‘UN’s Israel-bashing days are over’
United Nations Security Council ambassador Nikki Haley said that the Trump administration will not allow a repeat of last year’s UN resolution condemning Israel for its settlements.
THE Trump administration will not allow a repeat of last year’s United Nations Security Council Resolution condemning Israel for its settlements, the ambassador to the body, Nikki Haley, told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference on Monday.
The US will “never again do what we saw with resolution 2334 and make anyone question our support” for Israel, Haley said of her stance, while addressing the annual event, where she earned the warmest reception of all of this year’s speakers, with an extended standing ovation.
The Obama administration allowed through the resolution in December, – which described eastern Jerusalem and its Jewish holy sites as “occupied Palestinian territory – as one of its last acts, triggering bitter recriminations from Israel’s government.
Recalling the resolution, Haley vowed such an incident “will never happen again.”
“The days of Israel-bashing are over”, she declared, adding “For anyone who said you can’t get anything done at the UN, they need to know there’s a new sheriff in town.”
Describing her determination to help steer the course of the UN and its agencies from anti-Israel bias, she noted her intervention keeping Salam Fayyad, the former Palestinian prime minister, from becoming the body’s envoy to Libya, and in getting UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to withdraw a UN affiliate’s report likening Israel to an apartheid state.
Haley was one of a number of speakers at AIPAC who drew a sharp contrast at the conference between President Donald Trump’s administration and his predecessor, Barack Obama.
“We had just done something that showed the United States at its weakest ever,” she said of the resolution.
AIPAC has striven to promote bipartisanship as a theme this conference, seeking to heal wounds with Democrats opened over divisions with Obama over settlements and the Iran nuclear deal.
But Republican speakers have not been able to resist digs.
“What I wanted to make sure of was that the United States was leading again,” said Haley.
“I wear high heels, it’s not for a fashion statement, it’s because if I see something wrong I will kick it every single time.”
Paul Ryan, the US House of Representatives speaker, also spoke, saying Obama had “damaged trust” with Israel. “President Donald Trump’s commitment to Israel is sacrosanct,” he said.
Ryan described the Iran nuclear deal, which swapped sanctions relief for Iran’s rollback of its nuclear program, as an “unmitigated disaster” but – like Vice-President Mike Pence, who spoke on Sunday – stopped short of proposing dismantling the deal, as Republicans consistently had during last year’s campaign.
Instead, he endorsed AIPAC-backed bipartisan legislation that would increase non-nuclear-related sanctions on Iran for testing nuclear missiles and backing terrorism and other disruptive activity.
JTA & JNS
comments