While Christians Are Martyred in the Middle East, Israel Is Persecuted by the United Nations

In the face of the United Nations Security Council adoption of the anti-settlements resolution, many Jewish online commenters are talking about the religious aspect of Israel's betrayal by Barack Obama. [See the new PopShot.] • • • PRESIDENT-ELECT TRUMP AND MRS. TRUMP CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS AT CHURCH. At the same time, American political analysts are taking note of President-Elect Trump's emphasis on the fact that Christmas is a Christian religious feast. • President-Elect Trump and Mrs. Trump began their Christmas by attending midnight services at an Episcopal church in Palm Beach, Florida, where they were married in 2005. Newsmax printed a tweet of one of the chruchgoers, who wrote : "Florida parishioners cheer for Trump tonight as he arrives for Christmas Eve mass." For Americans, it is undoubtedly refreshing just to see their President-Elect attending a church service, something often lacking during the Obama presidency. • Trump has spoken out against the increased use of the term "Happy Holidays" in place of "Merry Christmas" as a sign that Christianity is under attack. As President, he's said, he'll reverse the trend. Trump also tweeted wishes for a "Happy Hanukkah" earlier Saturday. • FALWELL JR. PRAISES TRUMP. Despite some of President-elect Donald Trump's divisive rhetoric, evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University, told Fox News he never wavered in his support for the GOP nominee because he was for the working class, "was a good man," and we were not electing a "pastor-in-chief." Trump's election has worked out, Falwell Jr. told Chris Wallace : "My wife's noticed as she's done her Christmas shopping, more of the retailers are saying 'Merry Christmas.' There's a new hope, an optimism. There's a good spirit in America. And I think that's coming from [Trump's] lead." Falwell Jr. admitted he took a leap of faith in being unwavering in supporting Trump during this election : "It was sort of a gamble because I didn't know where he'd come down on all the issues, but because I believed he was a good man, I believed he would come down on the right side of the issues, and he's done that in the last year and I've been proud of him." Fox reported that Trump is overwhelmingly popular among evangelicals, getting 80% of their vote, as Fox News reported, figures which surpassed GOP candidates Mitt Romney (78% in 2012), John McCain (74% in 2008) and George W. Bush (78% in 2004). Falwell Jr. said : "We have to find the candidate who is most likely to support all the values that we hold dear. Evangelicals aren't that much different than the general population." • • • CHRISTIAN MARTYRS AND OBAMA'S SILENCE. Ralph Peters, retired US Army officer and Fox Strategic Analyst, wrote a piece for Fox News on Monday, talking of the martyrdom of St. Stephen (see Monday's blog). He tied the persecution of the early Christians to their martyrdom today : "The 2,000-year-old Middle-Eastern Christian civilization that began in the days of St. Stephen lies in ruins, persecuted as never before. As the Obama administration averted its self-righteous gaze, a religious genocide already underway accelerated across the region. Stubborn and dogmatic, the administration refused to acknowledge the problem of Christian refugees -- those who’d survived the kidnappings, tortures, rapes, massacres and broad religious cleansing -- even to the extent of labeling those who wished to help Christians as bigots. In Obama’s global village, there’s no room at the inn for Christian refugees. There’s not even a stable. We’ve watched as a great religious civilization nears extermination. For a thousand years, through good and horrid times, the three great monotheist religions of the Middle East rubbed along together (with varying levels of friction). Then...the Jews were driven out. Next came the turn of the Christians, as well as a number of minority faiths. Thanks to extremist Islam." Peters notes in his article : "In the Middle Ages, the majority of Christians lived in the east. The doctrines of the faith were refined in Asia Minor, Palestine and North Africa. The greatest monuments of Christianity’s first thousand years all stood -- a few still stand -- in lands where Christians long have been persecuted and are now massacred. Now the Christians are gone, their churches, monasteries and homes in ruins. This is a new age of martyrs. It’s a time when those who believe in the transcendent generosity of Christ are driven from their homes to suffer exile....Even Bethlehem, within living memory a majority-Christian city, has driven out the followers of Jesus until perhaps a dwindling eighth of the population is Christian." All this has occurred during Barack Obama's presidency, says Peters, without protest from students, the media, "the Pharisees we call 'public intellectuals,' or 'our can’t-be-bothered government.' Those Christians who survive the new barbarians become refugees with nowhere to go. Assigned to “all-faith” asylum homes in Europe, they’re tormented, beaten and threatened by violent migrants. Nor can they go elsewhere in the Middle East. Yet, we in the United States bar the door against them—in the name of religious tolerance, of all things. One day, we will be as ashamed of our denial of Christian refugees as deeply as we are shamed by our rejection of Jewish refugees from the Nazis." • • • OBAMA, THE UNITED NATIONS, AND THE ANTI-ISRAEL RESOLUTION. Newsmax says that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly reaching out to President-Elect Donald Trump and the US Congress in order to prevent the Obama administration from what the Israeli government fears is an American attempt to have the UN Security Council pass more resolutions against Israel by approving principles for a Palestinian state." The Times of Israel reports that the Netanyahu government, angered that the Security Council on Friday condemned