Nikki Haley Confronts the U.N.’s ‘Jackals’

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When U.N. member states vote Thursday on a resolution condemning America’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Ambassador Nikki Haley will be watching. As she tweeted Tuesday, “The U.S. will be taking names.”

President Donald Trump endorsed the threat Wednesday at the opening of a cabinet meeting, suggesting that countries that vote against the U.S. in the U.N. General Assembly will potentially lose foreign assistance.



It’s easy to shrug off this bravado. The U.N. provides members with an accounting of all votes in the General Assembly, so there’s no need to “take names.” What’s more, it’s only a symbolic resolution. Haley vetoed a potentially substantive one on Monday at the U.N. Security Council.

But dismissing Haley’s threat misses the significance of Trump’s course correction at the United Nations. Trump’s predecessor used the U.N. to validate American foreign policy. Barack Obama sought a Security Council resolution to intervene in Libya — without bothering to get Congress to authorize that military action. And while he didn’t end up going to the U.N. when a rampage of the Islamic State in 2014 led him to re-intervene in Iraq and Syria, Obama generally placed great weight on the U.N.’s approval of U.S. foreign policy. He loathed using America’s veto to protect Israel from the inevitable one-sided pro-Palestinian resolutions that burble out of Turtle Bay.

When Obama’s envoys did exercise that veto, the administration made sure to signal that it agreed with the principal of condemning Israeli settlements, but opposed the venue. Haley’s predecessor, Samantha Power, finally did abstain from a resolution that declared East Jerusalem occupied territory a year ago. She did so — to a standing ovation at the U.N. Security Council — when Obama had less than a month left in office.

Make no mistake, Power was “joining the jackals,” to borrow the title of a famous Commentary Magazine essay by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. and former Democratic senator from New York. In that essay, Moynihan documented how the anti-Israel resolutions to which former president Jimmy Carter acquiesced were designed to single out Israel as a rogue state at a time when the Security Council was silent on the predations of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and other regional aggression.

That’s not how Carter saw it though. Like Obama, he pursued a policy of avoiding open confrontation with states at the U.N. with whom the U.S. disagreed. Better to press the case in private and appear to be with the majority of member states than to stand in contrast to alleged world opinion. Moynihan summed up the folly of this approach neatly: “In our flight from ‘confrontation’ did we end not by understanding the perspectives of others, but by adopting them.”

This is the ideological context of Haley’s recent actions at the U.N. She has made it clear that the U.N. needs America more than America needs the U.N. This is not just because the U.S. hosts the body’s headquarters. It’s because the U.S. remains the indispensable member of the organization. It contributes 23 percent of the U.N. annual budget. The U.S. provides nearly 30 percent of the budget to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA. That’s the agency that runs Palestinian schools and medical facilities and has often turned a blind eye to the participation of outlaws like Hamas. The U.S. provides the logistics for moving troops and material for peace-keeping missions and disaster relief. There is no U.N. without the U.S.

Haley made this point well in her speech announcing the U.S. veto Monday of the U.N. Security Council resolution condemning recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. “When the American people see a group of countries whose total contributions to the Palestinian people is less than 1 percent of UNRWA’s budget — when they see these countries accuse the United States of being insufficiently committed to peace — the American people lose their patience.”

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The United Nations needs to go and i mean totaly go clean out of America let them move to China they have failed to bring World Peace but Peace was never what they were never about

The U.N. “jackals” just gave Donnie Boy an answer that he isn’t going to like. The vote was 128 to 9, with 35 abstentions.

He’s even less popular abroad than he is at home.

@Greg:

He’s even less popular abroad than he is at home.

No, antisemitism and Israel hatred is still popular in the UN.

The vote isn’t about Israel, it’s about Trump’s boneheaded and totally unnecessary proclamation that we’re moving our embassy to Jerusalem. Score one for Trump’s ego, and zero for advancing any prospect of a peaceful solution. This serves only to raise tension and increase the likelihood of violence at all potential flash points. What was gained? What makes it worthwhile?

@Greg:

The vote isn’t about Israel, it’s about Trump’s boneheaded and totally unnecessary proclamation that we’re moving our embassy to Jerusalem.

Obama agreed Jerusalem was the capital of Israel. He was just too gutless to follow through. It’s not about Trump; he doesn’t own Israel. It is about Jerusalem. It is about what is right. Jerusalem belongs to the Jews… and Israel.

Chicago Dems want to bring in UN troops to bring their blacks to heel. With the history of what they have been doing perhaps the Dems just want the populus squashed. https://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/africa/item/8349-un-troops-accused-of-sex-crimes-worldwide

@Kitt: That is nothing but Rahm and the left wanting to accelerate the One World Government instead of acknowledging the rule of law in the United States. Their liberal utopia has failed miserably, as it always does, and they want help but cannot bring themselves to go to Trump for it.

@Bill… Deplorable Me: Does that moron think these troops will abide by the constitution? Setting rapists and pedopiles loose on our citizens he as to be insane.

Jerusalem belongs to the Jews… and Israel.

And what will be gained by the President of the United States making a big deal out of ordering and proclaiming this?

Nearly every nation with an official embassy in Israel has placed it in Tel Aviv, to avoid inflaming a controversial, legally ambiguous, and already volatile situation. Some maintain separate consulates in Jerusalem in recognition of its status under international law as an international city. Trump, of course, has to break that precedent and be different for no good reason.

@Greg:

And what will be gained by the President of the United States making a big deal out of ordering and proclaiming this?

Well, it lets other countries know where to address their letters.

Nearly every nation with an official embassy in Israel has placed it in Tel Aviv, to avoid inflaming a controversial, legally ambiguous, and already volatile situation.

Yet, the capital of Israel is Jerusalem. Embassies belong in the capital of the host nation. Until nations start showing they have some balls (if any still do) and begin confronting Muslim bullying, threats, invasion and violence, the plague of terrorism will never be defeated. Paying them tribute, bowing and apologizing doesn’t get the job done. You simply don’t know what leadership looks like and Trump has shown himself to be a WORLD leader, not a cowardly “leader from behind”.