Festival of Lights and Israel's heartland.



Michael Freund..
Pundicity/JPost..
First Posted 11 December '15..
Link: http://www.michaelfreund.org/18256/judea-samaria-gaza-hanukka

As Jews around the world gather this week to celebrate Hanukka, it is worth taking a moment to consider an aspect of the holiday that is often overlooked.

Both in ancient and modern times, the miracles of Hanukka have been directly associated with Judea, Samaria and Gaza, those portions of the Land of Israel that the world is so keen to take away from us.

Now, in particular, when international pressure is mounting on the Jewish state to forgo these areas, it is all the more important that we appreciate the deep connection between the Festival of Lights and Israel's heartland.

Consider the following: many critical chapters in the Maccabean wars, when God "delivered the mighty into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few," took place in the territories that the world now accuses us of "occupying" and "colonizing."

In 166 BCE, at Beit Horon, which is west of what is now Ramallah, Judah the Maccabee defeated the Seleucid governor Seron and routed his forces in a crushing defeat. This victory followed shortly after Judah and his men had vanquished Apollonius, the Seleucid commander, at Ma'aleh Levona near Shechem (Nablus) in Samaria.

In Beit Zecharia, in what is now Gush Etzion, Judah's brother Elazar was killed when confronting elephants deployed by Antiochus against the Jewish rebels.

And it was in the hills around Beit El that many of the Hasmoneans found refuge from the Seleucid tyrant's forces of oppression.

Indeed, in Samaria one can visit the remains of fortresses that were erected by the Hasmonean dynasty, such as the one on the Horn of Sartaba, a mountain overlooking the Jordan Valley, where the Alexandrion fortress was built by King Alexander Yanai.

The list goes on, and it underlines the incontrovertible fact that Mattathias and the Maccabees fought to expel foreign invaders from Judea and Samaria and reclaim this central part of our ancestral patrimony.

All this took place some 800 years before Islam was founded, and more than two millennia prior to the establishment of the United Nations, giving the lie to claims that Israel has no right to these areas.

Friday, December 23, 2016

Europe's Compassionate Hatred of Israel - by Bat Ye'or

...The people of Europe will regain their freedom and identity by extricating themselves from this Euro-Arab alliance that joins them in a genocidal scheme against Israel and the West, in which they themselves are both protagonists and victims. Then and only then will they be able to help those Muslims who are bravely struggling to release their brethren from the hatred disfiguring the human face -- jihadi hatred -- and persuade them to accept human diversity. We have neglected these Muslims. They have been fighting alone for both them and us. It is imperative to help them.

Bat Ye'or..
Gatestone Institute..
22 December '16..

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...

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The expectation was that the U.S. would finally abandon Israel at the UN - by Jonathan Tobin

...Trump may not be able to undo a UNSC resolution unilaterally once he takes office. But it will give him added incentive to make gestures that show the world that the United States still has Israel’s back, such as a move of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. Moreover, as Eugene Kontorovich writes in the Washington Post, he could also order the State Department to reverse its stand on the legality of settlements—a position that would outrage the foreign-policy establishment and put the U.S. at odds with its allies but would also be rooted in justice and history.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
22 December '16..
Link: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/can-trump-stop-obama-at-united-nations/

This was supposed to be a day that ended with some high drama at the United Nations Security Council. The expectation was that the U.S. would finally abandon Israel at the UN, during President Obama’s last days in office, by failing to veto a measure that would label the presence of all Jews in the West Bank and in parts of Jerusalem lawbreakers. With the handover of power in Washington only 29 days away, we have a few more weeks to find out if that’s what Obama will do, but the answer won’t come today. Reportedly, last minute pressure from Israel on the resolution’s Egyptian sponsors resulted in Cairo postponing the vote, possibly “indefinitely.”

Was this outcome merely the product of the increasingly close relations between Israel and an Egyptian government that sees the Jewish state as an essential ally in its fight against ISIS terrorists in the Sinai as well as the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas? Perhaps. If so, then a biased resolution that places all of the blame for the lack of peace on Israel and only pays lip service to Palestinian terror and incitement to violence (without naming the Palestinian Authority and Hamas as the guilty parties) will soon be revived by another sponsor. But it’s also possible that the real diplomatic struggle here isn’t so much between Israel and Egypt or even the Palestinians as it is between Obama and his successor.

The assumption has been that once the presidential election was over, there would be nothing to restrain Obama from launching a parting shot at his longtime antagonist, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. That calculation turned out to be incorrect. While Obama need no longer fear a pro-Israel backlash from the voters or Congress, he does have to reckon with the intentions of his successor. In the last month, there was speculation that Obama would forgo a betrayal of the Jewish state at the UN because he feared doing so would only push Trump further into the arms of the pro-Israel community. In the wake of Trump’s naming as the next ambassador to Israel his friend David Friedman—an ardent backer of Israel as well as a supporter of the settlement movement and of moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv—the president may be further tempted to undermine Netanyahu and impede Trump’s plans.

That’s why Trump’s challenge to Obama this morning, in which he blasted the proposed resolution as “deeply unfair” to Israel and demanded that it be vetoed, may have had as much impact on today’s postponement and the chances of reviving the effort as any message Netanyahu may have sent to the Egyptians.