By Clarice Feldman, AMERICAN THINKER

In the Jewish calendar it’s the year 5777. That’s how long we date our history. The United Nations has lasted a mere forty-five years. Founded to promote world peace, it has devolved into a corrupt, anti-democratic, anti-Semitic den of thieves, where a “cartel of Bronze Age backward” nations regularly gets resolutions passed to attack the only democratic, modern state in the Middle East while ignoring genocide, despotism, slavery, and ethnic and religious persecutions that take place in their own lands.

Only people as blinkered as Obama, Powers, and Kerry could think otherwise, unless they, too, so despise Jews and Israel that they willingly accept the fiction that the UN is an impartial body trying to bring peace to the area. This week, with the connivance of the usual bastard nations and with the surprising addition of New Zealand  (whose main export, wine, should be boycotted in disgust) rammed through a resolution to ban settlements outside the 1967 borders of Israel. They did this despite unprecedented efforts by president-elect Trump to keep the resolution from being considered. At his behest, Egypt postponed the effort to consider the resolution, only to have the administration succeed in conniving with New Zealand and the Palestinians to get it back on the agenda.
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BY RICHARD l CRAVATTS, TOI

The shameful and morally incoherent December 23rd resolution vote by the UN Security Council demanding that “Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem,” also includes dangerous language that proclaims that Israeli settlements, which are “dangerously imperiling the viability of the two-state solution,” have “no legal validity.”

The United States, contrary to its customary role, abstained from the vote, which passed by a vote of 14 in favor out of 15 countries, and this departure marks a new low in the U.S.’s relations with Israel, even though the State Department under President Obama has, during the last eight years, promiscuously referred to the Israeli settlements as “unhelpful,” “obstructions to peace,” and “illegitimate.”
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“The Security Council,

“Reaffirming its relevant resolutions, including resolutions 242 (1967), 338 (1973), 446 (1979), 452 (1979), 465 (1980), 476 (1980), 478 (1980), 1397 (2002), 1515 (2003), and 1850 (2008),

“Guided by the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, and reaffirming, inter alia, the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force,

“Reaffirming the obligation of Israel, the occupying Power, to abide scrupulously by its legal obligations and responsibilities under the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949, and recalling the advisory opinion rendered on 9 July 2004 by the International Court of Justice,
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T. Belman. This article was published two days ago. Its even more pertinent now that the resolution on settlements has passed.

Are you going to be the one to convince Trump that, perhaps, despite all that has happened, recognizing a Palestinian state is a worthy endeavor?

By Rabbi Joseph Gerlitzky, INN

The story goes that sometime, toward the end of the 1940s, a passerby chanced upon a decrepit army bunker, in which two soldiers crouched in the mud, clutching their weapons. Apparently, they had been holding out there since the Second World War, seeing that word of the war’s conclusion had never reached their ears. Instead, for nearly half a decade, they remained at their posts, waiting for the enemy to arrive…

In an interview given to channel CBS by Benjamin Netanyahu on December 11, 2016, the Israeli prime minister sounded not much different than those two benighted soldiers, crouching in the mud, clutching their rusty weapons, blind to the fact that the world beyond their bunker had radically changed.
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By Ted Belman

For the record, the settlements are not illegal either because the Fourth Geneva Convention doesn’t make them so or it doesn’t apply to these lands.

Netanyahu shares some of the blame because he never embraced the Levy Report and never makes the case that the settlements are legal. He just argues they are not an obstacle to peace. He left the field wide open for the UN to pass this resolution.

I believe that this resolution is ultra vires the UN Charter. The UN has no right to set the borders. It may only act to keep the peace. Also remember the hateful Zionism is Racism resolution was repealed.

Something more is needed than just reducing or cutting off US financial support for the UN or the PA. And for certain there will never be a negotiated solution.

It is time for unilateral action. Israel and the US should decide what to do in keeping with the 2016 GOP platform which was unanimously passed. THEN DO IT.

Our response must wait for Jan 20 as there is still time for a Chap 7 resolution to be passed.

I think this resolution will serve as a catalyst for good things for Israel.

Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) President Morton A. Klein released the following statement:

We are outraged  – but not surprised – that President Barack Hussein Obama and U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power enabled the passage of an extraordinary, racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Israel UN Security Counsel resolution this afternoon. Also, the Resolution was filled with falsehoods and distortions. Obama and Kerry’s phony claim that they allowed this Resolution because Jews living in Judea/Samaria eastern Jerusalem would prevent a Palestinian State is a canard.The fact is that almost all Jews living in these very small areas are areas that would never be given away or prevent a State. The reason there’s no Palestinian State is the Arabs rejection of a State in 2000,2001,2007 in virtually all of Judea/Samaria and parts of Jerusalem.
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HAARETZ

U.S. didn’t veto the resolution because it reflects facts on the ground and is consistent with U.S. policy, Samantha Power says;

Trump: ‘Things will be different after Jan. 20.’

THIS RESOLUTION IS THE STRAW THAT WILL BREAK THE CAMELS BACK.

THE BIG LOSER WILL BE THE UN. THE US WILL DESTROY IT AND REPLACE IT.

ISRAEL WILL TRIUMPH.

Next year will see general elections in Holland, France and Germany, and nationalist parties in all three countries are likely to win or at a minimum be profoundly strengthened.

By Caroline B Glick, JPOST

US Pres Obama has but a month left in office. But he has a month left. And he is using it. In the days remaining, Obama is using the full authority of his office to advance his policies with the hope of rendering permanent his mark on American policy.

Domestically, Obama is working to undercut the capacity of his successor, President-elect Donald Trump, to implement his plans of expanding domestic oil and gas exploration and development.
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Dr. Aaron Lerner – Take note of this important line in the item:

“Of course, some elements we may need to send to another place to fix. But in most cases, we should we able to replace them from what’s on the shelf …The important thing is that we will not send aircraft out of the country.”

Here’s the truth:

1. There are large key components of the F-35 that WE CANNOT TOUCH. We can only pull them out of the jet and replace with the spare on the shelf.
2. We are going to have very few of these spare large key components.
3. The SLIGHTEST problem in such a component that under normal circumstances might be addressed in a few minutes by an Israeli tech (replace a washer, filets, etc.) mmeans getting thatmuch closer to exhausting the stock of spare components.
4. If and when the day comes that someone in the White House wants to limit our ability to continue an operation it would be child’s play for supply delays to slash the number of combat ready jets.
5. In fact – even without malice, this set up can easily lead to a situation that most of the jets are out of service during the course of a majorconflict that drains our resources.

By: Barbara Opall-Rome, December 11, 2016

TEL AVIV — Nearly a decade of planning preceded Monday’s scheduled delivery of the first F-35Is to the Israel Air Force (IAF), but once they touch down at the stealth fighter’s desert base at Nevatim, another process will just begin, with vast implications on how Israel wields airpower near and very far from home.

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HAARETZ : New Zealand, Venezuela, Malaysia and Senegal told Egypt on Thursday that if it did not clarify by midnight whether it planned to call a vote on a draft UN Security Council resolution demanding an end to Israeli settlements, then they reserved the right to move ahead with the text, diplomats said.

This article by Anne Bayefsky originally appeared on Fox News.

Update: Egypt Delays Vote

President Obama, left, at the Kapolei Golf Club, in Kapolei, Hawaii, Dec. 21, 2016.

The UN Security Council is scheduled to vote Thursday on a scandalous and irreversible Palestinian-led resolution purporting to decide that Israeli settlements violate international law. All signs point to President Obama being a willing participant and refusing to exercise the American veto.

If adopted, the treacherous resolution will greenlight the boycott, divestment, sanctions “BDS” master plan to devastate the Israeli economy and fast-track the effort to send Israel’s Prime Minister to the International Criminal Court to stand trial for war crimes.

The Palestinians are in a hurry to capitalize on the deep-seated antipathy that President Obama has always had for Israel and its leaders, but occasionally repressed during election-cycles. Now an Obama foreign policy, with strong affinities for the UN mob, is unhinged.
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by Daniel Pipes, Commentary

Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy sadly fits the classic description of insanity: “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” The identical assumptions – land-for-peace and the two-state solution, with the burden primarily on Israel – stay permanently in place, no matter how often they fail.

Decades of what insiders call “peace processing” has left matters worse than when they started, yet the great powers persist, sending diplomat after diplomat to Jerusalem and Ramallah, ever hoping that the next round of negotiations will lead to the elusive breakthrough.

The time is ripe for a new approach, a basic re-thinking of the problem. It draws on Israel’s successful strategy as carried out through its first 45 years. The failure of Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy since 1993 suggests this alternative approach – with a stress on Israeli toughness in pursuit of victory. This would, paradoxically perhaps, be of benefit to Palestinians and bolster American support.
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T. Belman. This is brilliant. A must read.

