Obama’s Choice: Mommy Or Daddy? Dream Or Reality? by Sheri Oz

...“I defended Israel continuously and in unimaginable ways,” he claimed. Yes, I am quite sure that you did. Every night in your dreams. I can see you now, in your heart-and-teddy-print jammies, head thrashing this way and that on your pillow, blanket getting all twisted up as you act out the scene in which Israel is attacked on all sides and YOU — Barack Obama, POTUS, strongest man in the Universe — fly in to rescue Israel, ready to carry her off in your arms to deliver her safely and soundly on a faraway planet, the location of which only you know.

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
18 January '17..

Obama had two terms to prove his mettle.

I do not think he meant to do this, but somehow he managed to turn his dealings with the Middle East into what seems like a personal vendetta against Netanyahu. Yes, I know he says he has Israel’s best interests at heart. But that is not unlike the argument put forth by the father brought before the judge for having taken a belt buckle to his 10-year-old’s bare bottom.

Jerusalem Online uploaded a section of President Obama’s last interview, quoting him thus:

In his last interview as US President, Barack Obama explains why he did not veto the UN Security Council resolution against Israeli settlement building over the green line: “I did not think that this would harm the relationship with Israel. Perhaps Netanyahu will be angry but this is nothing new. Throughout my term as president, he was angry.”

If you think about this, it is quite an amazing thing for him to have said. He did not veto a UNSC resolution against Israel because he did not think it would harm the relationship with Israel? So if I see a friend of mine being beat up on the street, I can later justify having stood there watching without any attempt to stop it with: “Well, I did not think it would affect my relationship with my friend to not intervene.”

Hands up everyone who would stay friends with me!

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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 Obama/Kerry Parting Tailwind to Terror -by Evelyn Gordon

...Two and a half years ago, I detailed how another Obama/Kerry effort to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace ended up sparking a war instead. But either they learned nothing from that fiasco, or they simply don’t care how many Israelis and Palestinians die for the sake of enabling them to posture self-righteously on the world stage. After all, they’ll be out of office at the end of the week. Israelis and Palestinians will still be here bleeding.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
17 January '17..
Link: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/israel/israel-obamakerry-tailwind-to-terror/

A few weeks ago, the security threat Israel faced from Palestinian terror looked relatively low. But then Barack Obama and John Kerry decided to meddle. The consequences were eminently predictable: They got to enjoy feeling self-righteous, while Israelis and Palestinians pay the price in blood.

Here’s what things looked like a few weeks ago: The lone-wolf Palestinian terror attacks that were proliferating a year ago had largely died down since most Palestinians had concluded (correctly) that they weren’t accomplishing anything. Rocket attacks from Gaza were at their lowest point in 11 years, with only 15 rockets fired in all of 2016, down from 24 in 2015. Moreover, the fact that just 39 rockets were fired in the two years following the Gaza war of 2014 showed that this war had created far greater deterrence than its predecessors. By comparison, 261 rockets were fired in the two years after the 2009 war and 412 in the two years after the 2012 war. And if further proof were needed of the war’s deterrent effect, there was Hamas’s bizarre offer last month to share its homemade rockets with anyone willing to use them against Israel–a clear indication that it had no intention of waging its own war anytime soon. If it did, it would be stockpiling its rockets rather than trying to hawk them.

But by last week, things looked very different. Israeli defense officials reported a sharp upsurge in attempted Palestinian attacks–primarily rock-throwing, but there was also a deadly car ramming in Jerusalem that killed four soldiers and wounded 16. In a highly unusual statement, the officials noted that this rise had occurred in the two weeks since the UN Security Council passed a resolution condemning Israeli settlements on December 23. And while the increase was partly attributable to the Palestinian exam season (when more teens are out throwing rocks because regular classes are canceled), it was much steeper than the usual exam-period spike.

That this upsurge occurred immediately after the UN resolution is no coincidence. Defense officials obviously can’t spell out the causal connection. It would be highly unseemly for them to accuse the Obama Administration of fomenting anti-Israel terror. But a commentator is subject to no such restraints, so let me explain.

