By New York Post (Opinion) | Created at 2024-11-20 01:01:13 | Updated at 2024-11-26 11:23:56
6 days ago
It’s back to the future at the UN Security Council this week as an outgoing Democratic administration eyes multilateral opportunities to support its Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel.
Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle should respond with one word President Biden knows well: Don’t.
Eight years ago, in the weeks following Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton, the outgoing Obama administration shepherded a Security Council resolution that declared Israel’s settlements in Judea, Samaria and parts of Jerusalem — including near the Western Wall — a violation of international law.
The resolution passed by a vote of 14-0 — and the United States abstained rather than use its permanent member veto.
The move was intended to box in the incoming Trump administration, limiting it to a failed peace paradigm and pressing Israel to give up territory to the Palestinian Authority, which indoctrinates its children to hate Jews and then pays terrorists to kill them.
The resolution handed Israel’s detractors a thin veneer of international law to conceal a blatantly antisemitic thesis that Jews have no right to live in their ancestral homeland — even in their eternal capital, including their religion’s holiest site.
Trump, of course, was not constrained by the UN’s lawfare.
His administration moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, declared that Israeli settlements in disputed territories were not inherently illegal and pressured the Palestinian Authority to end its “pay for slay” terror support.
He defunded the UN Relief and Works Agency and withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council — two leading promulgators of UN antisemitism.
And alongside a maximum pressure campaign on Iran, Trump delivered something historic: Arab-Israeli normalization agreements without a Palestinian state.
The Biden administration came into office knowing that Trump’s Abraham Accords disproved three decades of Middle East peacemaking strategy — and would soon force the Palestinians to either end their quest for Israel’s destruction, or get left behind by history.
To return to the failed paradigm, Biden resumed funding to UNRWA despite its close collaboration with Hamas, and rejoined the Human Rights Council.
Worse, having already lifted pressure on Iran and distanced Washington from Riyadh, the Biden administration tied future normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia to Palestinian statehood.
All this took place before Oct. 7.
That day should have been a terrifying reminder that there are consequences for subsidizing, incentivizing or enabling those who plot genocide.
But rather than learning any lessons, the Biden administration doubled down.
With indisputable evidence that UNRWA operates in Gaza as an arm of Hamas, Congress temporarily banned US funding — but the State Department continues to say UNRWA is indispensable, and pushes allies to fund it.
Biden reversed Trump’s position on settlements, aligning US policy with the 2016 Security Council resolution.
Most alarming, Biden issued an executive order that brought the BDS campaign inside the US government, hitting Israeli individuals, nonprofits and companies with sanctions typically reserved for America’s worst enemies.
Now, with just two months left until Trump returns to office, Israel’s detractors are pushing harder.
This week, the Security Council is considering a resolution demanding an immediate and unconditional Israeli ceasefire in Gaza, without any requirement for Hamas to release its remaining 101 hostages — and enshrining UNRWA as the “backbone of humanitarian response in Gaza.”
It should be a no-brainer for Washington to veto this pro-Hamas resolution.
Other resolutions may soon follow: The White House might seek to box Trump and Israel into a Saudi-Israel peace proposal that hinges on unachievable Palestinian demands, or to endorse a resolution giving full diplomatic recognition to the (invented) Palestinian state.
Or, knowing that Trump will rescind his BDS executive order, Biden might sign off on a UN sanctions framework targeting Jews living in disputed territories.
The Biden State Department would call it a multilateral action to deter “West Bank extremists.”
Everyone else would call it what it is: BDS.
Other shenanigans might emerge inside the General Assembly, where Palestinians hope to strip Israel’s UN credentials.
If Democrats want to save their party from further drift into the antisemitic abyss, they should call the White House this week and urge Biden to halt all such hostilities toward Israel during his final days in office.
Republicans should issue warnings to the United Nations as well: A new administration arrives in 60 days with the power to defund and impose sanctions of its own.
With unified GOP control of the White House, Senate and House, the UN should consider its next moves carefully.
Richard Goldberg is a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
