Biden played a key role in the Obama administration’s 2016 attack on Israel

November 1, 2020


Biden played a key role in the Obama administration’s 2016 attack on Israel



By Edward Davis


Those of Israel’s friends, tempted to vote for Joe Biden, should remember that Vice President Joe Biden played a crucial part in pushing through the notorious U.N.

Resolution 2334, which declared that Jews in east Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria have no right to live there.

The Obama administration abstained, which was betrayal enough. Even worse, Biden used his power over Ukraine to force Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to support the resolution.

The diplomatic assault against Israel topped the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s list of “2016 Top Ten Worst Global Anti-Semitic/Anti-Israel Incidents”:

The most stunning 2016 U.N. attack on Israel was facilitated by President Obama when the U.S. abstained on a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel for settlement construction. It reversed decades-long U.S. policy of vetoing such diplomatic moves against the Jewish State. *** The resolution, in effect, identifies Jerusalem’s holiest sites, including the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, as “occupied Palestinian territory.” It also urges U.N. members “to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967,” effectively endorsing BDS. U.S. Congressman Alcee L. Hastings (D-FL) echoed the sentiments of many Democrats and Republicans, labeling the resolution “destructive and irresponsible”, and as seeking “to isolate and delegitimize Israel”. “U.S.’ actions were completely unacceptable, and reckless.”

We later learned that Vice President Biden was a driving force behind America’s betrayal of its long-standing ally.

He engaged in a behind-the-scenes campaign to help the U.N. pass the resolution. To that end, Tablet reported that Biden pressured Ukraine to turn against Israel:

A wealth of evidence is now emerging that, far from simply abstaining from a U.N. vote, which is how the Administration and its press circle at first sought to characterize its actions, the anti-Israel resolution was actively vetted at the highest levels of the U.S. Administration, which then led a pressure campaign—both directly and through Great Britain—to convince other countries to vote in favor of it.

Tablet has confirmed that one tangible consequence of the high-level U.S. campaign was a phone call from Vice President Joseph Biden to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, which succeeded in changing Ukraine’s vote from an expected abstention to a “yes.” According to one U.S. national security source, the Obama Administration needed a 14-0 vote to justify what the source called “the optics” of its own abstention.

Obama, Biden, and their U.N. allies essentially labeled as illegal aliens hundreds of thousands of Jews living in their indigenous homeland -- but not illegal aliens deserving of amnesty.

When he bullied Ukraine into voting “yes,” Biden tried to reset the status quo to 1949-1967. During those years, Jordan controlled Judea, Samaria, and East Jerusalem, and ethnically cleansed the Jews, and destroyed their synagogues.

Even if a future Palestinian Arab state gets that land, there’s the question of why it must be Jew-free. Two million Arabs live in Israel, yet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, with help from Obama and Biden in 2016, insists his future state not be tarnished by a single Jew, making it another Muslim apartheid state.

Obama always indicated a desire to control Jewish lives. In 2009, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat had already told the Obama administration that it was unacceptable for it to object to Jews building apartments in a Jewish neighborhood:

Israeli law does not discriminate between Jews and Arabs and between east and west [Jerusalem]. The demand to specifically halt construction for Jews is not legal in the U.S. or in any other enlightened country in the world.

I cannot imagine the American administration demanding a halt to construction in the U.S. based upon race, religion or sex, and the attempt to demand this of Jerusalem constitutes a double standard and is unacceptable.

Obama’s crude attempts to control where Israel’s Jews could live contrasted dramatically with his hands-off attitude towards the Muslim world. He promised his administration would not meddle in Iran’s internal affairs, regarded a Fatah-Hamas unity deal as “an internal matter” and, in his celebrated Cairo speech, assured the Muslim world that “America does not presume to know what is best for everyone.”

