With the end in sight Friday for President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, 55-year-old President Barack Obama faces early retirement, taking to rewriting history in his last days in office. “I don’t think it caused a major rupture in relations between the United States and Israel,” Obama told “60 Minutes,” referring to abstaining on a Dec. 23, 2016 vote to condemn Israel settlement-buiding in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Obama had frosty relations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who expected Obama to veto the biased measure condemning Israel for building settlements in territories seized during the 1967 Six-Day War. U.S., European Union, Arab and other countries don’t recognize Israeli spoils as sovereign territory. Most countries, including the U.S., accept the Arab view that Israel occupies Palestinian lands in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Promising to relocate the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] Chairman Mahmoud Abbas warned President-elect Donald Trump Jan. 8 of dire consequences, including more terrorism, if he goes ahead to relocate the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. PLO founder Yasser Arafat played an integral part together with Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser in planning the 1967 War of annihilation against Israel. When the dust settled June 10, 1967, Israel dealt the PLO, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan crushing defeats, seizing Egypt’s Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula, Jordan’s West Bank and East Jerusalem and Syria’s Golan Heights.. No one at the time claimed Palestinian land.. Over the years the PLO convinced the U.N. that Israel occupies Palestinian land. Obama’s Dec. 23, 2016 vote reflects PLO propaganda that Palestinians hold sovereign territory.
Obama says his abstention did not “rupture” U.S.-Israeli relations, a kind of revisionist history. Obama’s vote made a bad situation worse but U.S.-Israeli relations will survive his poor treatment over the last eight years. Some argue that Obama was a friend of Israel backing the biggest military aid bill to Israel in U.S. history. But military aid doesn’t tell the whole story of Obama siding with prevailing anti-Israel U.N. rhetoric. Obama didn’t have it in for Israeli per se but simply followed his role as a cog in the U.N.’s internationalist wheel. U.N.-member states hold sympathies for Palestinians, finding any excuse to condemn Israel. When Trump takes office Jan. 20, Israel will once again get top priority for the White House in its ongoing fight against global terrorism. Obama wants to blame Netanyahu for why he couldn’t develop better relations with Israel.
Reversing much of former President George W. Bush’s anti-terror policies, Obama never understood counter-terrorism strategy after Sept. 11. Adopting a U.N.’s globalist perspective, Obama accepted the prevailing bias against Israel, especially over settlement-building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Since Sept. 11, it’s impossible for Israel to return to the pre-1967 borders because of ongoing security concern from al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS]. “If you’re saying that Prime Minister Netanyahu—got fired up, he’s been fired up repeatedly during the course of my presidency,” Obama told “60 Minutes.” You’d like to think Obama could be more reflective of his change of policy, adopting the U.N.’s views for Mideast peace. Failing to get a peace deal in 2014, Obama took a harsher tact with Israel, accepting the U.N. and PLO’s view.
Obama’s revisionist views go beyond the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, blaming Russia for defending Syrian President Basha al-Assad . Obama’s policy of backing various rebel groups since March 15, 2011, created the worst humanitarian crisis since WWII. Backing the Saudi’s Arab Spring to topple Mideast dictators, Obama contributed to the over 300,000 deaths in Syria, displacing 12 million more to neighboring countries and Europe, eventually driving the U.K. out of the EU June 23, 2016. Despite backing Saudi-U.S.-Turkey-funded terror groups to topple al-Assad, Obama doesn’t own his failed Syrian policy. Instead of working with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the Syrian War, Obama sided to Saudi-backed terror groups to oust al-Assad from Damascus. Barack can’t admit that his Syrian policy added to the death toll, refugee problems and crisis in the EU.
Whatever problems Obama had with Israel, it pales in comparison with his failures in Syria, but, more importantly, his deteriorated relations with Moscow. Backing ties to foreign terror groups over his relationship with Russia, Obama failed to see the importance of linkage to deal with pressing hotspots around the globe. Israel was a symptom of a bigger problem where Barack didn’t understand the U.S. has a foreign policy independent of the U.N. Netanyahu called the Dec. 23, 2016 abstention “shameful,” given the strategic importance of Israel in U.S. national security. Whatever difference the U.S. has with Israel over Mideast peace, it’s no excuse to sell out Israel in the Security Council. Whether Barack “ruptured” U.S-Israeli relations, he didn’t act like a loyal ally. Trying to rewrite history at the end of his presidency won’t change diplomatic blunders and foreign policy failures.
