Family Research Council

What does the State Department have to do with abortion and sexual behavior-based policies? Unfortunately, a whole lot. Over the last eight years, the State Department under Hillary Clinton and John Kerry has elevated the promotion of the Left’s view of human sexuality and abortion “rights” to the detriment of fundamental human rights like religious freedom.

Clinton made her intentions known early in her tenure that the administration would not only promote special rights based upon sexual behavior within the State Department but would use the State Department to export the LGBTQ agenda globally. These behavior based rights have consistently been a major emphasis of the Obama administration’s foreign policy.
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The NYTimes buried the Holocaust on its back pages during WWII. Today, its front section criticizes Israel in article after article.

By Prof Phyllis Chesler, INN

The New York Times has done it again! Just when I think they couldn’t possibly be any worse—they have the power to surprise and disgust me anew.

Six days ago, 14 nations on the UN Security Council (with America’s abstention), voted in Resolution 2334–and we know that Obama was behind this resolution, just stay tuned for “iron clad” evidence.

Yesterday, Obama’s Secretary of State, John Kerry, delivered his shameless lecture in which, as Israel’s “friend,” he demanded that it commit suicide by appeasing terrorism even further in the pointless, fruitless process known as the “two state solution.”
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By Odysseus, AMERICAN THINKER

American should not withdraw from the United Nations without first ensuring that the organization cannot retaliate.

“Upon this, one has to remark that men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge.”

–Niccolò Machiavelli

The recent actions of the Obama administration and the UN Security Council have renewed calls for the United States to withdraw from the United Nations.  The arguments for withdrawal are compelling and based on firm moral and practical considerations, but, so long as they leave the United Nations’ various organs intact, they will continue to wreak havoc in the world, unencumbered by our veto.  American withdrawal will not reduce the United Nations’ mischief, but unleash it.  Machiavelli addressed this when he wrote the passage quoted above, which can be summed up as, “never do an enemy a minor injury.”
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For 40 years, the U.S. was satisfied with pro forma condemnations of construction in Jerusalem, and the Israeli government built 12 new neighborhoods that became home to 200,000 Jews. Then U.S. President Barack Obama and his team came along.

By Nadav Shragai, ISRAEL HAYOM

In the spring of 2009, a winter frost was already on its way between U.S. President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The first meeting between the American president and the Israeli prime minister, which took place in May that year and was later described by associates of Netanyahu as “very difficult,” raised almost at once the differences of opinion that would characterize the relations between the two on two central issues: the Iranian nuclear program and construction in Jerusalem and the settlements.

The first red light for Israel came when Obama informed Netanyahu that the U.S. intended to announce a new regional peace plan. Netanyahu tried to sound him out for details. Obama refrained from providing any, but the answer came two months after the meeting.
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By Evelyn Gordon, COMMENTARY

There’s only one sensible way to relate to last week’s UN Security Council Resolution 2334–as a document, to quote its own language, which has “no legal validity” and “constitutes a flagrant violation under international law.” The resolution, which deemed every Israeli home in East Jerusalem and the West Bank in violation of international law and designated both areas in their entirety as “occupied Palestinian territory,” contradicts every previous binding international document on the Arab-Israeli conflict, including previous Security Council resolutions. So if those previous documents had legal validity, then this one is a flagrant violation of settled international law. And if they didn’t have legal validity, but merely expressed the international mood of the moment, then the same goes for this one, too.
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By MARTIN SHERMAN   

Despite being in power continuously for over a half- decade, Netanyahu has done virtually nothing to install effective mechanisms to contain and counter the pernicious effects of the White House’s predilections

 “If the aim of the Israeli government is to prevent a peace deal with the Palestinians, now or in the future, it’s close to realizing that goal…The Obama administration, with every justification, strongly condemned the…betrayal of the idea of a two-state solution in the Middle East. But Mr. Netanyahu obviously doesn’t care what Washington thinks, so it will be up to President Obama to find another way to preserve that option before he leaves office.”

               At the Boiling Point with Israel, The New York Times Editorial, October 6, 2016

For all the opprobrium and outrage one might feel for the egregious malevolence of the action –and inaction—of the Obama regime in the final throes of its incumbency, hard truths as to the part Israel itself played in facilitating these appalling and infuriating outbursts of vindictive pique cannot—and should not—be overlooked. Especially if there is to be any hope of avoiding such future fiascos…or of repairing the damage of past ones
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BE SURE TO LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW. SARAH AT HER BEST.

By John Hayward, BREITBART

Listen http://www.breitbart.com/radio/2016/12/29/palin-trump-call-unshackling-political-bands-tying-us-u-n/

On Thursday’s Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM, former Alaska Governor and 2008 vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin talked with Breitbart London Editor-in-Chief Raheem Kassam about the return of national sovereignty that began with Brexit and might lead to a United States withdrawal from the United Nations in the wake of its anti-Israel vote.
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Moscow, Ankara seek to broker deal that would leave Syrian President Assad in power until a less polarizing Alawite candidate emerges • Tehran remains unconvinced • Plan aims to cement narrative that Russia is regaining its mantle as a key Mideast player.

By Eli Leon, Daniel Siryoti, Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff

By Evelyn Gordon

There’s really only one suitable Zionist response to last week’s UN Security Council resolution on the settlements: massive settlement construction. That’s the appropriate response for more than one reason, but I’ll focus here on the most obvious one: The resolution proves conclusively that Israel gets no credit for showing restraint on this issue, so there’s no earthly reason why it should continue suffering the costs of restraint.

