Kerry Excuses America’s Anti-Israel Policy

In a question and answer session with the Washington Post on Monday Bennett denied that his plan violated worldwide law, despite the clear view of United Nations security council resolutions over the years as well as widespread global consensus on the issue.

I heard none of that.

At a time when Jews the world over are celebrating Hanukkah and the miracle of lights, Barack Obama has attempted to turn out the light on the Jewish state. Secretary Kerry’s speech, while mostly symbolic, was uncharacteristically critical of Israeli policies. The tit for tat that has and will follow is a direct result of President Barack Obama’s change in decades-old USA foreign policy and is a unsafe move on his way out of office.

But once he was re-elected to a second term in office, where was that strength and determination in building the path toward peace?

For 68 years the cardinal rule of USA policy in the Middle East has been to speak no ill of Israel and defend it always. A vast majority (81%) of Jews who identify as being on the political left say that settlements hurt security, although a relatively small share of Israeli Jews (8%) identify with the left.

“The Obama administration has long flirted with global efforts to delegitimize Israel, so what happened today isn’t really surprising”, one senior congressional aide told the Washington Free Beacon following the vote.

A headline that would become famous appeared in the New York Daily News in October 1975 after then-President Gerald Ford denied federal assistance to spare the city from bankruptcy. The existing settlements – even if expanded – do not pose any danger to the two-state solution, if the Palestinians really want their own state more than they want there not to be a Jewish state.

So, let’s be clear.

Maale Adumim is one of Israel’s largest settlements in occupied Palestinian Territories in the West Bank. United Nations resolutions rarely hold Israel and the Palestinians to equal standards.

Joseph Waks, fourth from the right, posing with Jewish visitors and soldiers at the Oz Vegaon tent outpost in the West Bank, Jan. 2, 2017.

Dawood Jahalin, secretary of the Fatah movement in Jerusalem’s Bedouin communities, told Ma’an that Israeli bulldozers escorted by Israeli forces demolished 11 residential structures without allowing the owners to evacuate personal belongings and furniture. How can you freeze that?

American Jewish organizations have expressed staunch opposition to a peace summit organized by France aimed at jump starting Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, calling the initiative “ill-conceived, poorly timed and damaging” in the wake of a UN Security Council vote condemning Israel’s settlement activities.

In his recent speech excoriating Israel for refusing to commit suicide by allowing a sworn enemy to have a state adjoining the Jewish state, Secretary of State John Kerry claimed the US government “did not draft or originate” the United Nations resolution critical of Israeli “settlements”.

All these points involve permanent concessions for Palestinian lands that were occupied in 1948, and call the recognition of Israel as a state with complete sovereignty that has the right to the Arab lands it occupies.

Abbas said he hoped the upcoming Paris summit on the Mideast conflict would further advance that cause.

The former PM’s comments and Ms Bishop’s subsequent rejection of his proposal come at an extraordinary time in the long-running Israel-Palestine feud. The issue of terrorism is included in the resolution but its weight is slight (as opposed to extensive dealing with the settlements, which are represented as the main obstacle to peace). But the Security Council has now called the status quo, with settlements expanding unabated, “unsustainable”.

“We’re not experts. But we believe in our right to live in a Jewish state, and we’re proud of what has been built here”, he said.