WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: There’s a real continuing danger to our Jewish homeland of Israel of a US-orchestrated follow-up to UNSC 2334, which called for a 1949-lines inside-the-land-of-Israel Arab state. US Jews, including supporters of “two-states” as a peace basis, should actively oppose the appointment as US Ambassador to Israel of Mr. Lew, who as a key member of the Obama administration supported 2334.
Challenge to Grassroots American Jews: Protest Looming UNSC 2334-Part 2 By Protesting Appointment of Lew?
It was ok with Britain at the beginning of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war for the invading Egyptian army to march up the Mediterranean coast approaching Tel Aviv. But later in that war, when Israeli troops set foot in Sinai to cut off Egyptians still in Israel’s south, Great Britain instantly warned Israel it would intervene on Egypt’s side unless it forthwith withdrew, which it did. Instantly upon Israel’s 1956 victory, Russia and the US demanded Israel get out of Sinai. It did. And now today – never mind Israel’s victory in the 1967 Six Day War, and again in 1973 – the whole world is howling for Israeli withdrawal back to the old defunct historic-Jerusalem-less, militarily-indefensible, 9-miles-wide in the lowland middle 1949 ceasefire lines. And today’s howlers include many Jews.
In an article this week, Tuesday, 8/15/23, Who Is Jack Lew, the Rumored Next US Ambassador to Israel, the Jerusalem Post’s review of Lew’s involvements in the Obama administration included:
“Lew also said he doesn’t think Israel should be reliant on US vetoes in the UN Security Council, defended the 2016 decision not to veto a UNSC condemnation of settlements, and pointed out that the Obama administration had always opposed settlements.” [emphasis added]
That article’s statement that UNSC 2334 was merely a “condemnation of settlements” which “the Obama administration had always opposed” and hence decided “not to veto” was far from fully informative. That resolution did a hell of a lot more than merely condemn settlements, and the US administration did a hell of a lot more than merely not veto.
Start with what UNSC 2334 said [emphasis added]:
UNSC 2334 didn’t just condemn “settlements” (as opposed to what the media pointedly contrasts as “Palestinian towns, villages, neighborhoods”), and it didn’t just call “East” Jerusalem and “the West Bank” as “disputed” between Jews and Arabs. It called every inch beyond the old defunct 1949 ceasefire lines “the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem.”
And UNSC 2334 didn’t leave to the parties working out borders between shrunken Israel and the new Palestinian Arab state. It “underlines that it will not recognize any changes to the 4 June 1967 [i.e., 1949 ceasefire] lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations ….” [i.e., the 1949 lines except to the extent the parties “agree”].
And now look at what the United States did beyond its “decision not to veto.”
“Obama didn’t only ‘not veto’ UNSC 2334. Then Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon revealed that the Obama administration orchestrated this terrible resolution; twisted allies’ arms to vote for it; and was trying to orchestrate yet another extreme anti-Israel resolution during Obama’s final weeks in office.” [ZOA press release this week, Wednesday, 8/17/23, emphasis added.]
In his auto-biography Bibi: My Story (pp. 577-578), Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister at the time, made the same points as Danon, and added that it was Russia that prevented the Obama administration, on its way out the door, from having perpetrated even worse, that
“a new and even harsher Security Council resolution was being prepared. This one would be a binding resolution calling on Israel to withdraw to the 1967 lines and establishing a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital….”
In addition to having been Treasury Secretary in the Obama administration, Lew served for a time as that President’s Chief of Staff. If he now serves as the US Ambassador to the current US President, who had been Obama’s Vice President, and also a fervent believer in “the two-state solution,” the possibility, danger, of that second, “even harsher Security Council resolution … a binding resolution calling on Israel to withdraw to the 1967 lines and establishing a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital” [emphasis added] is real.
The US Ambassador to Israel is the US administration’s “man on the scene,” who can advise the President and State Department of the mood, needs and desires of the people of the Jewish national home. He doesn’t make the final decision whether the US should “orchestrate” in the UN Security Council “a binding resolution calling on Israel to withdraw to the 1967 lines and establishing a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital,” but evidence seems clear that when the current US President was Vice President, and Mr. Lew a 2334-supporting Cabinet member, that is just what the US administration was attempting to do.
Given that danger of such a binding US-orchestrated 2334 follow-up, grassroots American Jews, whatever their peace solution beliefs, should oppose the appointment as US Ambassador to Israel of a former Obama administration key player who defended UNSC 2334.