By Matthew Hausman

Embracing JStreet, the NIF and the Palestinian Arab narrative seem the right thing to do when you reject authentic Judaism. It has happened before.

Progressive Jews wear their partisan allegiances on their sleeves during election season, often taking positions that are so inconsistent with tradition as to cast doubt on whether their values are Jewish at all, or merely secular political dogmas.  The most fundamental priorities for those claiming loyalty to tradition should be respect for ancestral values and commitment to religious, cultural and national survival.  Instead, progressives espouse views that are hostile to Jewish continuity and often display greater affinity for left-wing anti-Semites, Islamic radicals, and revisionist narratives that deny Jewish history.  
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By Matthew M. Hausman,

Know before Whom you stand – and conduct your politics accordingly.

The Hebrew phrase “Da Lifnei Mi Attah Omed” appears above the Ark in many synagogues and means “know before Whom you stand.”  These words come from the Talmud (Tractate Berachot 28b) and remind us that we are always in the presence of G-d and to conduct ourselves accordingly.  For Jews, this includes remembering the commandments, resisting assimilation, and safeguarding the religious and national integrity of the Jewish people.  But when community leaders and professionals express deep concern for the sensitivities of those who deny Jewish history and nationhood, one has to wonder whether they’ve forgotten before Whom they stand, or whether they ever knew in the first place.
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By MARTIN SHERMAN

The impending destruction of the Jewish community of Amona reflects failure of political will and ideo-intellectual bankruptcy of the elected government rather, than the inevitable culmination of a legal battle.

To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to the written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the ends to the means. – Thomas Jefferson, September 20, 1810

In Israel, the negative impact of the judicialization of politics on the Supreme Court’s legitimacy is already beginning to show its mark. Over the past decade, the public image of the Supreme Court as an autonomous and impartial arbiter has been increasingly eroded as political representatives of minority groups have come to realize that political arrangements and public policies agreed upon in majoritarian decision-making arenas are likely to be reviewed by an often hostile Supreme Court. As a result, the court and its judges are increasingly viewed by a considerable portion of the Israeli public as pushing forward their own political agenda… – Prof. Ran Hirschl,Towards Juristocracy: The Origins and Consequences of the New Constitutionalism, Harvard University Press, 2004.
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What is the purpose. He should be talking in private with Trump. Why is he not angling for a better deal from Trump?

(Communicated by the Prime Minister’s Media Adviser)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, today (Thursday, 22 December 2016), released the following statement:

“Israelis deeply appreciate one of the great pillars of the US-Israel alliance: The willingness over many years of the US to stand up in the UN and veto anti-Israel resolutions.

I hope the US won’t abandon this policy; I hope it will abide by the principles set by President Obama himself in his speech in the UN in 2011: That peace will come not through UN resolutions, but only through direct negotiations between the parties.

And that’s why this proposed resolution is bad. It’s bad for Israel; it’s bad for the United States; and it’s bad for peace.”

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 388

By Col. (res.) Dr. Eran Lerman, December 22, 2016

Practically every ideological and strategic group in the Middle East has a stake in the raw and murderous Syrian struggle. Viewed through the prism of the regional “game of camps,” the fall of Aleppo represents a major boost for Iran and her allies, given the active (and costly) role played there by Hezbollah fighters and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (specifically, Qasim Suleymani). Coupled with the growing role of the IRGC-backed forces in Iraq (“al-Hashd al-Sha’bi”) and the ongoing conflict in Yemen, the victory in Aleppo is feeding Tehran’s increasingly arrogant vision about the future of the region and Israel’s assured demise.
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Shoshana Bryen, JEWISH POLICY CENTER • December 22, 2016

President-elect Trump’s choice of David Friedman as Ambassador to Israel appears to be an excellent decision. It has already brought howls of protest from people invested heavily in the Oslo and subsequent accords, the “peace process” and the concept of the United States as an “evenhanded” broker between Israelis and Palestinians. Friedman, an Oslo-skeptic, has saidhe believes that, “Notwithstanding ‘agreements’ reached at Camp David, Oslo, Wye Plantation and elsewhere, neither Yasser Arafat nor Mahmoud Abbas ever had any intentions to observe the minimal conditions required of a two-state solution.”
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Ted Belman

The UN Security Council is due to vote today on an Egyptian draft resolution that would demand that Israel “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities”.

As I have often stated, the Arab States, though they need Israel’s help have never altered there demand Israel’s agreement to the Arab Peace Initiative.

This Egyptian sponsored resolution is another example of how intransigent they are even though they need us desperately.