Israel’s settlement activities when the US failed to veto the resolution, feels the measure is biased against Israel and is only an attempt by the Palestinians to delegitimize the Jewish state and avoid any direct negotiations. Critics of the resolution say that it will only harden positions and make an attempt at a peaceful solution to the conflict much more difficult. Netanyahu held a 40-minute meeting with US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro on Sunday evening after summoning him to explain why the United States abstained on the resolution, allowing it to pass. Netanyahu also summoned all the envoys of the other countries with representatives in Israel who voted for the resolution, which passed 14-0, including the other four UNSC permanent members -- France, Britain, China and Russia. • Israeli media reports that Netanyahu is also reaching out to the President-Elect, as well as to members of Congress, to attempt to have the new administration make clear that a Trump White House will economically harm those nations that vote against Israel in future UN resolutions. In another sign of Israel’s anger at the resolution, the Jerusalem Municipality will this week reportedly approve new housing in large Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem that were built after Israel captured the areas in the 1967 war. To emphasize his point, Netanyahu went to the Western Wall on Sunday evening, the second night of Hanukkah, to light the menorah there, reported the Jerusalem Post. The Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site, is the outer wall of the Second Temple which stood on the plateau above it until destroyed by the Romans 2,000 years ago, and was part of the territory Israel won in the 1967 war and is thus covered by the Friday anti-stettlement resolution. A Jewish temple first stood on the site 3,000 years ago, long before Islam, or Christianity, existed [the resolution is akin to the UN deciding that the Acropolis doesn't belong to Greece]. The JPost says Netanyahu points out on his Facebook page that Hanukkah celebrates the Jewish nation’s victory over the occupying Greeks who defiled the Temple and that the Jewish homeland included areas that are over the pre-1967 lines. Netanyahu fears that Secretary of State John Kerry will set out parameters for a Palestinian state in a speech on the Middle East that he says he will deliver in the next few days and then have a resolution enshrining those principles adopted by the Security Council in the time Obama has left in office. At Sunday’s weekly Cabinet meeting, Netanyahu publicly blamed Obama for the resolution’s passing, saying : "We have no doubt the Obama administration initiated [the resolution], stood behind it, coordinated the wording and demanded it be passed." • DERSHOWITZ SPEAKS OUT. Alan Dershowitz agrees with Netanyahu. TheHill published an article by Dershowite this weekend in which he says : "The Obama administration pulled a bait and switch in refusing to veto the recent Security Council resolution against Israel. In attempting to justify its abstention -- which under Security Council rules has the same effect as a vote in favor -- the administration focuses on “new” settlement building, especially in areas deep into the West Bank." Dershowitz quotes US Ambassador Samantha Power's explanation to the Security Council : “Today, the Security Council reaffirmed its established consensus that settlements have no legal validity....President Obama and Secretary Kerry have repeatedly warned -- publically and privately -- that the absence of progress toward peace and continued settlement expansion was going to put the two-state solution at risk, and threaten Israel’s stated objective to remain both a Jewish State and a democracy....This resolution reflects trends that will permanently destroy the hope of a two-state solution if they continue on their current course.” Dershowitz also quoted Ben Rhodes, Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor : “Netanyahu had the opportunity to pursue policies that would have led to a different outcome today....In the absence of any meaningful peace process, as well as in the accelerated settlement activity, we took the decision that we did today to abstain on the resolution.” And, says Dershowitz, the media -- from CNN, to the New York Times, to the Wall Street Journal -- also reported that the resolution was only about the expansion of new settlements. BUT, says Dershowitz, Professor Emeritus at Harvard Law School : "the text of the resolution itself goes well beyond new building in these controversial areas and applies equally to historically Jewish areas that were unlawfully taken by Jordanian military action during Israel’s War of Independence and liberated by Israel in a war started by Jordan in 1967. The text of the Security Council Resolution says that 'any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem,' have 'no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law.' This means that Israel’s decision to build a plaza for prayer at the Western Wall -- Judaism’s holiest site -- constitutes a 'flagrant violation of international law.' If it does, then why did President Obama pray there and leave a note asking for peace? Under this resolution, the access roads that opened up Hebrew University to Jewish and Arab students and the Hadassah Hospital to Jewish and Arab patients are illegal, as are all the rebuilt synagogues -- destroyed by Jordan -- in the ancient Jewish Quarter of the Old City." THEN, Dershowitz asks : "Is it really now US policy to condemn Israel for liberating these historically Jewish areas in Jerusalem? Does Obama really believe they should be made judenrein again, as they were between 1949 and 1967? If so, why didn’t the administration openly acknowledge that it was changing half a century of bipartisan support for Israel’s claims to these sacred areas? If not, why did it not demand changes in the language of the resolution to limit it to new building in