OPINION:
President Obama’s collusion in the passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334, ostensibly an anti-settlement measure, was a shameful betrayal of our ally Israel (“U.S. rebukes Israel and allows U.N. condemnation of settlements,” web, Dec. 23).
The resolution didn’t just criticize settlements east of the security barrier. It also declared Israel’s claim to the Western Wall in Jerusalem (the holiest place where Jews may pray) and the return of Jews to the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem (which Arab League forces ethnically cleansed of all Jews in 1948) to be “in violation of international humanitarian law,” have “no legal validity” and constitute “a flagrant violation under international law.” This is unconscionable.
Moreover, the United Nations — the “leading global purveyor of anti-Semitism,” according to human rights scholar Anne Bayefsky — is too bigoted a forum for this issue. The U.N. Security Council has previously condemned Israel for such “crimes” as capturing Nazi war criminal and Holocaust planner Adolf Eichmann (UNSC Resolution 138 in 1960), holding an Independence Day parade in Jerusalem (250 in 1968), neutralizing Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor that Saddam Hussein had vowed to use to destroy Israel (487 in 1981), and opening the entrance to an archaeological tunnel alongside the Western Wall (1073 in 1996).
By contrast, the United Nations refused to condemn Arab states attacking and trying to annihilate Israel in the 1948, 1967 and 1973 wars, refused to condemn the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre or the 1976 abduction of 106 Israelis that led to the Entebbe rescue raid. It was silent when Palestinian terrorists massacred 21 young Israelis in a Tel Aviv disco, 15 at a Jerusalem pizzeria, 30 at a Passover Seder, and hundreds more over the course of the second intifada, including children like Danielle Shefi, age 5, and Noam and Matan Ohayon, 4 and 5, in their bedrooms.
Mr. Obama has now added a new outrage to this history.
STEPHEN A. SILVER
San Francisco
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