The US and the UN are not who determine what is historically true and what is not - by Maria Polizoidou

...This ambush against Israel in UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which considers the Jewish people "occupiers" in their own ancient capital and the holiest part of it, is an act of jihad and an act of political violence – perpetrated by governments to achieve political goals.

Maria Polizoidou..
Gatestone Institute..
14 January '17..

If US President Barack Obama were uneducated, if his staff consisted of people who had never been taught history at school, if the government consisted of savages who have just emerged from the Amazon jungle, we could somehow "justify" their ignorance about the history of the Mediterranean and the Middle Eastern people.

But that is not what is going on. This ambush against Israel in UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which considers the Jewish people "occupiers" in their own ancient capital and the holiest part of it, is an act of jihad and an act of political violence – perpetrated by governments to achieve political goals.

This resolution did not randomly emerge from a historical moment, or as the result of political choices based on reasonable criteria to provide peace and stability in the region. It does not help either the Arabs living in the disputed territories -- Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip - or the Israelis in any peace process. It is an act of vengeance against the foundations of Judeo-Christian civilization and should be treated as such. The Jewish nation has every right to consider this attack an act of war against it. It certainly is an act of war against the history of the Jews and the freedom, democracy, human rights, pluralism and rule of law that Israel represents in the Middle East.

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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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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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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.

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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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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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 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.

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.

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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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 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 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.

Carter, an Obama Post-Presidency and Israel - by Jonathan Tobin

...Should Donald Trump keep his promises to stand by Israel, Jerusalem will not have to worry as much about its sole superpower ally as it has in the last eight years. But if Obama chooses to use the coming years of relative leisure to pursue his vendetta against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and to push for pressure on Israel or even to isolate it in the same manner as Carter, he could be almost as much of a problem for the Jewish state out of office as he was in it.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
29 November '16..
Link: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/israel/obama-post-presidency-israel-jimmy-carter/

In recent months, there’s been a lot of speculation about whether President Obama would use his last months in office to take a parting shot at Israel. In his final seven weeks, there is still a chance that he will allow a dangerously anti-Israel resolution to go up for a vote at the United Nations Security Council without a U.S. veto. But even if he is constrained by either common sense or a commendable desire not to tie the hands of his successor with an act that can’t be undone, supporters of the Jewish state should not assume that Obama’s attitude toward Israel will be something they can safely ignore once he leaves the White House.

A reminder of just how much damage an ex-president can do comes today in the form of an op-ed by Jimmy Carter published in the New York Times. In it, Carter urges Obama to do just what Israel’s friends fear: allow the Security Council to recognize Palestinian independence with the borders of the territories Israel seized in 1967 without first compelling them to make peace with Israel. That would be a reversal of decades of U.S. policy and do incalculable harm to Israel while not advancing the cause of peace.

Despite sharing an antipathy for Israel’s government, Carter and Obama are not close. If Obama does stab Israel in the back at the UN with a measure that will brand Israel as an outlaw state, it likely won’t be due to Carter’s influence. Yet the resurfacing of the 92-year-old Georgian at this crucial moment should alert the pro-Israel community to the possibility that Obama may use his post-presidency in a manner that will follow Carter’s pattern on the Middle East, but with the ability to create far more havoc than his predecessor.

Ever since he left the White House, Jimmy Carter has used the prestige of his former office to promote some anodyne causes like Habitat for Humanity. But he is almost as well known for his other post-presidential obsession: hammering Israel every chance he gets. Carter’s barely-concealed animus for Israel during his term in office was no secret, but it was overshadowed by Anwar Sadat’s courage in forging a peace with Israel for which the former president got more credit than he deserved.

Since then, Carter has stooped to false comparisons between Israel and apartheid-era South Africa and become a reliable apologist for anything the Palestinians do no matter how awful while never failing to attack Israel any chance he gets.

Carter left office as a defeated president and was labeled a failure. His presidency is chiefly remembered now, if it is remembered at all, as a prelude to the Ronald Reagan’s successful two terms, in which he presided over a robust recovery from Carter’s “malaise” and the defeat of the Soviet Union. Good works restored his reputation to some degree, but Carter’s standing at home and abroad has never been sufficient to lend the kind of weight to his attacks on the Jewish state that would have had an impact on American opinion or that of an international community already prejudiced against Israel.

