Free Republic

A new sheriff arrived in town with the appointment of Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina, as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. In her first speech, she indicated the disproportionate contribution by the United States -- 22% of the UN budget and 28% of UN peacekeeping operations -- to the world organization. The UN budget should be subject "strategic cutting," and sometimes withholding of dues. In picturesque language, Haley spoke of the need for a strong U.S. role at the UN. She had already made clear during her testimony on January 18, 2017, to the Senate Foreign Relations...

FULL TITLE: WATCH IT LIVE: TODAY'S UN SECURITY COUNCIL MEETING, "OPEN DEBATE, MIDDLE EAST" ...FEATURING ISRAELI AMBASSADOR DANNY DANON The United Nation's Security Council is meeting today in New York. The declared subject is, "Open Debate - Middle East." According to the Council's president, Olof Skoog, he hopes the meeting will "trigger action towards a two-state solution" between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Will it? Live-streamed here, see for yourself.

The US House of Representatives passed a scathing rebuke Thursday night to a United Nations Security Council resolution the Obama administration allowed through last month that condemned Israeli settlements as illegal. House Resolution 11 declared the UN motion a “one-sided” effort that is an obstacle to peace, placing disproportionate blame on Israel for the continuation of the conflict and encouraging Palestinians from engaging in direct, bilateral negotiations. […] Introduced by California Rep. Ed Royce (R) and New York Rep. Elliot Engel (D), the top two members of the House Foreign Affairs committee, the resolution was co-sponsored 105 other House members,...

Word is going around diplomatic circles that the Obama administration is planning a November surprise for Israel. Here’s what is said to be going on: The Paris peace conference last Friday, to which Israel and the Palestinians were not even invited, will end up exerting enormous pressure on Israel to create a Palestinian state. This renewed pressure will come despite evidence that a Palestinian state in the West Bank will quickly be dominated by genocidal Hamas, which is a threat to Israel and a disaster for the Palestinians. This will lead, in all likelihood, to a United Nations Security Council...

Sweden’s presidency of the UN Security Council will focus on conflict prevention and the inclusion of women in peace processes, Foreign Minister Margot Wallström has revealed. Writing in Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, Wallström highlighted three areas Sweden will tackle during its presidency of the Security Council through January 2017. It is the first month of a two-year term as part of the body, after being elected in June last year as a non-permanent member for the 2017-18 period. […] Mali, Syria, Somalia, the DRC, Cyprus, Colombia and the peace process in the Middle East will all be discussed during the...

President Barack Obama will not allow any further United Nations measures critical of Israel to pass during the remainder of his term, deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes promised on Wednesday. When asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper if secretary of state John Kerry had indicated in his speech earlier Wednesday that the US would veto any other potential UN resolution that may come forward during the rest of Obama’s presidency, Rhodes said “yes.” Since the anti-settlements resolution passed in the Security Council last Friday, Israel has expressed concern that another measure may come up before the international body for a...

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull broke with much of the international community on Friday, attacking last week’s United Nations Security Council Resolution as “one-sided” and “deeply unsettling.” Turnbull, speaking at a menorah-lighting ceremony at Sydney’s Central Synagogue, said that “Australia stands with Israel. We support Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East,” The Australian Jewish News reported. Turnbull’s comments come after his foreign minister said Thursday Australia would likely have voted against United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, which condemned Israeli settlements. …

… A spokesman for the British Prime Minister issued a statement criticizing Kerry’s focus on the Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria, and eastern Jerusalem. “We do not… believe that the way to negotiate peace is by focusing on only one issue, in this case the construction of settlements, when clearly the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is so deeply complex.” The spokesman also criticized Kerry’s description of the current government in Israel as “the most right-wing government” in Israeli history. “And we do not believe that it is appropriate to attack the composition of the democratically-elected government of an...

