...has she been reading biblical prophecy?
The Trump administration’s insistence on fair treatment for Israel at the UN is “actually a demand for peace,” the US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley told the AIPAC Policy Conference here on Monday evening, in a speech met with thunderous applause and frequent standing ovations.
The UN’s bias against Israel, she said, has “long undermined peace by encouraging an illusion that Israel will simply go away.” But Israel, she stressed, “is not going away. When the world recognizes that, then peace becomes possible” because all sides will then “be dealing with realities not fantasies” and “reasonable negotiated compromises can prevail over absolutist demands.”
Praising US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, she predicted that the day would come when the whole world would follow suit. And she said she intended to come to Jerusalem for the ceremony opening the US embassy there in May.
Haley’s address was by far the most enthusiastically received of any speech at the conference since it opened on Sunday morning. “You guys are amazing,” she said at the start, as the applause continued.
Twice she was interrupted by voices from the crowd declaring their love for her. Twice, she replied: “I love you too.”
To thunderous applause, Haley promised early in her remarks that she would not allow the UN to bully Israel any longer.
“At the UN and throughout the UN agencies, Israel gets bullied,” the South Carolina native told the crowd of 18,000 gathered in the nation’s capital. “I have absolutely no patience for bullying.”
She said she hadn’t solved the problem yet, but that the balance was starting to change.
She described a series of what she deemed transgressions against the Jewish state at the UN, including a UNESCO resolution that branded the biblical Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron as “a Palestinian heritage site in need of protection from Israel.
UNESCO was a UN agency with “one of the worst records of Israel bias.” But that resolution — an “outrageous” attempt “to change ancient history” — was, for the Trump administration, beyond the pale. “That was enough,” she said. “Ten months into this administration, the United States withdrew from UNESCO.”
Haley warmly praised Trump’s decision last December to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and to set in motion plans to move the US embassy there.
“Like most Americans, I knew what the capital of Israel was,” she said. “To be more clear, I knew that Jerusalem was, is and will always be the capital of Israel.”
“This was not something that was created by the location of embassy,” she went on. “This is not something that was created by an American decision. America did not make Jerusalem Israel’s capital. What President Trump did, to his great credit, was recognize a reality that American presidents had denied for too long. Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. That’s a fact. And President Trump had the courage to recognize that fact when others would not.”
She added that, “Sometime in the future, the day will come when the whole world recognizes that fact.”
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