As I’ve written repeatedly in the past, data from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics shows that there has been less settlement construction under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu than under any of his predecessors. Nor is this a matter of partisan dispute: The left-wing daily Haaretz, a virulent opponent of both Netanyahu and the settlements, used the same data to reach the same conclusion last year.
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Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) President Morton A. Klein released the following statement:

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s speech today essentially was a proposal for a Hamas-Fatah-Iranian-Palestinian-Arab terrorist state, which divides Jerusalem in two, forcibly evicts Jews from their homeland, and requires Israel’s retreat to indefensible borders. His speech was filled with anti-Israel vitriol and falsehoods. Neither the U.S. nor Israel nor any of our allies would benefit from establishing another Iranian or Iraqi or Libyan or Syrian-style state in the Middle East – and that is exactly what Kerry’s proposal entails.  Kerry’s proposal endangers Israel’s safety and security – and would reward the Palestinian Authority (“PA”)/PLO for promoting the murder of Jews, honoring murderers of Jews, and paying pensions to families of murderers of Jews.

Kerry also called for easing the Gaza weapons blockade, which he called “restrictions” on Gaza.  This would enable Hamas to bring in more military equipment, further gravely endangering Israel’s citizens.
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Read full transcript:

Thank you all. It’s good to be here even in the middle of a holiday week. I wish you all a happy and productive new year. Today, I want to share candid thoughts about an issue that for decades has animated the foreign policy dialogue here and around the world – the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Throughout his administration, President Obama has been deeply committed to Israel and its security, and that commitment has guided his pursuit of peace in the Middle East. This is an issue which I’ve worked on intensely during my time as Secretary of State for one simple reason: because the two state solution is the only way to achieve a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians. It is the only way to ensure Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state, living in peace and security with its neighbors. It is the only way to ensure a future of freedom and dignity for the Palestinian people. And it is an important way of advancing U.S. interests in the region.
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By Jordan Blashekr, AMERICAN THINKER

President Obama is clearly not yet finished destroying what remains of the U.S.-led international order.  By allowing a harmful UN Security Council resolution to pass declaring Israeli settlements to be “a flagrant violation under International Law,” he reverses decades of U.S. policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and makes a future negotiated settlement even more difficult for the parties to achieve.  More importantly, the move strikes a devastating blow to the credibility of the UN and international law.

Eight years of Obama’s foreign policy have left the world on fire.  Now, with his final foray into geopolitics, he has attacked the last remaining vestiges of a rules-based order.

For a president who prides himself on the long-game, this was an incredibly short-sighted and selfish move.
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[Dror Eydar wrote a critique of this article under this title. It’s time for a changing of the guard]

Will the top brass and the military and the intelligence services be replaced with loyal officers? Will the incitement against artists and political rivals be translated into indictments, imprisonment and dismissals?

By Aluf Benn, HAARETZ

On May 14, 2015, exactly 67 years after the Declaration of Independence, a revolution began in Israel. Few people noticed the change at first. Benjamin Netanyahu remained prime minister, as he had been for six years. He used the same manner of speaking and had the same hairstyle, but he was different.

The conservative Netanyahu who had shunned adventures and risks ceded office to the right-wing radical Netanyahu seeking to fulfill his old dream of “replacing the elites.” But instead of forming a national-unity government with his rival, Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog, after the election that year and sleepily settling back into “stability,” Netanyahu established a right-wing coalition with his former assistant and current bitter enemy, Habayit Hayehudi chief Naftali Bennett.
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DEBKA

Wednesday, Dec. 28, hours before US Secretary of State John Kerry was due to deliver a major speech on his vision for the Middle East, Turkey and Russia announced a ceasefire plan going into effect the same night for the whole of Syria, and in all regions, where fighting between pro-government forces and opposition groups were taking place – excepting for terrorist organizations.
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By Adam Kredo, FREE BEACON

Congress is already setting the stage to cut off U.S. funding to the United Nations in the wake of a contested vote last week in which the Obama administration permitted an anti-Israel resolution to win overwhelming approval, according to congressional leaders, who told the Washington Free Beacon that the current administration is already plotting to take further action against the Jewish state before vacating office.

Other punitive actions by Congress could include expelling Palestinian diplomats from U.S. soil and scaling back ties with foreign nations that voted in favor of the controversial measure, according to multiple sources who spoke to the Free Beacon about the situation both on and off the record.
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Amb. Alan Baker – The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs

The December 23, 2016, resolution adopted by the UN Security Council regarding Israel’s settlement policy has been received with mixed and even extreme reactions.

The Palestinian leadership, having initiated the resolution, is celebrating its adoption as an affirmation by the international community, including the United States, of its claims against Israel.

Israel sees this resolution as a major impediment to continued peace negotiations in light of the fact that it by-passes the negotiation process in an attempt to prejudge central issues that are on the negotiating table. As such, it seriously prejudices any possible return to the negotiating process.
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By GERALD STEINBERG 27 Dec 2016, The Jerusalem Post

Once President Obama had signaled his readiness to join in this ritual, there was no reason to expect the other 14 members of the UNSC to break with the traditional Israel- bashing.
Israel’s angry response to the UN Security Resolution on Israeli settlements, and the abstention (de facto support) of the Obama administration is understandable, but it is unlikely to be very helpful and is probably counterproductive.

Such attacks in the UN have been commonplace for decades, reflecting both the power of the Arab and Islamic bloc, and the hypocrisy of many of the western democracies.

Once President Obama had signaled his readiness to join in this ritual, there was no reason to expect the other 14 members of the UNSC to break with the traditional Israel- bashing.
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