The United Nations and an embittered Biden administration are making big plans to do permanent harm to the state of Israel. President Obama produced the template for an end run around the result of the 2016 election: enable the UN to do the dirty work during the lame-duck term.
On December 23, 2016 – less than a month before leaving office – the Obama administration refused to veto a UN Security Council resolution (2334) that upended decades of bipartisan support for a negotiated settlement of key issues in the Arab-Israeli conflict. In a perfidious maneuver, Obama was photographed innocuously playing golf while the details of the dangerous betrayal were covertly being finalized with his UN Ambassador Samantha Power at Turtle Bay.
The endgame is simple: forget Congress and the election results. American sovereignty can be bent to the will of the United Nations.
The Security Council technique works like this. America withholds the veto and either abstains from a resolution or votes in favor together with the other veto-holding permanent members, known as the “Perm-5” (Russia, China, the UK and France).
The American Ambassador then makes a statement in “explanation of vote” about being even-handed (aka moral relativism), having Israel’s back (having just planted a knife in it), and downplaying the significance of the move for the allegedly ignorant American people (whose votes they just lost). The Russians and the Chinese will make speeches about protecting human rights and obeying international law. And the UK and France will laud the equal treatment of “all parties,” that is, of genocidal terrorists and a democratic UN member state fighting an existential war on seven fronts.
From now until January 20, 2025, the Palestinians and their UN partners have one central goal: to Trump-proof whatever UN move they and the Biden administration concoct.
In practical terms, Trump-proofing means one of two things. Adopting a resolution that cannot be reversed without Russian and Chinese approval (that is, agreement to withhold their veto). Or crafting a resolution with an implementation formula that does not require a return to the Council.
The UN-Palestinian-Islamic state axis is not shy about their MO. The UN gets to decide how the Arab-Israeli conflict ends. UN sources describe it this way: “the permanent responsibility of the United Nations towards the question of Palestine until it is satisfactorily resolved in all its aspects.” Put plainly, the UN will keep hammering away until the state of Israel is six feet under.
The stage for the UN-Biden swan song has already been set. The administration has shamefully allowed (by failing to use their veto) four Security Council resolutions since October 7, 2023, all of which heavily focused on aid to Palestinians. Not one condemned Hamas, called October 7th a terror attack or antisemitic, or mentioned Israel’s UN Charter right of self-defense.
Possible Trump-Proof UN Moves
Back in December 2016 Israel and the American electorate were ill-prepared for Obama’s anti-democratic UN-based treachery. It is, therefore, critical to take an immediate and very public look at the range of at least five Trump-proof harms now within reach of a UN-Biden hit squad.
The first Trump-proof move afoot is a “Chapter VII” resolution – a resolution that the UN Charter renders legally binding. Since Israel’s admission as a UN member state, it has never been subject to a Chapter VII resolution. Any Chapter VII move would alter the very fundamentals of American Mideast diplomacy – which, in theory, still insists on a negotiated settlement and mutual recognition, and for good reason, keeps the UN wolves at bay.
The second Trump-proof scenario is a resolution that demands a permanent ceasefire. Everybody knows that Hamas and Hezbollah are not deterred or defeated, that they will never obey a ceasefire, and that their Iranian sponsors are key and yet invisible to the UN’s scope. A UN ceasefire demand has only one real target, namely, Israel.
Trump-proofing a fake ceasefire ultimatum requires an additional step: building into the resolution consequences for Israel’s predictable unwillingness to commit harikari.
One such consequence could be ordering the UN Secretary-General to churn out reports in perpetuity on whether Israel is obeying the Security Council order, and creating a new permanent Council agenda item to continually reconvene and take up those reports.
Make no mistake. Reports, meetings, press conferences – carried by UN WebTV around the world in six languages – aren’t just a recipe for more hot air. They are a scheme to fan the flames of hate and antisemitism until they blow up in Israel, in Dutch streets, and American college campuses.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on October 9, 2023 that the butchery of Jewish babies on October 7th needed to be contextualized. He called the rape, torture, mutilation, murder and kidnap of more than a thousand Jews in a matter of hours another data point in a “vicious circle” of violence originating from a “long occupation.” By which he meant the offensive presence of Jews on what the UN has decided is Arab territory, including Jerusalem.
A Trump-proof production line of Secretary-General reports ensures the UN will be constantly throwing gasoline on any American attempt to put out the fire.
The third Trump-proofing scheme is any resolution that pontificates about the UN’s idea of international “law,” albeit strictly-speaking only a Chapter VII resolution is legally-binding. Such a resolution – that past UN practice portends will be unjust, biased, deliberately ambiguous or dead wrong – will guarantee a global legal pogrom. It will trigger pronouncements from the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ), the International Criminal Court (ICC), and possibly domestic courts. Now in the offing, therefore, is a rising crescendo of legal fist-pumping intended to generate sanctions, boycotts and arms embargoes, while Israeli leaders and defense forces are defamed, hunted down, prosecuted and locked up.
