Dershowitz: Obama, Media Lying About UN Israel Vote

According to famed attorney Alan Dershowitz, the Obama administration is lying about the recent United Nations resolution against Israel and their justifications for abstaining from the vote. And the mainstream media, he says, is not being forthright about the full ramifications of the Security Council measure. In an op-ed for The Hill, Dershowitz accused both Obama and the press of obfuscation.

“The Obama administration pulled a bait and switch in refusing to veto the recent Security Council resolution against Israel,” Dershowitz writes. “In attempting to justify its abstention – which under Security Council rules has the same effect as a vote in favor – the administration focuses on ‘new’ settlement building, especially in areas deep into the West Bank.”

Dershowitz cites UN Ambassador Samantha Power, who said Israel’s “continued settlement expansion was going to put the two-state solution at risk.”

“And the media – from CNN, to the New York Times, to the Wall Street Journal – also reported that the resolution was only about the expansion of new settlements,” he writes.

Dershowitz points out, however, that the resolution itself doesn’t just condemn settlement expansions that have occurred over the last couple of years. Indeed, the Security Council officially declared that any boundary lines changed since June 4, 1967 constitute a “flagrant violation of international law.”

“This means that Israel’s decision to build a plaza for prayer at the Western Wall – Judaism’s holiest site – constitutes a ‘flagrant violation of international law.’ If it does then why did President Obama pray there and leave a note asking for peace?” he asks.

Dershowitz calls on Obama to stand by the text of the resolution in full – a major shift in U.S. policy dating back decades – or declare the resolution invalid, seeing as how America’s abstention was “not cast in good faith.”

Short of that, he calls on Donald Trump to finally move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, since the major justification for keeping it in Tel Aviv was to preserve the status quo.

“That justification no longer exists because this resolution does precisely that: it declares the status quo – the reality on the ground that acknowledges Israel’s legitimate claims to its most sacred and historical Jewish areas – to be flagrant violations of international law,” he writes.

Obama needlessly took this action as a parting shot at his personal nemesis, Benjamin Netanyahu. Unfortunately, his arrogance has introduced another dose of instability into the Middle East, endangering Israel’s security – and our own.