Between right now and January 20th, 2017 is a real “pressure point” for U.S. relations with Israel. Barack Obama has always desired to “leave a legacy” in the Middle East, and at this point the only option for accomplishing anything tangible is through the United Nations. The Israeli government is extremely concerned that Obama may attempt to take such action before he leaves office, and so they recently asked Secretary of State John Kerry if the U.S. would promise to veto any anti-Israel resolutions that come before the UN Security Council for the rest of Obama’s time in the White House. Unfortunately for Israel, the New York Post is reporting that Kerry flatly refused to make such a promise…
Israel faces a unique window of danger from Nov. 9 to Jan. 20: What might President Obama do in his final days in office to slam the Jewish state?Start with Secretary of State John Kerry’s recent flat refusal to promise a US veto on any upcoming anti-Israel resolution in the UN Security Council.On Saturday, Haaretz reports, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Kerry he’s counting on Washington to stick to its policy of nixing anti-Israel resolutions. Kerry’s reply: The administration has yet to make a decision on the matter.
Barack Obama knows that he is the only one standing in the way of a UN Security Council resolution that would formally recognize a Palestinian state, that would set the basic parameters for that state, and that would grant the Palestinians East Jerusalem as their capital.
If Obama decided not to use the U.S. veto power to block such a resolution, it would be legally binding on both Israel and the Palestinians, and the next president would not be able to go back and reverse course. It would take another UN Security Council vote to rescind the resolution once it has been passed, and the votes would simply not be there to do that.
So there is a great deal of concern about what Obama may do during his last few months in the White House. In fact, there is so much concern in Congress that 88 U.S. Senators sent him a letter last month asking him to continue to block any anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations.
Unfortunately, there is also a lot of pressure on Obama to support such a resolution. About a week ago, I wrote about how the New York Times editorial board has actually formally endorsed a UN resolution that would establish a Palestinian state. For the most important newspaper in America to take such a stand is extraordinary.
136 countries have already recognized a Palestinian state, and the international pressure on Obama to do something before he leaves the White House is intense. The Obama administration has not indicated which way they are going to go just yet, and that is leaving many people very, very nervous.
And without a doubt, the United Nations has moved in a very anti-Israel direction recently. If you have not heard about it yet, last week UNESCO (the cultural arm of the United Nations) adopted an anti-Israel resolution that denies Israel’s historic connection to the Temple Mount. The following comes from Haaretz…
UNESCO adopted an anti-Israel resolution Thursday that disregards Judaism’s historic connection to the Temple Mount and casts doubt on the link between Judaism and the Western Wall.
Twenty-four countries voted in favor of the decision while six voted against and 26 abstained while just two were missing from the vote.
Incredibly, the resolution says that the Temple Mount is sacred only to Muslims, and it accuses Israel of being “the occupying Power”…
UNESCO said it “firmly deplores the continuous storming of Al-Aqṣa Mosque/Al-Ḥaram Al-Sharif by Israeli right-wing extremists and uniformed forces, and urges Israel, the occupying Power, to take necessary measures to prevent provocative abuses that violate the sanctity and integrity of Al-Aqṣa Mosque/Al-Ḥaram Al-Sharif.”Incredibly, the resolution says that the Temple Mount is sacred only to Muslims, and it accuses Israel of being “the occupying Power”…
UNESCO said it “firmly deplores the continuous storming of Al-Aqṣa Mosque/Al-Ḥaram Al-Sharif by Israeli right-wing extremists and uniformed forces, and urges Israel, the occupying Power, to take necessary measures to prevent provocative abuses that violate the sanctity and integrity of Al-Aqṣa Mosque/Al-Ḥaram Al-Sharif.”
This move by UNESCO was so outrageous that it has even become an issue in the U.S. presidential campaign. Donald Trump has strongly denounced UNESCO, and he repeated his pledge to recognize Jerusalem “as the one true capital of Israel”…
“I have said on numerous occasions that in a Trump administration, the United States will recognize Jerusalem as the one true capital of Israel,” he said. “The United Nations’ attempt to disconnect the state of Israel from Jerusalem is a one-sided attempt to ignore Israel’s 3,000-year bond to its capital city, and is further evidence of the enormous anti-Israel bias of the U.N.”
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have both announced that they will not support a UN Security Council resolution that sets the parameters for a Palestinian state. So that makes the upcoming January 20th deadline that much more important.
It may surprise you to hear that Clinton has come out so strongly against such a resolution, but the truth is that both candidates desperately need the Jewish vote in this election, and so both of them are taking positions that will appeal to Jewish voters.
To get an idea of just how important the Jewish vote is, check out the following excerpt from a recent MSN article…
Jews may account for roughly only 2 percent of the American adult population, but their concentration in a number of swing states and counties makes them a potentially pivotal demographic in this fall’s presidential election.
Eighty to 85 percent of Jews turn out to vote in national elections—more than 20 percent higher than the national average during the 2012 presidential election. More than one million eligible Jewish voters also live in 11 battleground states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.
Even though Hillary Clinton is a habitual liar, it is unlikely that she will break her pledge to Jewish voters to veto any anti-Israel UN Security Council resolutions, because she will need their votes again in 2020.
So if we can get to January 20th and there is no UN Security Council resolution to divide the land of Israel, perhaps we can breathe a bit of a sigh of relief.
