From Ian:
WATCH: Israeli PM Netanyahu Delivers Chilling Message During Speech
Egypt’s Security Council anti-settlement vote postponed, possibly ‘indefinitely’
WATCH: Israeli PM Netanyahu Delivers Chilling Message During Speech
During his September 22, 2016, speech before the United Nations General Assembly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a powerful story. His official YouTube channel just released a clip from the speech, called "Remember Ali," and it's something quite extraordinary.Remember Ali?
Netanyahu begins with the following:
"Had the Palestinians said yes to a Jewish state in 1947, there would have been no war, no refugees and no conflict. And when the Palestinians finally say yes to a Jewish state, we will be able to end this conflict once and for all. Now here’s the tragedy, because, see, the Palestinians are not only trapped in the past, their leaders are poisoning the future.
I want you to imagine a day in the life of a 13-year-old Palestinian boy, I’ll call him Ali..."
The prime minister goes on to deliver a chilling message. To simply transcribe the story would rob it of its impact. Instead, take three minutes out of your day to watch this clip:
Egypt’s Security Council anti-settlement vote postponed, possibly ‘indefinitely’
The United Nations Security Council on Thursday postponed a vote on an Egyptian-drafted resolution demanding that Israel immediately halt its settlement activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, diplomats said. The vote had been set to take place later in the day.Eugene Kontorovich: By allowing an anti-Israel Security Council resolution, Obama will hurt the U.N., and not help peace
Egypt requested the delay to allow time for consultations on the measure, but no new time or date was scheduled. One unnamed Western diplomatic source told Reuters that the vote was postponed “potentially indefinitely.”
Egypt sought the postponement at Israel’s request, after “high level” contacts between the two governments, Reuters said.
The delay came as Israel was scrambling to head off a possible surprise move by the United States, with some indications the Obama administration may not have been willing to exercise its veto power.
According to a report in the Israeli news site Walla, an unnamed Israeli official said that outgoing US Secretary of State John Kerry told a Palestinian delegation to Washington earlier this month that the US would not veto the resolution; however, the Palestinians later denied this claim.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had convened his security cabinet for an emergency session Thursday evening, just hours before the vote was scheduled.
The Security Council is expected to vote today on a resolution, introduced by Egypt, condemning the presence of settlements — Jewish communities in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem. For years, there has been mounting speculation, fueled by the administration itself, that President Obama would use his lame-duck period in office for a major anti-Israel action, probably by not providing the customary U.S. veto to such resolutions.
I expect the United States will veto today’s resolution, but that may be only a prequel to allowing the passage of one of the numerous similar resolutions that have been floated. The other resolutions are substantively similar, but unlike the Egyptian proposal, they may make cosmetic, inconsequential half-criticisms of Palestinian Authority “incitement” (while ignoring the PA’s ongoing solicitation and sponsorship of actual killings of Jews). Then the administration would then say it vetoed “anti-Israel resolutions,” but simply could not hold back the tide against a “balanced” resolution.
Obama’s goal with such a resolution would be to punish Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he personally dislikes, and to create diplomatic facts on the ground to box in President-elect Donald Trump’s foreign policy. The folly of a such resolution has been underscored by both Hillary Clinton and Trump, as well as near-unanimous majorities in both houses of Congress and an array of Democratic foreign policy experts, including former Senate majority leader and Obama administration peace negotiator George Mitchell.
Such a resolution would not cement any positive legacy for Obama. To the contrary, it would vastly magnify the actual obstacles to resolving the Palestinian issue. Moreover, by setting the U.N. against Israel, Obama may provoke a sharp conflict between Washington and the U.N. — one that would harm the latter much more than the former.























