On the recordJanuary 5, 2017
Mr. President, in the final days of the Obama administration's second term, with all eyes focused on the President- elect, the temptation to try to take a dramatic action to seal a cherished policy legacy must have been almost irresistible. So it proved for President Obama on December 23, 2016, when he betrayed decades of robust bipartisan American support for Israel at the United Nations by abstaining from a completely biased resolution that condemns our close friend and ally Israel and condemns all the so-called settlement activity, defined as any construction in any territory won by Israel in the Six-Day War. U.S. policy for decades has been to stand up for Israel at the United Nations, a hot bed of anti-Semitism that discriminately condemns Israel more than any country in the world, particularly when resolutions are being offered up that are outrageously biased, that attempt to predetermine the outcome of negotiations, that prejudge the basis for negotiations, or that try to dictate terms to Israel. We have seen this pattern of appealing to the United Nations from the Obama administration over and over with disastrous deals--the nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran, as well as the U.N. Convention on Climate Change, two international agreements that significantly threaten the security and prosperity of the United States. Both of them should have been submitted to this body, the Senate, as treaties.…
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