Backfire: Obama’s Israel slap could prompt U.S. to leave U.N.

By Garth Kant

[jwplayer dlODdQDC-pszPfxYQ]

WASHINGTON – “Never let a crisis go to waste,” President Obama’s first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel once famously advised Democrats.

Republicans look increasingly determined to now use that advice against Obama.

Obama-Israel-TW
President Obama (Photo: Twitter)

The president’s refusal to veto a United Nations resolution condemning Israeli settlements, documented in detail by WND on Friday, is now causing such a backlash, the move could stunningly backfire on the outgoing commander in chief.

Following Friday’s vote, there were immediate calls for the U.S. to defund the organization. By Monday, there was a rising tide of calls to use the vote as a reason for the U.S. to leave the U.N. altogether.

“We need to ditch this organization run by crazies and create one run by free nations,” former Rep. Steve Stockman told WND.

Former Rep. Michele Bachman, R-Minn., told WND, “The U.S. should expose the O.I.C. (Organization of Islamic Cooperation) agenda at the U.N., which is institutional genocide by consensus against the Jewish state of Israel, and against the Jewish people generally. Then the U.S. should let it be known the U.S. will no longer be part of the O.I.C./U.N. agenda.”

She essentially predicted the U.N. must clean up its act or face the ultimate price: “We will refuse to pay any further U.N. costs, may remove ourselves from membership and consider removal of the U.N. building from the current U.S. site in New York City.”

The U.S. contributed $3.04 billion to the U.N. in 2015, according to congressional testimony. That’s 22 percent of its budget and more than is paid by 185 other countries combined.

Stockman reflected, “Emanuel’s advice about not letting a serious crisis go to waste, which was once used to enact such major changes as Obamacare, could now backfire on the administration.”

The former congressman told WND, “The growing outrage over the vote has provided conservatives our turn to take advantage of a crisis, because (with the incoming Trump administration) now we have a chance to kill the wasteful spending on a wasteful concept called the U.N.”

The Texan also said, “Obama severely overplayed his hand by allowing this unprecedented slap at Israel. He revealed his true feelings. Obama had to show his anti-Semitic and pro-global government views before he walks out the door.”

Those sentiments were just part of growing chorus calling for a dramatic response to the Obama administration’s refusal to veto the resolution demanding the Jewish state “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.”

Climate change conference at the U.N. in New York in November 2015.
Climate change conference at the U.N. in New York in November 2015

As WND reported, immediately following Friday’s vote, Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., urged Congress to reduce or eliminate U.S. funding of the U.N.

But the snowball was just getting started.

By Saturday, Cruz tweeted, “No US $ for UN until reversed.” On Sunday, Graham told CNN that not only will he introduce a bill to significantly reduce or even eliminate U.S. funding of the U.N. unless the UN Security Council repeals the resolution, “there is going to be a break. And I am going to lead that break.”

By Monday, the calls for withdrawing the U.S. from the U.N. were growing.

Roger L. Simon, CEO Emeritus of PJ Media, wrote, “[I]t would be useful to negotiate the entire institution out of existence, or at least impoverish it to the degree it will have to decamp from Manhattan and leave that pricey Turtle Bay real estate for better purposes.”

He noted, “this ‘peaceful’ organization that has had no effect whatsoever on ending war spends most of its working hours bashing the state of Israel. In 2015 alone, the U.N. General Assembly adopted 20 resolutions singling out Israel for criticism – and only 3 resolutions on the rest of the world combined.”

oic

Referring to the group mentioned by Bachmann, and its heavy influence on the U.N., Simon said the O.I.C. “includes most of the disgusting theocratic kleptocracies that exploit or enslave their people, abjure human rights, discriminate against women and hang gays from telephone polls, and lead the way – now with the help of Obama’s USA – in the aforementioned bashing of the only democracy in the Middle East.”

The most scathing criticism and loudest call for withdrawing the U.S. from the U.N. came from FrontPage Magazine’s Daniel Greenfield, who wrote, “We are not making the world a better place by being members of this anti-American organization which vacillates between being evil and useless.”

“The Jewish state is the U.N.’s scapegoat for anything and everything,” Greenfield continued. “These days, the United Nations is a forum for Islamist powers and the rotting remains of the Communist front to continue its war against the free world while seducing weak-minded nations into going along.”

Calling upon the U.S. to “pull the plug” on what he called “a failed experiment,” Greenfield called the organization “just a slush fund for redistributing our money to a vast U.N. bureaucracy and anyone willing to bribe it for benefits.”

He echoed Stockman’s observation that, “It’s time to build our closest alliances with the countries that” share U.S. ideals.

Greenfield summarized, “The United Nations does not promote its own ideals. Or ours. Instead, it sanctimoniously violates them. Providing every brutal dictatorship with equal representation hasn’t ushered in an age of human rights. Allowing Islamic terrorists and the radical left to denounce their enemies hasn’t made the world better. And throwing $3 billion a year at the towering U.N. swamp on Turtle Bay only wastes our time and money.”

Even one of Obama’s strongest supporters was livid over the president’s inaction at the U.N.

[jwplayer ThXS8j4f-pszPfxYQ]

Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz was moved to say, even though he supports the administration’s domestic policy, “He will go down in history, President Obama, as one of the worst foreign policy presidents ever.”

“What he did was so nasty,” accused the professor, speaking on Fox News on Monday morning. “He pulled a bait-and-switch. He said to the American public, ‘Oh, this is all about the settlements deep in the West Bank.’ And yet, he allowed his representative to the U.N. to abstain, which is really (a vote) for a resolution that says the Jews can’t pray at the Western Wall.'”

Dershowitz said Obama’s gambit will backfire because, “This will make peace much more difficult to achieve because the Palestinians will now say, ‘We can get a state through the U.N.,” and “we don’t have to negotiate, we don’t have to make painful compromises.'”

The professor, a Democrat, even accused Obama of having an ulterior motive, and a personal score to settle, after noting his bad blood with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“I think he was trying to get even,” said Dershowitz. “Look, he called me into the Oval Office before the election and he said to me, ‘Alan, I want your support, and I have to tell you, I will always have Israel’s back.’ I didn’t realize what he meant is that he would … stab them in the back.”

The Israeli government claims it has proof of just that.

Netanyahu said on Sunday he has evidence the Obama administration was actually the driving force behind the anti-Israeli resolution.

And Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer said on Monday his government will turn that evidence over to the incoming Trump administration.

On Monday, President-elect Donald Trump called the U.N. “sad” following its anti-Israel resolution. He tweeted: “The United Nations has such great potential but right now it is just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time. So sad!”

Trump-UN-TW

Garth Kant

Garth Kant is WND Washington news editor. Previously, he spent five years writing, copy-editing and producing at "CNN Headline News," three years writing, copy-editing and training writers at MSNBC, and also served several local TV newsrooms as producer, executive producer and assistant news director. His most recent book is "Capitol Crime: Washington's cover-up of the Killing of Miriam Carey." He also is the author of the McGraw-Hill textbook, "How to Write Television News." Read more of Garth Kant's articles here.


Leave a Comment