disputed areas of the West Bank? The Obama administration can’t have it both ways. It must now declare where it stands on Israel’s right to allow prayer at the Western Wall, access to Hebrew University and Hadassah Hospital, and the repair of destroyed synagogues to the Jewish Quarter." Dershowitz is direct in his conclusion : "President-Elect Donald Trump and Congress can make it clear that it is not US policy that all changes 'to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem' are in violation of international law. The new President can immediately recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and begin the process of moving our embassy there. The justification for keeping it in Tel Aviv was not to change the status quo, but that justification no longer exists because this resolution does precisely that : it declares the status quo -- the reality on the ground that acknowledges Israel’s legitimate claims to its most sacred and historical Jewish areas -- to be flagrant violations of international law. Congress can legislate no funding to implement the Security Council’s troubling resolution." Dershowitz, renowned lawyer that he is, then puts Obama in his logic-vice, saying that Obama should either publicly announce that he agrees that the sacred Jewish areas covered by the resolution are in violation of international law, OR, if Obama refuses to make clear his vote against Israel's right to these areas, then : "the entire resolution should be deemed invalid because the US did not cast its abstention -- the equivalent of a yes vote -- in good faith." • • • ISRAEL'S CONTINUING MARTYRDOM AT THE UNITED NATIONS. While Christians are being physically martyred in the Middle East as the world ignores the genocidal attacks, Israel is being martyred at the UN by a 'world organization' that supposedly works for peace, even as it continues to abuse and penalize the one Middle East country that works for peace throughout the region. President-Elect Trump said Saturday that Israel's "big loss" with the United Nations on Friday "will make it harder to negotiate peace" -- but that "we will get it done anyway." This Trump tweet got 15,499 retweets and 59,416 likes. A senior Israeli government official described Obama’s stunning departure from US policy : “This is the last sting from President Obama. An act that revealed the true face of the Obama administration. Now the world can see what we have been facing for the past eight years.” Both Israel and the US Congress have threatened to respond by cutting funding to the United Nations, and aid to the nations that promoted the resolution. Netanyahu said in English at his cabinet meeting : "Over decades, American administrations and Israeli governments have disagreed about settlements, but we agreed that the Security Council was not the place to resolve this issue. As I told [Secretary of State] John Kerry on Thursday, friends don’t take friends to the Security Council." Obama has faced widespread backlash from Republicans and some Democrats since the decision to abstain from the vote. Netanyahu on Sunday canceled a planned visit by Ukraine’s prime minister and recalled Israel's ambassadors to Senegal and New Zealand, the two sponsors of the reslolution where Israel has embassies. • Former US Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, said Friday night that he thinks President Obama took the action to "box the incoming Trump administration in." Bolton told Fox News' "Hannity" show Friday night. "It was entirely predictable. I would say this for people in the pro-Israel community in the United States who defended Obama's Middle East policy over these last eight years : You should have seen this coming and this is what you get for supporting Barack Obama." The proposed resolution says Israel's occupation is "illegitimate," said Bolton, and "therefore it has no land to give back in exchange for peace. Contrary to what the Obama administration has said, this puts a huge thumb on the scale against Israel....I do think, contrary to what Obama says, ths is the death now of the two-state solution. It shows once again it's fundamentally unworkable, and I think Netanyahu and a nearly unanimous Israeli opinion will support him on that." When it come to the United States, Bolton said : "it's time to stand up for principle....I've certainly advocated for a long time [that] votes in the United Nations should have consequences. We've got two issues here, the 14 countries that voted in favor of the resolution and the United Nations as a whole." • • • DEAR READERS, for many years, the citizens of the United States have had a love-hate relationship with the UN. On Christmas Eve, Senator Lindsey Graham pledged to propose a measure to cut US funding to the UN unless it repeals the resolution demanding an end to Israeli settlements. Graham said : "It's that important to me. This is a road we haven't gone down before. If you can't show the American people that international organizations can be more responsible, there is going to be a break. And I am going to lead that break." Graham called the UN resolution a "provocative action" that "must be dealt with sternly and forcefully." He said, before the resolution passed : "If the United Nations moves forward with the ill-conceived resolution, I will work to form a bipartisan coalition to suspend or significantly reduce United States assistance to the United Nations. In addition, any nation which backs this resolution and receives assistance from the United States will put that assistance in jeopardy." • To permit the anti-Semitic members of the United Nations to continue to pillory Israel while the United States keeps signing checks that make their actions possible, as well as to continue to provide the New York City building in which they plot the destruction of Israel and the Jewish religion, is inexcusable. Either the UN must stop its attacks on Israel or the United States must withdraw funding and other support for the United Nations. Period.