An Insult To Israel

Investors Business Daily
IBD Editorial
www.investors.com
Posted 02/22/2011

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/563896/201102221845/An-Insult-To-Israel.htm

Ally Betrayed: The Obama administration wanted the best of both worlds in vetoing a U.N. condemnation of Israel while publicly agreeing with it. Instead, an increasingly impotent United States added insult to injury.

Last Friday the U.S. performed a contortionist's routine at the United Nations Security Council. We officially exercised our veto against Lebanon's resolution criminalizing Jewish settlements in Palestinian territories.

Yet afterward, both our ambassador to the U.N. and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed public support for the substance of the resolutions they vetoed.

In explaining the U.S. veto, Ambassador Susan Rice apologized to the world on behalf of America, confessing that "we agree with our fellow Council members — and indeed, with the wider world — about the folly and illegitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity," and charging that it has "corroded hopes for peace and stability. . .. We therefore regrettably have opposed this draft resolution."

Appearing on ABC's "This Week," Secretary Clinton, like Rice, used the term "illegitimate" — a half-notch down from "illegal" (both words coming from the Latin lex, meaning "law." But no one could mistake that the U.S. was condemning our staunch ally Israel in word, while providing the semblance of a defense in deed.

The result is a schizophrenic foreign policy in which the president can tell the world we've become anti-Israel, while maintaining the pretense at home that we haven't.

The whole argument against Israeli settlements is based on a twisting of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, designed to prevent a repeat of the Nazi practice of sending people to concentration camps.

But Israeli settlements entail no forcible transport; nor is there displacement of Arabs, whose growing population continues living in the territories.

The real threat to Palestinians' quality of life in these areas is not Jewish settlements but the terrorists they choose to elect to the Palestinian Authority.

The state of Israel staunchly stood with the U.S. at the U.N. against the Soviet Union for decades throughout the Cold War. Israel is the only representative government of long-term stability in the Middle East. And Israel has been our ally in the global war on terror.

As Middle East Islamic nations, one after the other, are threatened or overthrown, our influence as the world's lone superpower seems to be diminishing.

How does a two-faced policy toward Israel help?

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