But between then and now, there will be a massive amount of international pressure on Barack Obama to support such a resolution, and if he does support such a resolution the consequences for our nation will be exceedingly great.
For decades, we have seen a pattern of judgment on anyone that is involved in trying to divide the land of Israel. Just recently we witnessed another amazing example of this phenomenon with the death of Israeli politician Shimon Peres...w
Attempting to divide the land of Israel is a big mistake, but it is a mistake that our leaders keep on making over and over again.
Whether it is Barack Obama or some other president, someday the U.S. government will play a major role in helping to formally establish a Palestinian state.
And when that happens, all hell will break loose in this country.
So let us pray that this will be delayed for as long as possible.
Personally, my hope is that we can get to January 20th without Barack Obama doing something very, very foolish at the United Nations.
Noting that the United States had now moved on to “Plan B” in Syria – directly targeting Syrian and Russian military forces – Kisiliov warned that Washington could be preparing stage a contrived false flag event to justify the new assault.
“Can a provocation used to start a war be excluded?” asked Kisiliov.
Given the experience of the beginning of the world wars, the first and second, provocation worked as a trigger,” he added.
“The Vietnam war also began with an American organized provocation,” said Kisiliov, referring to the Gulf of Tonkin incident, an alleged attack on the USS Maddox by North Vietnamese boats that is now widely thought by historians to have never actually happened.
The TV host also cited America’s “false pretenses” under which they launched attacks on Iraq and Libya.
“Because they got away with it, the United States ignored the international law and no longer understands words,” Kisiliov concluded.
As we reported last month, the U.S. State Department warned of terror attacks in Russian cities and even shoot downs of Russian jets if Vladimir Putin continued his fight against ISIS in Syria, remarks that Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova took as a direct threat.
However, Major-General Igor Konashenkov, Russia’s Defense Ministry spokesman, promised that Moscow would shoot back if the United States attempted to launch a “shadow hot war” against Russia and Syria.
Kisiliov’s warning is noteworthy given that the prime time host “enjoys the largest audience among news programs in Russia”.
Kisiliov (alternative spelling Kiselyov) is a controversial but prominent journalist in Russia. He was personally appointed by Russian President Vladimir Putin to head the new official Russian government-owned international news agency Rossiya Segodnya in December 2013.
Kisiliov previously made headlines when he asserted that the elite may assassinate Donald Trump to prevent him from becoming president.
It would be monumental, but Western states seem to be moving, ineluctably, towards banning Russian news media channels from satellite platforms and the internet. That outcome – albeit with enormous ethical and political implications – seems to be a logical conclusion of the increasingly frenzied transatlantic campaign to demonize Russia.
Washington, London and Paris appear to be coordinating an unprecedented media onslaught that is vilifying Russia for almost every conceivable malfeasance, from alleged war crimes in Syria to threatening the security of Europe, to shooting down civilian airliners, to subverting American presidential elections. And that’s only a sample.
The hostility towards Russia, as conveyed by the wording in this week’s EU resolution, can only be described as rabid, if not bordering on paranoid. The Russian government was accused of aggressively employing a «disinformation campaign», of «targeting EU politicians and journalists», and of «disrupting democratic values across Europe». In short, Moscow was accused of plotting the downfall of the European bloc.
So, not only is the Russian government being recklessly accused of harboring subversive, destructive designs on European states, its professional news media channels are conflated with an alleged Russian agenda of hybrid warfare. The Russian state is demonized as a foreign enemy, and its news media are part of the hybrid warfare arsenal. In other words, legitimate Russian public information services are in effect being delegitimized by the European parliament.
The Western drumbeat to delegitimize Russia’s popular news media has escalated in recent months. Last month, for example, the US-led NATO military alliance issued yet another report warning: ‘West Losing Information War Against Russia’.
Note how it is alleged that Russia is somehow underhandedly «exploiting» Western media freedom. The implication here is that counter-sanctions on Russian media would therefore be justified because of alleged transgressions.
Washington fears Russia under Putin. It is an obstacle to its full-spectrum global dominance, as envisaged by American imperialist ideologues following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
However, Russia is more than an obstacle. In its conduct of independent foreign policy, Russia is exposing American crimes of international lawlessness and state-sponsorship of terrorism. And Russia is also exposing the pathetic servility and complicity of European states, the Western mass media and UN institutions in pandering to Washington’s hegemonic ambitions.
To say that the Western states are frustrated by Russia is an understatement. They are livid, as can be seen from the way their Syrian regime-change criminal enterprise has been routed. Hence, Western efforts are aimed at accusing Russia of «war crimes» and being comparable to Nazi Germany.
But as Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief at RT told Deutsche Welle, the draconian move to ban Russian media only shows how empty Western claims of «free speech» are.
Western governments are displaying the standards of a despot.
Unable to get their absolute way, including violating international law and going to war whenever and wherever they want, they then lash out at resistant nations like Russia, to the point where Russia is being labelled as an enemy state liable for military attack.
And when news media expose these criminal Western double standards and hypocrisies, then such media are also lambasted as enemy propaganda that must be shut off and banned.
Western decadence is truly sinking into the gutter or corruption and absurdity. That is a fate of its own making due to its own internal collapse of oligarchic mis-rule and warmongering. And the Western public increasingly know that, with or without Russian assistance.
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