Obama, Kerry Still Think They Were Good for Israel - Israel Today

Obama, Kerry Still Think They Were Good for Israel

Tuesday, January 17, 2017 |  Israel Today Staff

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America

Outgoing US President Barack Obama and his top diplomat, Secretary of State John Kerry, were busy this week defending their record on Israel, despite recent outright betrayals of the Jewish state.

In a farewell interview on CNN, Kerry explained why the Obama Administration refused to veto last month’s UN Security Council resolution targeting Israel, and why he thinks it was a “friendly” gesture.

The resolution called the Jewish presence in Judea, Samaria and on the eastern side of Jerusalem illegal. Included in those territories is the Old City of Jerusalem and Judaism’s holiest site, the Western Wall of the Temple Mount.

But Kerry glossed over that inconvenient truth:

“We, at the UN, made the decision we made, because we believe that Israel has a major choice and the Palestinians have a major choice. The choice we put to Israel is ‘if you want to be a Jewish state and you want to be a democracy, you cannot be a unitary state’ and right now they are marching down the road because of the increased settlements, because of the absence of a legitimate negotiation toward that possibility.”

Kerry, and Obama, have also ignored the fact that the resolution has only emboldened Israel’s enemies. Some feel that was their intention all along.

But according to Kerry, Israel has no better friend than the outgoing administration.

“All we are trying to do is speak as a good, solid best friend of Israel and we have done more for this government, more for Israel than any other administration,” he said.

Of course, Israel’s government sees the situation very differently.

At Sunday’s cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the Middle East peace conference that was taking place in Paris the same day, and which was enthusiastically attended by Kerry as a follow-up to his administration’s behavior at the UN.

“I must say that this conference is among the last twitches of yesterday’s world. Tomorrow’s world will be different – and it is very near,” Netanyahu said in clear reference to Israel’s anticipation of this Friday’s inauguration of Donald Trump as the next president of the United States.

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