Free Republic

Obama is a sad figure, and history will regard him as a study in narcissistic hubris. Responsible for an acute aggravation of worldwide misery and suffering, in an age where global indicators of development and education are nevertheless positive, his calm and serious demeanor are but mere appearance in contrast with his lightweight and unserious reflection and behavior. His easy-going and superficial personality make him an affable dinner companion but reveal an insubstantiality manifest in his international policy. In the litany of his crimes without number, the abetting of the slaughter of a half million Syrians is only the latest,...

For reasons beyond my comprehension, friends of the Jewish state both here and in Israel are shocked and dismayed over last Friday’s U.S. veto abstention at the UN. But hold the presses. If Israel’s claims, which they profess to be ironclad, are true, the passage of UNSC resolution 2334 is just the tip of the iceberg in the ever-widening breach of American/Israeli relations. The real story may be that the Obama administration orchestrated the resolution and colluded with New Zealand and such democratic stalwarts as Malaysia, Senegal, and Venezuela to present it to the Security Council. If this proves correct,...

On Dec. 21, amid his morning workout, an afternoon round of golf and a family dinner with friends, President Obama interrupted his Hawaii vacation to consult by phone with his top national security team in Washington. Egypt had introduced a resolution at the U.N. Security Council condemning Israeli settlements as illegal, and a vote was scheduled for the next day. The idea had been circulating at the council for months, but the abrupt timing was a surprise. Obama was open to abstaining, he said on the call, provided the measure was “balanced” in its censure of terrorism and Palestinian violence...

Weaponizes UN Human Rights Council blacklist and BDS movement. In all the fury over the anti-Israel UN Resolution 2334 the Obama administration marshalled through the Security Council, with an "abstain" vote providing cover for the perfidy, few people have focused on a particularly pernicious and dangerous provision.I'm not talking about the provisions effectively declaring it illegal for Jews to live in Jewish Quarter of the Old City or to worship at the Western Wall.Here is the provision I'm talking about in Resolution 2334 (pdf.): 5. Calls upon all States, bearing in mind paragraph 1 of this resolution, to distinguish, in...

TEL AVIV – The Palestinian Authority has been in contact with the Obama administration and European countries about the possibility of taking more UN action on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before President Obama leaves office next month, a senior PA official told Breitbart Jerusalem. The official said the UN action could come in the form of declarations by UN bodies, including the General Assembly; UN sessions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; or even another United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution. He said any further UNSC resolution would depend on the support of the U.S. and European countries after the upcoming Paris Mideast...

Hanan Ashwari has for decades been the most recognizable face of the Palestinian government in the American media. As was clear this morning, she is also the face of Palestinian rejectionism of the very basis of the existence of the State of Israel. Ashwari appeared on CNN after David Keyes, Netanyahu’s spokesman, said that the real barrier to peace is Palestinian rejection of Israel as a Jewish state. Ashwari expressed that rejection in clear terms: “we cannot a accept religion for any state.” Emphasizing her point, she twice mockingly described Israel as wanting Palestinians “to become Zionists suddenly.” View the...

The United Nations Security Council’s resolution Friday condemning Israeli settlements as “a flagrant violation under international law,” and the United States’ decision not to block it, has been broadly welcomed by anti-settlement advocates. But it could end up having exactly the opposite effect from the one desired. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long carried on a delicate balancing act between the right wing’s pressure to support settlement expansion and the left’s push for peace with the Palestinians. The UN’s move may compel him to choose between those forces, and it appears the momentum is on the side of the settlers....

President Obama has taken a number of unilateral actions in the waning days of his tenure that appear designed to box in President-elect Donald Trump Obama's decision Thursday to sanction Russian entities for election-related hacking is just the latest obstacle he has placed in Trump's way. Days before the sanctions were unveiled, the Obama administration allowed the U.N. Security Council to condemn Israeli settlement activity — something that could have an indelible impact on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Obama has also permanently banned oil and gas drilling across large swaths of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans, closed off 1.6 million acres...

Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday said American allies "won't be swayed or intimidated by a tweet" from President-elect Donald Trump, who has repeatedly weighed in on foreign affairs despite not yet taking office. In an exclusive interview with NBC's Andrea Mitchell, Kerry said he would not get into a "debate" with Trump, but suggested U.S. allies have been "affected" by the president-elect's recent commentary on U.S.-Israeli relations and other sensitive foreign policy issues.

The U.N. General Assembly has agreed to fund the compiling of a first-ever U.N. blacklist of private companies doing business in territories disputed between Israel and the Palestinians. A Palestinian U.N. delegate explained earlier that the goal was to encourage countries to boycott such companies.

‘I think this was clearly intended to do much more than affect the issue of Israeli settlements’ HENRY: “Let’s bring in John Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Good evening, ambassador, Merry Christmas. I wonder do you believe this was President Obama stabbing the prime minister, and Israel by extension, in the back.” BOLTON: “No I think he was stabbing Israel in the front. I think this was clearly intended to do much more than affect the issue of Israeli settlements. I think when you read the text of the resolution carefully, it’s an implicit repeal of...

An Egyptian paper published what it claims are the transcripts of meetings between top US and Palestinian officials that, if true, would corroborate Israeli accusations that the Obama administration was behind last week’s UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements. At the same time, a report in an Israeli daily Tuesday night pointed to Britain helping draft the resolution and high drama in the hours leading up to the vote, as Jerusalem tried to convince New Zealand to bury the Security Council measure. In a meeting in early December with top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, US Secretary of State John...

Prior to the UN Security Council vote on anti-Israeli settlement resolution 2334, US Secretary of State John Kerry met with a Palestinian delegation in early December in Washington to discuss the draft, agreeing to cooperate, according to transcripts released by Egyptian daily Al-Youm Al-Saba'a. According to the report, Kerry along with US National Security Adviser Susan Rice, met with Secretary General of the PLO Executive Committee Saeb Erkat and Majed Faraj, head of the Palestinian Authority's General Intelligence Service. The reported transcripts reflect statements by numerous Israeli officials claiming that the resolution was orchestrated by the Obama administration. The source...

The anti-Israel U.N. resolution of December 23, 2016, which the United States abstained from, is the crowning glory of an anti-Semitic and anti-American administration. It is the coda to a dismal eight years from a radical leftist regime that holds a Hanukkah lighting ceremony at the White House while seeking to obliterate the Jewish homeland. It is totally to be expected from a president whose seething animus for all things Jewish was evident from his very first days in office. It will remain a moment of shame for America. On November 10, 1975, U.N. ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan eloquently showed...

Vice President Joe Biden is denying accusations that he personally lobbied foreign leaders to vote in favor of a hotly contested anti-Israel resolution at the United Nations last week that has brought U.S.-Israel relations to an all time low, according to sources who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon about the matter. Insiders familiar with the matter said Biden spoke by phone with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to ask that his country vote in favor of the resolution, which was passed by the U.N. Security Council last week when the United States, in a reversal of longstanding policy, did not...

Did the community organizer from Harvard Law just deliver some personal payback to the IDF commando? So it would seem. By abstaining on that Security Council resolution declaring Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem illegal and invalid, raged Bibi Netanyahu, President Obama "failed to protect Israel in this gang-up at the UN, and colluded with it." Obama's people, charged Bibi, "initiated this resolution, stood behind it, coordinated on the wording and demanded that it be passed." White House aide Ben Rhodes calls the charges "falsehoods." Hence, we have an Israeli leader all but castigating an American...

. 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....

Let’s take our $3 billion and go. The United States pays 22% of the total UN budget. What we get for our $3 billion a year is a corrupt organization whose dysfunctional and hostile agencies are united in opposing us around the world. The United Nations does only two things consistently and effectively: waste money and bash Israel. Sometimes it manages to do both at the same time. ... The Jewish State is the UN’s scapegoat for anything and everything. The Palestinian Authority blamed Israel at the UN for Global Warming. ... Here’s what we get for our $3 billion....