The Real Middle East Story - by Walter Russel Mead

...There is perhaps only one thing harder for the American mind to process than the fact that President Obama has been a terrible foreign policy president, and that is that Bibi Netanyahu is an extraordinarily successful Israeli Prime Minister.

Walter Russel Mead..
The American Interest..
23 September '16..







Peter Baker notices something important in his dispatch this morning: at this year’s UNGA, the Israel/Palestine issue is no longer the center of attention. From The New York Times:

They took the stage, one after the other, two aging actors in a long-running drama that has begun to lose its audience. As the Israeli and Palestinian leaders recited their lines in the grand hall of the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, many in the orchestra seats recognized the script.

“Heinous crimes,” charged Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president. “Historic catastrophe.”

“Fanaticism,” countered Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister. “Inhumanity.”

Mr. Abbas and Mr. Netanyahu have been at this for so long that between them they have addressed the world body 19 times, every year cajoling, lecturing, warning and guilt-tripping the international community into seeing their side of the bloody struggle between their two peoples. Their speeches are filled with grievance and bristling with resentment, as they summon the ghosts of history from hundreds and even thousands of years ago to make their case.

While each year finds some new twist, often nuanced, sometimes incendiary, the argument has been running long enough that the world has begun to move on. Where the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once dominated the annual meeting of the United Nations, this year it has become a side show as Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas compete for attention against seemingly more urgent crises like the civil war in Syria and the threat from the Islamic State.

Baker (and presumably many of his readers) don’t go on to the next, obvious question: What does this tell us about the relative success or failure of the leaders involved? The piece presents both Netanyahu and Abbas as irrelevant. They used to command the world stage, but now nobody is interested in their interminable quarrel.

What the piece doesn’t say is that this situation is exactly what Israel wants, and is a terrible defeat for the Palestinians. Abbas is the one whose strategy depends on keeping the Palestinian issue front and center in world politics; Bibi wants the issue to fade quietly away. What we saw at the UN this week is that however much Abbas and the Palestinians’ many sympathizers might protest, events are moving in Bibi’s direction.

(Continue to Full Article)

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AIPAC’s Post-Trump Hangover - by Jonathan Tobin

...The job of a bipartisan lobby in age of hyper-partisanship is not easy. But it must be done. Pinkus should save her tears and her apologies. Once the Trump hangover wears off friends of Israel are going to have their work cut out for them in trying to maintain the alliance between these two great democracies no matter who wins in November. That’s going to mean working with lots of people that a lot of don’t like. AIPAC activists and their critics need to get used to it. It’s called democracy.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
23 March '16..

Donald Trump surprised a lot of people on Monday night when he read a fairly standard pro-Israel speech at the AIPAC conference. But while his performance got mixed reviews as even those, like me, who were willing to give him some credit for repudiating his claim of “neutrality” and saying a lot of sensible things about the conflict with the Palestinians and the Iran nuclear deal, understood that the gap between scripted Donald Trump and the unscripted version that has said very different things is too great to be ignored. In the aftermath of the speech, Trump has gone on to say more outrageous things about different subjects (the latest being a thuggish threat aimed at Ted Cruz’s wife) but the pro-Israel lobby seems to have been shaken by the criticism the organization received for applauding the candidate’s address.

The best evidence of this came the morning after when Lillian Pinkus, the new president of AIPAC took the stage at the conference and tearfully apologized for some of the things Trump said. The GOP frontrunner had taken some harsh shots at President Obama about his policies toward Iran and Israel. He cheered the notion that it was the president’s final year in office and then added, in a deviation from his script, that Obama was, “maybe the worst thing to happen to Israel.” Obviously, that last line was a piece of classic Trump hyperbole. If compared to Yasir Arafat, Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas, Obama doesn’t seem quite so bad even to his critics.

