New Threat to Betray Israel at the UN Security Council Must be Stopped

President Obama is reportedly plotting to abandon Israel at the U.N. Security Council, pressing our greatest ally in the Middle East into an untenable position of weakness. It’s unthinkable.

In times of crisis, real leaders lead. They can read the mood of the people and the needs of the time, and they rise to the occasion. Winston Churchill was just such a leader. He rallied the British people in the darkest days of WWII with his “We shall fight on the beaches . . . . We shall never surrender” speech. President George W. Bush did the same for the American people in the dark days following 9/11. The Nation needed rallying, and W rallied us all as he stood with first responders at Ground Zero and announced that an aroused Nation was coming after those who had attacked U.S. soil! 

President Obama seems utterly incapable of discerning what’s really important and how his actions come across to others. Remember how he hurried off to play golf right after announcing that an American citizen had been beheaded? And, as ISIS is decimating parts of the Middle East and extending its tentacles to Europe and beyond, remember how the President lectured us about climate change?

Just the other day, as Brussels was reeling from multiple bomb blasts committed by persons whose religious persuasion could not be uttered for fear of offending all others of that particular persuasion, our President was seen smiling broadly and doing the wave with that lovable old communist Raoul Castro at a baseball game in Cuba.

Even as the toll of the dead and injured mounted in Brussels, our smiling President headed to Buenos Aires to dance the tango as Belgian authorities feverishly searched for additional jihadists and victims’ families buried their dead. One wonders if our President is even capable of understanding what his actions look like to normal people. Is he really that out of touch?

Now, we may see how out of touch he really is. It’s being reported that our own government may propose that the U.N. Security Council adopt a resolution to force Israelis and Palestinians back to the table to resolve their differences. This resolution has been reported to include a hammer to impose a result if the negotiations don’t succeed after a set period of time. How misguided can our Government be?

Who would be helped by such a resolution? Only the Palestinians. The Israelis have time and again negotiated in good faith only to be stymied at the last minute—by Palestinian intransigence. It’s been aptly noted that the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. The Palestinian penchant for making ill-advised decisions is not new. The Palestinians were offered a state back in 1947. They rejected the offer because it didn’t give them everything they wanted. They would rather starve than embrace the concept that half a loaf is better than no bread at all.

In the interim, try as they might, the Israelis cannot get the Palestinians to negotiate in good faith. They still demand the entire loaf or nothing. They keep opting for nothing and then blame the Israelis for their own poor choices. Imagine the dilemma for the Israelis. It’s hard to resolve problems via negotiations when one’s negotiation partner simply won’t negotiate.

In a world with lots of Islamic countries (many of which are rich in oil) and with many poor countries which cannot afford to offend Muslim-majority oil producing countries, the world’s sole Jewish state is at a marked disadvantage. But for the principled defense of Israel exercised by the United States in the past, Israel would be totally isolated in the world.

Yet, now it is reported that the Obama Administration is about to foist upon Israel a deal that runs wholly counter to Israel’s national interests. The U.S. is considering proposing a resolution before the UN Security Council to force Palestinians and Israelis back to the bargaining table.

Have the Palestinians done anything to indicate that they will negotiate in good faith this time? No! Have the Palestinians done anything to indicate that they are prepared to make the painful compromises that both sides must make to resolve the outstanding differences between the sides? No!

In the past, the U.S. has always exercised its veto when Israel was unfairly singled out at the Security Council. This time, however, the Administration may be leading the charge to get things moving in the Security Council.

Moreover, given President Obama’s treatment of Israel thus far in his Administration, it seems unlikely that any such proposed resolution will protect Israel against traditional Palestinian intransigence. That would constitute a significant break with our best friend and ally in the Middle East and isolate them diplomatically.

Finally, from what has been reported, the resolution will likely include language that the Palestinians have long desired, such as stating that the 1949 armistice lines are international boundaries (clearly indefensible borders for Israel and something that the Arabs refused to allow when the agreements were originally negotiated), that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are on “occupied Palestinian territory” (something that is untrue given that the Mandate for Palestine is the international document still governing settlements in the West Bank for Jews), and that Jerusalem is to be the capital of a Palestinian state (something that no U.N. agency has authority to grant). This would mandate that the negations start with massive concessions to the Palestinian Authority—forcing Israel into an untenable position of weakness.

This would be another example of misguided foreign policy from the Obama Administration. Just as President Obama backed the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (a mistake of epic proportions that destabilized Egypt and split us from our traditional Arab allies in the region), made a deal with the Iranian ayatollahs which even they refused to sign (ditto on epic mistake that encouraged our enemies and shocked our friends in the region), and failed to negotiate a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) in Iraq that would have left sufficient U.S. forces in Iraq to stop the rise of ISIS, the most dangerous jihadist movement existing today (ditto again on epic mistake for which the region and other areas of the world are paying a heavy price), proposing a resolution to compel negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians will achieve nothing and destabilize the region still further.

President Obama couldn’t have created more chaos if he had tried . . . . Don’t let him drop the last shoe. Stand with Israel and against all efforts at the U.N. to undermine the only democracy in the Middle East.

In the next few days, the ACLJ and our international affiliate with consultative status at the U.N., the European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ), will be sending letters and legal memoranda to U.N. officials, to Permanent Representatives of U.N. member states serving on the Security Council, and to key U.S. government officials in both the Executive and Legislative branches to call on them to stop the adoption of any proposal to compel Israel to enter negotiations with Palestinian officials who appear no less intransigent today than in the past. Until the Palestinians want to negotiate in good faith, negotiations are futile.

We’ve successfully stopped President Obama from abandoning Israel before, now we must do so again, in our ally’s greatest time of need.

You can help, too. Contact your Congressman and both Senators and tell them to pressure the President and the Secretary of State to not propose such a resolution. You can also take direct legal action with us. Join our legal letters and memoranda by signing our critical petition to defend Israel and stop forcing them to negotiate with terrorists below.