Obama and Biden waited until after the 2016 election what has been described as the administration’s “parting shot” at Israel, knowing most voters would not react well to seeing the Jewish state delegitimized and ostracized by its former best ally.
Biden will probably replicate Obama’s third term. As Axios reported in March 2020, “Biden advisers describe a Return to Normal plan. . . . Biden wants known, trusted people around him -- many from the Obama years.” The only difference will be that any newer advisors will be hardened leftists and even more hostile to Israel.
Image: Jewish settlement in ancient Shiloh. YouTube screengrab.

The diplomatic assault against Israel topped the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s list of “2016 Top Ten Worst Global Anti-Semitic/Anti-Israel Incidents”:

The most stunning 2016 U.N. attack on Israel was facilitated by President Obama when the U.S. abstained on a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel for settlement construction. It reversed decades-long U.S. policy of vetoing such diplomatic moves against the Jewish State. *** The resolution, in effect, identifies Jerusalem’s holiest sites, including the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, as “occupied Palestinian territory.” It also urges U.N. members “to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967,” effectively endorsing BDS. U.S. Congressman Alcee L. Hastings (D-FL) echoed the sentiments of many Democrats and Republicans, labeling the resolution “destructive and irresponsible”, and as seeking “to isolate and delegitimize Israel”. “U.S.’ actions were completely unacceptable, and reckless.”

We later learned that Vice President Biden was a driving force behind America’s betrayal of its long-standing ally. He engaged in a behind-the-scenes campaign to help the U.N. pass the resolution. To that end, Tablet reported that Biden pressured Ukraine to turn against Israel:

A wealth of evidence is now emerging that, far from simply abstaining from a U.N. vote, which is how the Administration and its press circle at first sought to characterize its actions, the anti-Israel resolution was actively vetted at the highest levels of the U.S. Administration, which then led a pressure campaign—both directly and through Great Britain—to convince other countries to vote in favor of it.

Tablet has confirmed that one tangible consequence of the high-level U.S. campaign was a phone call from Vice President Joseph Biden to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, which succeeded in changing Ukraine’s vote from an expected abstention to a “yes.” According to one U.S. national security source, the Obama Administration needed a 14-0 vote to justify what the source called “the optics” of its own abstention.

Obama, Biden, and their U.N. allies essentially labeled as illegal aliens hundreds of thousands of Jews living in their indigenous homeland -- but not illegal aliens deserving of amnesty.

When he bullied Ukraine into voting “yes,” Biden tried to reset the status quo to 1949-1967. During those years, Jordan controlled Judea, Samaria, and East Jerusalem, and ethnically cleansed the Jews, and destroyed their synagogues.
Even if a future Palestinian Arab state gets that land, there’s the question of why it must be Jew-free. Two million Arabs live in Israel, yet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, with help from Obama and Biden in 2016, insists his future state not be tarnished by a single Jew, making it another Muslim apartheid state.

Obama always indicated a desire to control Jewish lives. In 2009, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat had already told the Obama administration that it was unacceptable for it to object to Jews building apartments in a Jewish neighborhood:

Israeli law does not discriminate between Jews and Arabs and between east and west [Jerusalem]. The demand to specifically halt construction for Jews is not legal in the U.S. or in any other enlightened country in the world.
I cannot imagine the American administration demanding a halt to construction in the U.S. based upon race, religion or sex, and the attempt to demand this of Jerusalem constitutes a double standard and is unacceptable.

Obama’s crude attempts to control where Israel’s Jews could live contrasted dramatically with his hands-off attitude towards the Muslim world. He promised his administration would not meddle in Iran’s internal affairs, regarded a Fatah-Hamas unity deal as “an internal matter” and, in his celebrated Cairo speech, assured the Muslim world that “America does not presume to know what is best for everyone.”
Obama and Biden waited until after the 2016 election what has been described as the administration’s “parting shot” at Israel, knowing most voters would not react well to seeing the Jewish state delegitimized and ostracized by its former best ally.
Biden will probably replicate Obama’s third term. As Axios reported in March 2020, “Biden advisers describe a Return to Normal plan. . . . Biden wants known, trusted people around him -- many from the Obama years.” The only difference will be that any newer advisors will be hardened leftists and even more hostile to Israel.


https://www.americanthinker.com/blog...on_israel.html