But Pinkus’s apology wasn’t so much about what Trump said but the fact that the vast majority of the 18,000 AIPAC conference attendees applauded him. The expectation prior to the speech was that a great many of those at the event would walk out as the candidate spoke or that he might be booed or heckled. That was a not unreasonable expectation since Trump is despised by a great many Jewish conservatives as well as liberals. But while a few staged a symbolic walkout or stayed away — something that was barely noticed in a packed arena — the AIPAC crowd gave him a respectful hearing as they did the other candidates.

More than that, when Trump told them things they wanted to hear about support for Israel, the Iran deal or even Obama, they didn’t sit on their hands. They laughed at his jokes and applauded. Trump’s appeal as a performer is a lot greater than his critics, including me, have been willing to acknowledge. And for some, including apparently some of AIPAC’s leaders, that applause was an unforgivable sin for which the organization must make amends.

Let’s specify that by naming Obama in the way that he did, Trump used what we might term unparliamentary language in a setting where even partisans understand that bipartisanship is the order of the day. But, to be fair, despite Pinkus’ tearful apology about “ad hominem attacks” that were “levied against the president of the United States from our stage,” this wasn’t the first time a sitting president was criticized at an AIPAC conference. Moreover, by Trump’s admittedly debased standards, merely saying Obama was the “worst thing” or saying “yay,” about the prospect of him leaving office barely registered even as a mild insult. But Pinkus’s apology for a guest speaker that spoke only for himself and not AIPAC was, as the Washington Post noted, unprecedented.

Why did she do it?

Remembering Rabin and Shamir, correctly and for good purpose

...Things that Netanyahu should keep in mind as he faces Obama next week: 1. The clap-happy advocacy of unfettered Palestinian statehood which we hear today from Obama, Peres and the like does not accord with the “Rabin heritage” at all. 2. Heed the bitter lesson learned by Yitzhak Shamir in his dealings with President George H.W. Bush: Stick to your policy goals, and don’t let Israel be wedged off-course for ersatz, temporary relief from presidential pressures.

David M. Weinberg..
A Citadel Defending Zion..
06 November '15..

This week, Israel marked the twentieth anniversary of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination, as well as what would have been the 100th birthday of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.

There are lessons to be learned about the way we remember these two great leaders, both of blessed memory. This is especially true for Prime Minister Netanyahu, who next week once again enters the lion’s den – meeting US President Barack Hussein Obama in the White House, after a long period of US-Israel conflict regarding policy towards Iran and the Palestinians.

Rabin’s true legacy is Israel’s struggle for secure and defensible borders and a unified Jerusalem, and great wariness of Palestinian statehood. The use of Rabin’s name to support a galloping-forward two-state-solution peace process – is left-wing historical revisionism.

Like the majority of Israelis, then and now, Rabin was willing to take risks and give the peace process a chance. But he remained suspicious of his Palestinian partners, skeptical about the outcome, very wary of a full-fledged Palestinian state, and insistent on maintaining defensible borders for Israel.

In fact, Rabin may have been close to calling-off the Oslo process – according his closet advisors and family members, and scholars.

His daughter Dalia told Yediot Ahronot in 2010 that “Many people who were close to father told me that on the eve of the murder he considered stopping the Oslo process because of the terror that was running rampant in the streets, and because he felt that Yasser Arafat was not delivering on his promises.”

“Father after all wasn’t a blind man running forward without thought. I don’t rule out the possibility that he was considering a u-turn, doing a reverse on our side. After all he was someone for whom the national security of the state was sacrosanct and above all,” said Dalia Rabin.

Last week, Dalia Rabin similarly told The Times of Israel that “As the waves of terror hit the peace process… I have the feeling that he (Yitzhak Rabin) wouldn’t have let it continue. There would have been a stage where he would have decided: We’re in a phased process. Let’s evaluate what we have achieved and what the price has been. He wouldn’t have stopped Oslo, but he would have done what Oslo enabled him to do: to look at it as a process and assess whether it was working.”

In his 2008 book The Long Short Way, Moshe ‘Bogie’ Yaalon wrote that a few weeks before the assassination, Rabin told Yaalon (who was then chief of IDF Military Intelligence) that after the next Israeli elections “he (Rabin) was going to ‘set things straight’ with the Oslo process, because Arafat could no longer be trusted.” And this was before the murderous Second Palestinian Intifada!