Not Content With Damage Already Done, U.N. Creates a Boycott Database For Israeli Businesses

In this photo provided by the United Nations, members of the United Nations Security council vote at the United Nations headquarters on Friday, Dec. 23, 2016, in favor of condemning Israel for its practice of establishing settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. In a striking rupture with past practice, the U.S. allowed the vote, not exercising its veto. (Manuel Elias/The United Nations via AP)

Just when you thought the disgust level for the United Nations had peaked, they up the outrage factor.

They aren’t simply satisfied with telling Israel that their homeland is not their land, but they’re making moves to economically punish the nation, through those companies that do business in the West Bank.

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On Christmas eve, the U.N. appropriated $138,700 to fund a database of those businesses, adding weight to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign.

From FoxNews.com:

“The types of data they are talking about acquiring would be to form the basis for future sanctions against companies that did business on the West Bank,” Fox News contributor and former U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton told FoxNews.com. “That’s the only purpose of it that I can see.”

The request for funding, first adopted last April, would “investigate the implications of the Israeli settlements on the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” which extends to East Jerusalem, and would “produce a database of all business enterprises” working in territories disputed between Israel and the Palestinians.

Bolton said the database is an “effort to lay the groundwork” for the UN Security Council to follow up on its anti-settlement declaration by imposing costly economic sanctions.

Had the Obama administration not been so completely wretched, a veto of the resolution would likely have stopped this part of the U.N.’s plan. In fact, for their part, the administration objected to funding for a boycott data base.

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“In close consultation and cooperation with Israel, we joined the Israelis recently in opposing funding for work related to the database, but this effort, unfortunately, was not successful,” U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power told FoxNews.com in an emailed statement. “We will continue to strongly oppose, in close coordination with Israel, any additional measures related to this one-sided effort if they arise moving forward.”

Why wasn’t it successful?

Oh, right.

Because you stabbed Israel in the back.

“There is a structural, institutional bias against Israel and approving money to blacklist the Israeli companies is helping the BDS movement –basically another opportunity for the UN to single out Israel,” former Israeli UN Ambassador Ron Prosor told Fox News. “There is nothing constructive here—this will not lead to anything but more violence in the region.”

Prosor said Israelis will not be the only ones affected by the so-called blacklist. He said Israeli companies employ 30,000 Palestinians in the West Bank, and punishing their employers will hurt them.

The condemnation of the weasel-y move by the Obama administration was bipartisan, with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle taken aback by this break in longstanding U.S. policy, that has always protected Israel from such sanctions.

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It was Obama’s final shot at Netanyahu and Israel.

“The administration’s stunt at the UN hurt our ally Israel and made peace in the region even more difficult to achieve,” Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, both California Republicans, said in a joint statement.

But Bolton said there is not a lot Congress can do.

“They can express their disapproval, which is helpful politically,” Bolton said. “But I am more concerned about what will happen internationally.”

Unfortunately, from 2008 to 2016 our nation was plagued by an anti-Israel troll in the White House, and what he did was meant to do long term damage.
 

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