Free Republic

Former President Barack Obama backtracked Friday on his early support for Israel against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, telling an audience at the Obama Foundation Democracy Forum in Chicago that they had pushed him to modify his position. “I had a conversation with a group of you around this issue, and you were passionate and pushed me around some of the public statements I’d made,” Obama told a group of activists and supporters. He said that all agreed on the desired outcome — ” an end to the killing, peaceful coexistence between two sovereign and free peoples” — but that...

Former President Barack Obama is coming under scrutiny for his recent remarks on Israel’s war on Hamas, giving moral equivalence to the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks by linking them with Israel’s “occupation” of Palestinian lands. “What Hamas did was horrific and there’s no justification for it,” Obama said, following that statement immediately by saying, “And what is also true is that the occupation and what’s happening to Palestinians is unbearable.” Obama made the remarks Friday at his Foundation’s “Democracy Forum.” Video excerpts of Obama’s comments were posted Pod Save America’s X page.

His latest autobiography goes out of its way to demonize the Jewish state. Great news: Barack Hussein Obama is now not only a Nobel laureate, but he has opened up a big lead among the presidents as the one with by far the most autobiographies. The marvelous narcissist now leads all other presidents who have written autobiographies by two, as he has written three, compared to a number of his peers who are tied at one. However, his latest one, A Promised Land, is more than just an update on the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of the Most Undeservedly Celebrated...

When President Donald Trump gave the order to kill Iran's Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani, he not only made an arguably proportionate response to the invasion of the U.S. Embassy this week but he also reversed a policy of the Obama administration. According to a report from 2018, Israel was "on the verge" of assassinating Soleimani in 2015, but Obama's officials foiled the plan. In fact, they reached out to Iran with news of Israel's plans. The Trump administration, on the other hand, gave Israel a green light to assassinate Soleimani, according to a January 1, 2018 report from the...

Ben Rhodes, President Obama's national security adviser, said on Monday that Obama sought to use the United Nations as a vehicle to isolate and pressure the Jewish state. Rhodes, speaking at the anti-Israel group J Street's annual conference in Washington, D.C., discussed efforts by the former administration to weaponize the U.N. to force Israel into concessions to the Palestinians. Obama, near the end of his tenure in office, drew sharp criticism across the pro-Israel community for permitting the United States to abstain from a U.N. vote criticizing what it described as Israeli settlements. The U.N. was allowed to proceed with...

The Obama Administration not only pushed through the Iran deal in violation of federal law but also most likely tried to set up Israel and the Trump Campaign and Administration at the same time. In a recent article at the Columbia Law Review a few of the crimes of the Obama Administration were discussed – The Obama Administration’s efforts to sign and implement a nuclear agreement with Iran with limited if any congressional input, and at times in violation of federal law, is a particularly important example of Democratic constitu­tional hardball. This particular example failed to make it into books...

Former President Barack Obama told a Jewish congregation in Manhattan Thursday that he is “basically a liberal Jew” as he defended his administration’s record on Israel and his decision to criticize Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria. Ha’aretz reports: The event at Temple Emanuel in Manhattan marked the first time that Obama spoke publicly about Israel since leaving office.

He was just 24, but speechwriter David Litt had already become President Barack Obama’s go-to guy for anything considered “kishke-related.” In Litt’s parlance, that meant he wrote the president’s speeches aiming to connect with Jewish Americans on a gut level — things like holiday and anniversary commemorations, but not, say, Israel or foreign policy. That explains Litt’s presence one Friday night in the White House library in April 2012. A jet-lagged Obama had just returned from a trip to Asia and the last thing on his schedule was to record a video greeting for Passover. “All right,” Obama said grumpily...

President Obama’s clashes with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may cost him a membership at an exclusive golf club, sources said. Obama is looking to join the elite Woodmont Country Club in Maryland once he becomes a private citizen. But members of the mostly Jewish club are at each other’s throats over whether to accept the golf-loving president, with many saying he deserves to be snubbed for not blocking an anti-Israel vote at the United Nations, according to the sources.

. UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which was passed on Friday and focuses on Israeli settlement activity, is even worse than its critics—who include Democratic lawmakers and the staunchly left-wing Central Conference of American (Reform) Rabbis (here and here)—have made it out to be. The resolution—whose passage was made possible by the U.S. abstention ordered by President Obama from Hawaii—is not just shameful, unfair, unbalanced, or destructive. It’s barbaric. Only in one clause—which is in the preamble, which has less force than the body of the text—does the resolution explicitly call on Palestinians to do anything. The preamble calls on...