It took eight years of backbiting and pretending they got along for relations between President Barack Obama’s administration and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to finally hit rock bottom. Though they’ve clashed bitterly before, mostly notably over Iran, the two governments seemed further apart than ever after a speech Wednesday by Secretary of State John Kerry and last week’s United Nations resolution. The key question for the Obama administration, newly willing to air grievances with Israel on live television, is why now? …

John Kerry: Obstacle to Peace Kerry believes that peace is what happens when the bad guys win. December 29, 2016 Daniel Greenfield Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. Before Obama decided to “abstain” from standing with Israel in a UN vote condemning the Jewish State, he had abstained from voting in defense of America in a UN resolution condemning the United States. Obama, like Power and Kerry, have treated Israel just like they treated the United States. John Forbes Kerry began his miserable career as a traitor...

Obama has been perceived for the better part of the past eight years by many of the world's leadership as a spineless and weak leader, never feeling comfortable or really knowing how to implement the art of statesmanship. Obama caved in to Putin, the leader of Russia, and caved in to Assad, the embattled leader of Syria. China, Iran, North Korea, and Libya have all exhibited nothing but contempt for Obama, who always backed down, stood down, and generally did nothing more than wag his presidential tail. And then there was Israel. The objective of the recent Obama-concocted Security Council...

Tuesday on Fox News Channel’s “The O’Reilly Factor,” former United Nations ambassador John Bolton took aim at the Obama administration for allowing a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements in so-called disputed territory to go forward. Bolton told fill-in host Eric Bolling it goes back to Obama having a “score to settle,” which was reflective of the current president’s ideology

The number-two Democrat in the House, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland, has published several statements which are strongly critical of the Obama administration’s betrayal of Israel at the United Nations. Before the vote was cast at the UN, Hoyer urged the President to exercise America’s veto power against the anti-Israel resolution: The resolution, as proposed, seeks to place responsibility for continued conflict fully on Israel and ignores violence and incitement by Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority and Hamas leaderships. Any workable and long-lasting solution to this conflict must come about through direct, bilateral negotiations, and this resolution undermines that...

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union has joined the outgoing U.S. administration in defending the two-state solution as the best way to achieve lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians. A spokeswoman for the 28-nation bloc reiterated the EU's support for the two-state solution on Thursday, the day after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry tore into Israel for settlement-building.

"While Secretary Kerry mentioned Gaza in his speech, he seems to have forgotten the history of the settlements in Gaza, where the Israeli government forced settlers to withdraw from all settlements and the Palestinians responded by sending rockets from Gaza into Israel," Schumer said in a statement. "This is something that people of all political stripes in Israel vividly remember.

Israel fired back at Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasting Kerry’s lengthy televised rebuke of the Middle Eastern democracy and the United States’ abstention from an anti-Israel United Nations vote last week. Netanyahu, speaking in Jerusalem just over an hour after Kerry’s speech had ended, said the speech was “as unbalanced as the anti-Israel resolution passed last week.” “Secretary Kerry paid lip service to the unrelenting campaign of terror that has been waged by the Palestinians against the Jewish State,” Netanyahu said. He later added: “Israelis do not need to be lectured about...

Within two days of the uniquely conjoined holidays of Christmas and Hannukah, the U.N.security council voted for a resolution which would criminalize Israeli settlements, subject Jewish soldiers defending their homeland to international tribunals, and cede the entire West Bank,(Judea) to the “Palestinians”, Cede East Jerusalem to the Palestinians and criminalize any construction of Jewish dwellings there, as “obstacles to the two state solution”. Such insane regulations are proposed regularly in the United Nations, the largest voting block being the Organization of Islamic conference, consisting of 57 Muslim states , not to mention Israel’s other enemies. But usually these malicious motions...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded earlier today to the hour long speech by Secretary John Kerry and the clarified stance of the U.S. position toward Israel as outlined in the past several days.

My college roommate Ed Atkins and I were commissioned second lieutenants in the US Air Force the day before we graduated in June 1970. My eyes were lousy and Ed’s weren’t, so our paths diverged. I went to law school and he went to flight school, the lucky dog. After all, the mission of the Air Force is “to fly and to fight.” He was going to do it, and I was being trained to risk only paper cuts in the law library. I was (and still am) jealous as hell. Fresh from a combat tour in Vietnam, during which...

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...