It was particularly painful and frustrating seeing President Barack Hussein Obama, Secretary Kerry and UN Envoy Samantha Power’s anti-Semitic act knifing Israel in the back at the UN – because so few people listened during the months when my organization (the Zionist Organization of America – ZOA) issued press releases, had press conferences, spoke on TV and radio, and published a full-page NYTimes and other nationwide newspaper ads warning that Obama would betray Israel at the UN after the 2016 election. (See ZOA’s October 29 New York Times Ad, entitled “After Elections Will Obama Betray Israel at the UN?”)
ZOA pleaded with other Jewish organizations and leaders and US Senators to join our campaign to stop Obama from doing grave damage to Israel at the UN – but those groups and leaders responded: “Don’t be silly, Obama will never do this.”
I have been unable to sleep, thinking about how a relentless united Jewish front may have stopped Obama, may have smoked him out to expose his position early on. We might not be stuck today trying to unravel a vicious resolution that promotes ethnically cleansing the Jewish people from our millennia-old homeland; making the Jewish Quarter, and the Western Wall “occupied Arab Land ,“ creating indefensible 1949 Armistice lines that had no legal basis; which will perpetrate anti-Semitic legal actions and boycotts.
If only AIPAC and similar groups had not refused to support the legal, political, historic, and religious right of Jews to live in the Jewish homelands in Judea/Samaria and eastern Jerusalem. Some groups openly opposed this right, sending a message to Obama and the world that Jews were divided on this critical issue. The Conservative Movement even refused to sign ZOA ads calling for an undivided Jerusalem- stating we may have to give parts away!
ZOA’s ads cited flashing warning signs that Obama was plotting to pass an anti-Israel anti-Semitic resolution. Obama’s U.S. State Department began “strongly condemning” Israel for building a few apartments and threatened to “reconsider” U.S. policy at the UN. Obama’s “echo chamber” at the New York Times and like-minded media simultaneously published virtually identical condemnations and demands for UN actions. The White House crossed out the word “Israel” from Prime Minister Shimon Peres’s burial location in Jerusalem. In his Peres eulogy, Obama falsely accused Israel of enslaving Palestinians. A Wikileaks document by a former White House official and a present Obama negotiator revealed the administration’s plan for “consequences” against Israel’s refusal to freeze construction.
ZOA also predicted eight years ago that: “Obama will be the worst president for Israel ever.” During his first presidential campaign, Obama told the New York Times (on May 16 2008) that “Hamas and Hezbollah . . . have legitimate claims.” Obama worshiped for 22 years at the anti-Semitic church where Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who Obama called a great man and mentor, shouted “G-d Damn Israel.” Obama befriended the virulently anti-Israel and anti Semitic Louis Farrakhan, Edward Said, Rashid Khalidi, “Electronic Intifada” founder Ali Abunimah, and radical Bill Ayers.
Obama’s first act as President-elect was threatening Israel to stop defending herself from Hamas rockets in Gaza. It was not coincidental that Israel prematurely ended her efforts to wipe out Hamas’ rocket arsenals the day before Obama was sworn in, in January 2009.
In his 2009 Cairo speech, Obama falsely likened Israel’s treatment of Palestinian Arabs to the Nazis’ treatment of Jews.
During Hamas’s latest (2014) war against Israel, Obama sent Hamas $47 million, urged Israel to accept an early ceasefire with pro-Hamas terms, refused to send critical arms to Israel for days, and unnecessarily briefly stopped American commercial flights to Israel. He also reduced funding for the iron dome only to have Congress reinstate it.
Obama said nothing when the Palestinian Authority (PA) formed a unity government with Hamas except stating he would continue funding the PA.
Obama opposed sanctions on Iran and then pushed through the catastrophic Iran deal, giving a regime bent on Israel’s and America’s annihilation $150 billion and a path to a nuclear bomb. And he released hundreds of Islamist terrorists from Guantanamo – one third of whom have returned to terrorist activity.
In a meeting with Jewish leaders he proclaimed, “You must speak to your friends and relatives in Israel and ask them and yourselves to search your souls to see if you’re serious about peace, you think the peace process is overrated…but the PA’s Mahmoud Abbas is sincere about peace and everyone knows that.”
But Obama was not satisfied with giving Iran the means to destroy Israel; Obama also apparently needed to drive another knife into Israel’s back last week. .
After the fact this week, many Jewish groups and leaders joined with ZOA, bi-partisan Congress members, and others to condemn the horrendous UNSC resolution.
But we must do more now.
It’s time to unite to support real action – such as the proposal by Senators Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, James Langford, and Marco Rubio to eliminate funding to the UN and PA until UN Resolution 2334 is reversed.
It’s time for AIPAC and other Jewish groups to proclaim that Jerusalem is not negotiable and that Jews have the right to live in our homeland in eastern Jerusalem and Judea/Samaria. And to join ZOA in explaining that Jerusalem is mentioned 700 times in the Torah – but never in the Koran – and is not holy to Muslims.
It’s time for AIPAC and others to stop promoting a Palestinian state (the so-called “two state solution”) – and to join us in explaining that experience, polling and Palestinian-Arab leaders’ own statements demonstrate that this “solution” would be a Hamas-Iran-PLO terrorist state that seeks to obliterate Israel.
It’s time for Hadassah and the Conservative Movement and others to end their anti-Bannon campaigns and to condemn anti-Semites such as Keith Ellison.
It’s time for Jewish groups to appreciate our friends who tried to stop the horrendous UNSC resolution, including Donald Trump and his great nominee for U.S. Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, and Trump’s chief policy strategist Stephen Bannon.
And it’s time for us to all work together with the pro-Israel Trump administration to repair the damage that Obama, Kerry and Power have wrought.