The War on Israel Never Ends

"Last week's United Nations Security Council resolution on Israel is a weapon of war pretending to be a plea for peace. Israel's enemies say it has no right to exist. They claim the whole state was built on Arab land and it's an injustice for Jews to exercise sovereignty there. Palestinians still widely promote this untruth in their official television and newspapers, whether from the PLO-controlled West Bank or Hamas-controlled Gaza. That is the unmistakable subtext of Friday's U.N. Resolution 2334, despite the lip service paid to peace and the 'two-state solution.'

The resolution describes Israel's West Bank towns and East Jerusalem neighborhoods as settlements that are a 'major obstacle' to peace. But there was a life-or-death Arab-Israeli conflict before those areas were built, and before Israel acquired the West Bank in the 1967 war.

Arab opposition to Israel's existence predated-indeed caused-that war. It even predated Israel's birth in 1948, which is why the 1948-49 war occurred...

Friday's U.N. resolution is full of illogic and anti-Israel hostility. It says disputed issues should be 'agreed by the parties through negotiations.' Among the key open issues is who should control the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Yet the resolution calls these areas 'Palestinian territory.' So much for negotiations.

The resolution says that Jewish West Bank and Jerusalem 'settlements' have 'no legal validity.' On the basis of a skewed legal analysis that ignored pre-1967 Jewish claims, President Jimmy Carter called the settlements illegal. Knowing that Mr. Carter's conclusion was wrong and hostile to Israel, President Ronald Reagan repudiated it, and all U.S. administrations since were careful to avoid it. Until now. By reviving Mr. Carter's legal attack on the settlements, President Obama breaks with good sense and decades of U.S. policy..."