Wall Street Journal ArticleThe House of Representatives on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a measure disavowing a United Nations resolution that condemned Israel’s settlement activities, in a rare show of bipartisan force that doubled as a rebuke to President Barack Obama’s approach to the U.S.-Israel relationship.
Excerpts from Resolution:
(1)(G): the United States Government should oppose and veto future United Nations Security Council resolutions that seek to impose solutions to final status issues, or are one-sided and anti-Israel;…
(2) the House of Representatives opposes United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 and will work to strengthen the United States-Israel relationship, and calls for United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 to be repealed or fundamentally altered…
Excerpts from Engel’s speech:
“Mr. Speaker, throughout its entire history, the state of Israel has never gotten a fair shake from the United Nations. Year after year after year, member states manipulate the UN to bully our ally Israel, to pile on with one-sided resolutions placing all of the blame for the ongoing conflict on Israel.
“We saw a resolution like this come before the Security Council a few weeks ago, and today the House of Representatives will go on record saying that that UN resolution is wrong, plain and simple. And frankly we should not have voted for that.
“The Security Council resolution is highly critical of Israel, yet asks nothing directly of the Palestinians. That’s biased, that’s unfair, that’s not balanced and, again, we should have opposed it. We should have vetoed it.
“And the language about Jerusalem is not new, but it remains deeply offensive to Jews whose holiest site lies on the Temple Mount in East Jerusalem. The Kotel, the holy Western Wall, is simply not occupied territory, and it’s offensive to hear that.