To be sure, when it comes to the ICC, Congress long ago adopted what is known as the “Hague Invasion Act” – a promise to free Americans, Israelis and others from ICC clutches. But many of America’s allies are party to the ICC treaty and bound to obey it. So any Biden-approved Security Council resolution about “the law” will inevitably set up a dangerous conflict between the Trump administration and other states, deceitfully styled as a conflict between law-breakers and law-abiders.
The fourth Trump-proof strategy is to build sanctions of various kinds into the resolution itself – sanctions that automatically kick in should any UN-designated authority declare that Israel has violated the Council’s orders. No doubt, such a route would set an uncomfortable precedent for control-freaks among the Perm-5, but it is just possible that their aversion to Israel and Trump will prevail.
For the Biden administration, subjugating American interests to the United Nations is not a good look or rallying cry for the 2026 mid-terms. So, selling the move to an American audience will be just as important as achieving it.
The marketing tool? Humanitarian aid. Aid for Palestinians, that is – the only ones the UN counts as suffering. Aid that is hijacked to, feeds and empowers Palestinian terrorists. Aid that doesn’t go to the hostages, including Americans, who are deliberately being starved.
The Biden team has been playing this Palestinian no-win game since October 8, 2023. Aid is a one-way street owed by Israelis to Palestinians, notwithstanding that Palestinians put other Palestinians in harm’s way. In preparation for Biden’s lame-duck term, Secretaries Blinken and Austin gave Israel a post-election deadline of November 14th to deliver on a range of arbitrary, capricious and inappropriate “humanitarian” demands that parroted UN sources – or else. It’s a setup for justifying UN-favored punishments on Israel and a UN-US December/January surprise.
Fifth, the ultimate Trump-proof tactic would be a Security Council resolution admitting the “State of Palestine” as a full member state of the United Nations. The ramifications are clear. It would manufacture a Palestinian state without negotiations, without the legal attributes of statehood, and without even satisfying the conditions set by the UN Charter. It would be a reward for terrorism. A greenlight for antisemitism. A guarantee of more war. A dodge around acceptance of a Jewish state. A violation of the Oslo Accords. A violation of American promises. A rupture of the bonds of trust between the United States and Israel.
At the same time, American law prohibits depositing one cent in UN coffers if the United Nations or any of its agencies accords the Palestinians “the same standing as member states.” The UN heavily relies on American taxpayers who pay almost one-third of its bills, upwards of 20 billion annually. On the one hand, some might understandably argue “Go ahead. Make my day.” On the other hand, doing everything possible to prevent this tactic is important, since one can anticipate down the road a repeat of Democratic efforts to circumvent withholding laws and turn the US-UN spigot back on.
How Can a UN-Biden Plan Be Stopped?
As these options are debated, the UN itself is ratcheting up the pressure on what they read as an angry, spiteful and like-minded Biden crew. A Secretary-General report will be out by mid-December on a General Assembly to-do list for laying waste to the “racist” Jewish state, including sanctions, arms embargoes, isolation, and dungeons in the Hague awaiting Israeli “criminals.”
Palestinians and their UN cronies are also pursuing rejection of the credentials of the Israeli UN delegation and suspension of Israeli participation in the General Assembly. These moves don’t require Security Council approval, and anything short of a rapid American promise of severe repercussions for bilateral and multilateral relations may well produce miscalculations.
Which brings us to the pollyannish view that Biden could not possibly have any such Trump-proofing visions for his legacy. Alas, the truth is that his Presidency has emboldened Israel and America’s enemies, and wrongly and gravely impeded Israel’s prosecution of an existential war. President Biden is unlikely to wake up minutes to midnight.
Faced with these attempts to derail a Trump foreign policy before it even has a chance to begin, what can the incoming administration do?
Beware the pro-UN, anti-Israel “Logan Act” crowd. That’s the virtually moribund 18th century Act which has almost never been invoked and has led to zero convictions. The Act prohibits U.S. citizens from attempting to “influence the measures or conduct” of a foreign government or to “defeat the measures of the United States.” Such threats against the Trump team would be bogus, unconstitutional, as well as discriminatory – since according to Democrats, former Secretary of State John Kerry lobbying Iranians in opposition to then President Trump’s policies didn’t count.
There is no reason for the incoming Trump administration to hide from other nations the point that antisemitism at the United Nations will not be tolerated on their watch. That the UN’s hiding behind “humanitarianism” while fanning the flames of terror, violence and intolerance doesn’t fool the new administration. That a phony ceasefire imposed on Israel before the release of all the hostages, before the end of Palestinian rocket fire, and before the termination of Hamas’s reign of terror is a fake out, and the new President won’t fall for it. Making all that clear is called free speech.
Here is what is really anti-democratic: a lame-duck American President using the United Nations to achieve what he couldn’t do in a domestic setting; modifying or introducing what is effectively treaty law without the advice and consent of the Senate; foisting international financial legal obligations on the American people without any prior consideration by Congress; making immutable foreign policy moves with intent to defeat the measures of the President-elect.
Americans of all political stripes need to remind President Biden’s lame-duck administration that they didn’t come out to vote only to hand over control to the Russians, the Chinese and the United Nations.
