From The Other Side Of The Bench
By David J. Seidemann, Esq.
I’ll report; you decide. Rather than drawing the conclusion myself, I’ll provide you with a few definitions and facts, and you decide who is what.
Webster’s defines an anti-Semite as one who discriminates against or who is hostile towards or prejudiced against Jews. Breaking with longstanding United States policy, taking a parting shot as he leaves office, effectively tying the incoming president’s hands; you decide if Obama is an anti-Semite. Considering his silence when Syria crosses the “Red Line,” but his condemnation when Israel approaches the “Green Line,” you decide if Obama is an anti-Semite.
Webster defines an idiot and a fool as someone who acts in a self-defeating or significantly counterproductive way. You decide if Obama’s actions in the United Nations promote his verbalized policy position of bringing peace closer, or whether his actions now make a two-state solution even less possible. The Israeli leftists have coalesced behind Bibi, and the Palestinians have zero incentive to sit and negotiate with Israel. They obtained the recognition they wanted from the United Nothing, and now, from Israel’s point of view, there is nothing left to negotiate. UN Resolution 242, which called for final borders to be determined by negotiation of the parties and by the parties, has been neutralized. The UN, through this shameful resolution, has now decided that issue. It’s all theirs. And not just the West Bank but East Jerusalem as well—East Jerusalem, where the Kotel is and has been long before there was an Arab anywhere near it. East Jerusalem means the Jewish Quarter, whose archaeological ruins predate Mohammed’s birth by almost 1,500 years.
Resolution 242 was passed unanimously in 1967 after Israel defeated the invading Arab armies. It provided that Israel would never have to retreat to indefensible borders. The only holdout in 1967 was Syria. But even Syria eventually accepted the terms of UN Resolution 242 in its reincarnated form after the Yom Kippur War through Resolution 338 in 1973.
Resolution 2334 not only turns years of United States policy towards Israel upside down, it also contradicts Resolution 242 by creating non-defensible borders for Israel, and by resolving the issue of borders and East Jerusalem in the UN and not by direct negotiations between the parties.
Democrats and Republicans alike feel betrayed by Obama, who blindsided his own party members. He is on his way out of town. They are not, and they will pay a price next time ballots are cast. They will rightfully argue that they had no idea that their party leader would allow this to happen to an ally—no, not just any ally, but to Israel, which is at the forefront of the world’s fight against terror.
In one act of vengeance, he has hardened the hearts of Israeli and Palestinian alike and has thrown his fellow Democratic lawmakers under the bus.
One would think that as a lawyer, Obama has a basic working knowledge of international law. And that basic knowledge would tell him that there can be no occupation when the land supposedly “taken” was in a defensive war. There can be no “occupation” when the land in question was taken back from a sovereign entity that appropriated it originally from the original owner. There can be no “occupation” under international law when the entity the land was supposedly taken from was not a sovereign entity. The PA was not formed till after the 1967 War, and the land in question—the West Bank and East Jerusalem—was never owned, occupied, or administered by an entity called the Palestinian Authority. Jordan was in control (so to speak) of the West Bank after the War of Independence, and Egypt occupied Gaza and the Sinai.
Jordan occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem from 1948 till 1967 and annexed East Jerusalem in 1950. Jordan gave Jordanian citizenship to the residents of East Jerusalem in 1954, and then with a snap of a finger and a stroke of a pen, gifted it to the PLO in 1988. Where was the UN then, when annexation by Jordan and the transfer of the area to a mythical people and government was made?
So I report and you decide. These are the facts. Obama has turned his back on Israel as he makes his farewell. In the process, he makes the possibility of a negotiated peace even more remote. He angers even those furthest on the left in Israel, and even his Jewish supporters here are scratching their heads. He allows the resolution to pass, which puts it in direct conflict with Resolution 242. He ignores international law and emboldens the Palestinians to begin a new intifada with the new argument that any Jew who prays by the Western Wall is in flagrant violation of international law.
He places his fellow Democrats in the awkward position of having to tell their constituents that they were kept in the dark, had no knowledge of this, making them impotent and irrelevant. All for what? For revenge. For ego. Perhaps Mr. Obama needs a dictionary where he can find the definitions presented above.
I fear he is not done. I fear he will dispatch Secretary of State Kerry to drive one more stake through Israel’s heart, which will simply expose yet another person who acts with hostility towards Jews (see definition above of an anti-Semite) and yet another person who acts in a self-destructive way (see definition above of a fool).
And though I fear those actions, I am not afraid in the long run. We have seen this storyline before. Haman proposes a resolution to Achashverosh that stabs the Jews in the back. Haman is an anti-Semite. Achashverosh, the fool, passes the resolution. The analogy is oh so clear.
But before Haman and Achashverosh work together to draft and pass the resolution which is supposed to put an end to the Jewish people, before that, Mordechai is introduced to the Jewish people, and to Achashverosh, and to Haman, and to the ministers of the 127 nations.
Mordechai is present, off in the distance, perched to reverse the evil decree.
Inauguration Day cannot come soon enough.
David Seidemann is a partner with the law firm of Seidemann and Mermelstein and serves as a professor of business law at Touro College. He can be reached at 718-692-1013 or ds@lawofficesm.com.