RUTHFULLY YOURS

Mr. Obama’s Middle East policy quite nicely: “Praise Islam, ignore Christians, blame Jews.”

After watching all the pomp and circumstance of the presidential inauguration of January 20, 2009, I remember turning to my husband Steve and saying: “The sole mission of Barack Obama and his henchmen is to destroy Israel.”

Steve reminded me that there was a mountain of domestic issues awaiting the new, far-left regime, and I agreed. And sure enough, Mr. Obama and his minions proceeded to wreak havoc on job creation and on the American military, inflict strangulating regulations, amass crushing national debt, foist horrific healthcare and education systems on our citizens, and seed every government department with operatives from the Nazi-inspired terrorist organization Muslim Brotherhood, and then hand over control of the Internet to the United Nations––the most corrupt, tin-pot-dictator-driven, anti-American, anti-Semitic, American-resource-draining cesspool in our country.

But all that still left them plenty of time to enact a foreign policy that genuflected to our enemies and spit in the face of our most faithful allies, most particularly Israel.

Writer Mona Charen has said that Mr. Obama has a “genocidal hostility toward Israel.” As if to reinforce that opinion, he just engaged in his longtime habit of spitting on Jews––and also Christians––by launching his poison dart on December 23rd, right in time for Chanukah and Christmas.

After the first vote proposed by Egypt to condemn Israeli “settlements”––meaning housing on Israeli land––was canceled after President-elect Trump intervened, the vote was rescheduled in the United Nation’s Security Council when New Zealand (10,000 miles from Israel), Malaysia (where the official religion is Islam), Senegal (which is 90-percent Muslim), and Venezuela (so impoverished that people are now scrounging for toilet paper) reinstituted the anti-Israel measure, and the United States, reversing decades of U.S. policy, refused to veto it.

Resolution 2334 demands that Israel “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the [so-called] occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.” It also advised all states “to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967″––what former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called “Auschwitz borders.”

Despite White House denials that it had anything to do with creating the Resolution, there is no doubt that this sneak attack was hatched and orchestrated directly from the Oval Office and involved Mr. Obama himself, Secretary of State John Kerry, Susan Rice, and other of his Jew-hating acolytes. Israel says it has “iron-clad evidence” of direct involvement, and leaked documents already confirm that claim.

In the Obama administration’s waning days, global challenges to American interests abound. In Syria, which will be a bloody stain on the reputations of Barack Obama and John Kerry, the killing continues. The effort to free Mosul from ISIS is slowing. The rise of Iranian influence in the Gulf and the Levant, of China in Asia and the western Pacific, and of Putin’s Russia in both Europe and the Middle East, all continue. One might have thought any of these could be the subject of a final address by the president or the secretary of state.

But one would have been wrong. John Kerry delivered what is probably the last major speech of the Obama administration Wednesday, and its subject was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and especially the growth of Israeli settlements. So the Obama administration ends where it began: obsessed with Israelis and Palestinians as if their struggle were the key to peace in the entire region, and with construction of homes in settlements and in Jerusalem as if it were the major roadblock to a peace agreement.

In a speech that was remarkable for its length, its defensive and even whiny tone, its attack on the government of Israel, and for its lack of new ideas, Kerry tried to explain both last week’s failure to veto a UN Security Council resolution and eight years of failed Obama policy. His central argument was that the two-state solution is essential, is possible, and is being destroyed by Israeli settlements. The administration did not veto the resolution, he said, because it was balanced: It rebuked Israel for settlement expansion but also rebuked the Palestinians for incitement.

The latter point is significant, and shows the fundamental failure of Kerry’s argument. The resolution passed last week will do actual damage to Israel, because calling all the settlements and even construction in East Jerusalem a violation of international law opens Israel to further boycotts and to prosecution as criminals (in local courts all over the world or the International Criminal Court) of Israeli officials or of settlers. The “balance” that moved the administration to permit adoption of the resolution was non-existent: There is in the resolution no call upon the Palestinians to stop glorifying terrorism by naming schools and parks after murderers and celebrating their “achievements.” Instead the resolution does not mention the Palestinians in that context at all and merely “calls for compliance with obligations under international law for the strengthening of ongoing efforts to combat terrorism…and to clearly condemn all acts of terrorism.” Israel is condemned but the Palestinians are never criticized in that supposedly “balanced” text.

Kerry noted in his speech that “We have repeatedly and emphatically stressed to the Palestinians that all incitement to violence must stop.” Kerry actually spoke at some length about these Palestinian practices, as if repeating how much he dislikes them strengthened his point. But it does not, because the United States has been complaining about this for all eight years of the Obama administration to no effect whatsoever. The key point is that the Palestinians are never penalized for glorifying terror and the U.N. resolution doesn’t penalize them either. The resolution will harm Israel and do nothing at all to the Palestinians, which means it is not balanced and Kerry’s argument here is simply false.

Now that the smoke has cleared at the United Nations, there is little question about President Obama’s intentions; they are now crystal clear. Incontrovertible evidence exists that suggests the proposal for a return to the 1967 borders in Israel was orchestrated by the White House. By any measure that is a break from the historic ties between the U.S. and Israel and, as many commentators have noted, an act of betrayal.

It is also an act that cannot be trivialized. Of course, Israel will ignore the proposition. Netanyahu hasn’t any alternative. President Trump will regard it as an openly hostile act and may repudiate it by naming Jerusalem the capital of Israel. But what must also be realized is that even a coat of paint in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank is technically illegal and a violation of international law according to the Hague Court of International Justice. While the court doesn’t have the ability to impose its will, as was demonstrated by China’s President Xi repudiating a decision on the Spratly islands, it can bog down the Israeli government in legal harassment.

Most significantly, this proposal could be a casus belli. Suppose Palestinian activists decide to take matters into their own hands by arguing they have a legitimate claim to Samaria and Judea thereby employing force to obtain the territory they have acquired through legal decree. What Obama may not have thought through is how disruptive his proposal might be. Moreover, since the Sunni nations have put the Palestinian question behind them, it is odd that President Obama should insert it into the international equation as a front burner issue. Now terrorist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, Iranian Quds can claim a legitimate right to attack an Israeli government theoretically violating the law.

Even the insertion of a note into the Western Wall, a practice that has gone on as a Jewish religious ritual since 1967, can be declared an act violating the U.N. proposal. That Obama chose this matter as his swan song is revealing. His hostility towards Israel has been manifest in many ways, but at no point in the past has an American president acted as Obama has. This White House abstention and behind the scenes maneuvering with sponsoring states is unprecedented. The lies leading to the decision and rationalizations in the aftermath are also unprecedented.

In fact, this decision puts a slow burn on Donald Trump. Despite the number of global issues he will be obliged to digest setting foot in the White House from Syria to NATO, from the South China Sea air perimeter to North Korea, he will now be saddled with a Palestinian state issue most officials thought was on hold for the foreseeable future.

Obama has virtually destroyed any legacy he hoped to transmit to future historians about his eight years in office. He has left in ruins all he tried to manage.

The world is in disarray in large part because of his mismanagement or ignoring any management.

His ego won’t allow a dispassionate assessment of the Obama presidency, but if one were to do so after this recent U.N. fiasco, Barack Obama would have to be considered among the worst presidents in American history.
Dr. Herb London is president of the London Center for Policy Research and is co-author with Jed Babbin of “The BDS War Against Israel.”