WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: Am I being paranoid in fearing that whichever side wins our 2024 election, that after it, the current administration, no longer with immediate backlash of Jewish voters to fear, will harken to the International Court’s anti-Jewish homeland ruling this week and foment another UNSC 2334 or worse in the UN? Bite me twice, shame on me.
You didn’t have to be a red-blooded MAGA GOP-nik like me to have appreciated some moving moments at this week’s Republican Convention. President Trump’s opening remarks on the millimeters-from-fatal Pennsylvania rally assassin’s bullet last weekend were certainly that. Any grandfather, of which I have the privilege to be one, was undoubtedly deeply moved by President Trump’s granddaughter’s personal view of her grandfather. And, talk about family, Sen. Vance’s intensely inspiring account of his mother’s decade-sustained recovery from addiction is hopefully that of a role model for those afflicted with this devastating scourge on Americans.
But the brief moving GOP convention remarks that I myself missed but, thank you, Alan, I saw on tape and would tell you about are those of a young Harvard student, one Shabbos Kestenbaum, and of the Convention’s reception of him, of whom every Jew in America, even once-Sanders-voters like him, can be justifiably proud.
JTA headlined its article Thursday
Republicans Cheer Shabbos Kestenbaum, Harvard Grad Who Is Suing School Over Post-Oct. 7 Antisemitism
JTA’s Ron Kampeas wrote: “… as he took the main stage, Kestenbaum got a hero’s welcome for helping to knock a despised liberal institution, Harvard, back on its heels.”
“I am a proud first-generation American,” Kestenbaum began. “I am a proud Orthodox Jew, and as of five months ago, I am the proud plaintiff suing Harvard University for its failure to combat antisemitism.” JTA: “Whoops and cheers.”
“When I planted 1,200 American and Israeli flags on campus they were they were all vandalized in 24 hours…. I was harassed by my peers merely for being a Jew and have received countless death threats online.”
Perhaps you may not agree (which I do) that the following necessarily follows, but Shabbos went on: “Let’s elect a president who will instill patriotism in our schools once again. Let’s elect a president who will confront terrorism and its supporters once again.” JTA: “The audience erupted in cheers.”
But whether you agree with nee-Sanders-Voter Kestenbaum about the 2024 election, there is a specter of events following the 2016 election which we American Jews, whoever each of us votes for this year, must warn against occurring again.
In case you don’t remember, here’s how the Obama administration, after Trump had won the 2016 election, stuck it to Israel and its American Jewish supporters on its way out the door.
On pages 577-78 of his autobiography Bibi: My Story, Netanyahu wrote about how UNSC 2334, rejecting Israeli claim to Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem, came about. That resolution was adopted 14-0-1 by the Security Council in December 2016. It was the US that abstained, but Bibi wrote that “Egypt was chosen by the US [emphasis added] as the country to submit the anti-Israel resolution at the Security Council.” (And, btw, guess who co-sponsored 2334 – New Zealand and Ukraine. Ibid.)
Why is this relevant now? A JNS article Friday led:
“The International Court of Justice, the principal judicial arm of the United Nations, located in the Hague, issued a non-binding 83-page opinion on Friday declaring Israeli ‘occupation’ of Judea and Samaria to be ‘unlawful.’
“’The Court reaffirms that the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the regime associated with them, have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law,’ the U.N. High Court stated.
“Israel is ‘obliged to bring an end to its presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible,’ the court added.”
Israel, naturally, went nuts. Israeli PM Netanyahu, per JNS, “denounced the ruling on Friday”:
“‘The Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land, including in our eternal capital Jerusalem nor in Judea and Samaria, our historical homeland,’ he said. ‘No absurd opinion in The Hague can deny this historical truth or the legal right of Israelis to live in their own communities in our ancestral home.’”
Bravo, Bibi! But it’s election-time in the U.S. Regardless of who wins, the specter is out there that, no longer having to fear, realistically or not, the immediate wrath of American Jewish voters, the forces at work in the current administration, from which the Obama administration’s participants are hardly absent, may in the Security Council stick it to Jews again, again on their post-election way out the door if the Republicans win.
What’s incumbent on us now, before the election, is to make clear that, regardless which side wins our 2024 U.S. presidential election, there must be no repetition of UNSC 2334. Even Jews who once voted for Sanders must publicly state that if the U.S. foments-and-abstains-on another such resolution in the U.N., every one of us will permanently wear MAGA hats from then on. Bite me twice, shame on me.
Am I being paranoid about the prospect of this? I don’t think so. Here’s a Jerusalem Post headline Friday: “Blinken Asserts Hostage-Ceasefire Deal Is Close, Reasserts Support For Two-State Solution” [emphasis added?]