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has apparently snubbed Theresa May over the UK’s support of a highly critical UN resolution condemning Israeli settlement building. The move is the latest in a series of diplomatic retaliations by Israel against the countries that supported a UN security council resolution describing Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories as a “flagrant violation” of international law and an obstacle to peace.

As Ambassador Bolton said in the clip below from Fox News, Obama killed the peace process by pushing this anti-Semitic, evil resolution. He killed the peace process and all prospects for peace by destroying the foundation of the process. That foundation was "land for peace." Land for peace formed the basis of UN Security Council resolution 242 from the end of the 1967 Six Day War. It stipulated that in exchange for Arab recognition of Israel and peace with the Jewish state, Israel would cede some of the land that it took control over during the course of that war....

The Times of Israel reports: The United States’ failure to veto a Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements was the “last sting of President Obama” that exposed his “true face,” unnamed Israeli officials said Saturday evening. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, thanked President-elect Donald Trump for his promise for support at the international body after he takes office. The US’s abstention in Friday’s vote “is the last sting of President Obama. It exposes the true face of the [Obama] administration,” the officials said Saturday evening. “Now it’s easier to understand what we dealt with the past eight years.”

The United States could have killed a key United Nations resolution that condemned Israel for its West Bank settlements by voting against it rather than abstaining, former U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said Friday night, but he thinks President Barack Obama took the action to "box the incoming Trump administration in." "This was a stab in the back against the Israelis," Bolton told Fox News' "Hannity" show Friday night. "It was entirely predictable. I would say this for people in the pro-Israel community in the United States who defended Obama's Middle East policy over these last eight years: You should have...

A "shameful" abstention by the U.S. in a United Nations Security Council vote Friday allowed passage of a resolution condemning Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank. The resolution was put forward by New Zealand, Malaysia, Venezuela and Senegal after Egypt withdrew it Thursday under pressure from Israel and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump. It was adopted with 14 votes in favor, to a round of applause, after U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power abstained. It is the first resolution the Security Council has adopted on Israel and the Palestinians in nearly eight years. Reaction from U.S. Republicans and Jewish leaders around...

UNSC voting on anti-Israel settlement resolution. Israel claims Obama "cooked up" the resolution with the Palestinians!

The U.N. was expected to vote today on a resolution demanding an end to Israeli settlement building, and reports indicate that Obama was ready to allow the resolution to pass until Egypt put off the vote. President-elect Donald Trump put pressure on Egypt not to go forward with the resolution, and it seems to have had an effect. Charles Krauthammer said that the resolution could have done serious damage to Israel, making Trump’s involvement daring and effective: More than a slap on the wrist, I think it would have done permanent damage to Israel, which is why even Obama himself...

TEL AVIV — The Obama administration secretly worked with the Palestinian Authority to craft a “shameful” United Nations resolution behind Israel’s back, an Israeli official told reporters on Friday. “President Obama and Secretary Kerry are behind this shameful move against Israel at the UN. The US administration secretly cooked up with the Palestinians an extreme anti Israeli resolution behind Israel’s back which would be a tailwind for terror and boycotts and effectively make the Western Wall occupied Palestinian territory... ...This is an abandonment of Israel which breaks decades of US policy of protecting Israel at the UN and undermines the...

The White House defended President Barack Obama over the U.S.’s abstention from a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements on the West Bank, saying Obama has done “more for Israel” than any other American president. Members of the White House National Security Council defended the abstention vote on a press call Friday insisting that the United States could not veto the resolution, which they claimed “erodes a foundation for a two state solution.” The White House said the abstention was consistent with past administrations and while the current administration believes construction of settlements on the West Bank would drum...

The White House’s decision to break with decades of U.S. policy and allow the U.N. Security Council to condemn Israeli settlements is the culmination of years of bad blood between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  The decision won Obama criticism from across the political spectrum, and almost certainly wouldn't have been made if Hillary Clinton had won the presidential election. It opened him up to condemnation from President-elect Donald Trump and the right, and could lead to a battle over U.S. funding for the U.N. in Congress.  But Obama's team decided it was worth it.