On Sunday evening, after calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and demanding an “immediate, unconditional” ceasefire in the war with Hamas, President Barack Obama convened an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council to ratify a unanimous resolution to the same effect. Ironically, President Obama declined to take the case for military action against Syria to the UN Security Council last year.
According to a leaked draft of the resolution, the Council will express “grave concern regarding the deterioration in the situation as a result of the crisis related to Gaza and the loss of civilian lives and casualties,” though it will not single out either Israel or Hamas. It is unclear whether either party will obey the demand for a ceasefire, but the resolution effectively isolates Israel in its war to eradicate a terrorist threat to civilians–a war it is winning.
The referral to the Security Council will be considered an ultimate act of betrayal by many supporters of Israel. The UN has been the stage for many of the most vicious anti-Israel–and antisemitic–calumnies of recent years, most notably the Goldstone Report on trumped-up “war crimes” in Gaza in 2008-9, and the infamous “Zionism equals racism” resolution of 1975, which the U.S., then represented by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, opposed.
One thing is certain: for a president who once told pro-Israel activists that he had “Israel’s back,” the past few days have been extraordinary. Not only has the Obama administration sought to impose a ceasefire on Israel that would have left Hamas’s terror infrastructure intact, but has sought ceasefire terms that would give Hamas outright victory. Now Obama is leading the charge to isolate Israel. If he has Israel’s back, it is with a sharp dagger.
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