That’s not the way policy should be made, to get even in the lame duck period when there are no checks and balances and you don’t have to worry about an election. It’s the most undemocratic thing a president can do, to tie the hands of his successor during the lame duck period. And what [Obama] did was so nasty; he pulled a bait and switch. He said to the American public, ‘this is all about the settlements deep in the West Bank,’ and yet he allowed his representative to the U.N. to abstain, which is really “for,” a resolution that Jews can’t pray at the Western Wall, Jewish and Arab students can’t go to Hebrew University, Jewish and Arab patients can’t go to Hadassah Hospital, Jews can’t live in the Jewish Quarter where they’ve lived for thousands of years, and he’s going to say, ‘Whops, I didn’t mean that!’
Well read the resolution, you’re a lawyer, you went to Harvard Law School, read what you’ve read!
I think he was trying to get even. Look, he called me into the Oval Office before the election and he said to me, ‘Alan, I want your support and I have to tell you I will always have Israel’s back.’ I didn’t realize what he meant was that he’d have his back to stab them in the back. And he just stabbed them in the back. And this will make peace much more difficult to achieve, because, the Palestinians will now say, we can get a state through the U.N., we can get a state through the BDS movement, because this will encourage that, we can get a state through the International Court, because this will encourage that, we don’t have to negotiate, we don’t have to make painful compromises…
He will go down in history, President Obama, as one of the worst foreign policy presidents, ever. What he did to Syria, and was partly responsible for happened in Aleppo, creating a vacuum for Russia, I have to tell you… look, I supported his domestic policy, I liked him on Supreme Court appointments, but he created a terrible conflict for people, many like me, liberal Democrats who support his domestic policy but think he was an appalling… APPALLING president when it came for foreign policy. Hurt America so badly.
There were more resolutions condemning Israel than all the other countries combined, including North Korea, Syria, you name it. Look at the people who voted for this resolution, China, which has been occupying Tibet, Russia, which has been occupying the Ukraine and Konigsberg, New Zealand, which is basically a colonial country established by settlers coming in, killing the Maoris, expelling them, ethnic cleansing, and creating their own country… what hypocrisy.
There is some glimmer of hope, but you can’t undue a U.N. resolution because you can’t take back an abstention. Once the United States didn’t veto, that’s it forever. So the president has deliberately tied the hands of his successor. It’s going to make it much harder for President Trump to make peace, but I think he wants to see a negotiated peace. Look, you have two tough guys, Netanyahu and Trump, they’d both love to be Nixon in China, they’d both love to be the guys who made peace and did it on Israel’s terms, with good security, protecting Israel.
I’m always an optimist… you know, in Israel, a pessimist is one who says ‘things are so bad they can’t get any worse,’ an optimist is one who says, ‘Yes they can!’
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