Cruz says UN draft resolution against Israel is aimed at undermining incoming Trump admin, GOP Congress
In the closing weeks of the Biden administration, there are new concerns in Israel and among supporters of the Jewish state that the Biden administration will seek to punish Israel at the United Nations.
JERUSALEM— Just hours before the United Nations Security Council is slated to vote on an alleged anti-Israel resolution pushed by Algeria to impose an end on the Jewish state's war of self-defense against Hamas, the Biden administration has gone silent about how it will vote.
The irony of the notoriously anti-Israel Algeria devising the resolution recalls the witty line of the late Israeli Ambassador to the U.N., Abba Eban, who said, "If Algeria introduced a (U.N.) resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions."
The proposed resolution has triggered outrage from several quarters, including a leading Republican U.S.senator.
"This resolution is just one of several assaults on Israel being planned at the United Nations, meant to preemptively and permanently undermine the incoming Trump administration and Republican Congress," Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told Fox News Digital.
"I will work with my Republican colleagues and with President Trump to take whatever steps are necessary to undo these measures, including fundamentally reevaluating our relationship with the U.N. and the Palestinians, broadly cutting aid, imposing sanctions on specific officials responsible for those measures, and countering governments and NGOs pushing or implementing them," he said.
Fox News Digital reported last week that U.N. experts believed Biden’s administration might seek to replicate Obama’s parting shot at Israel, in which he failed to veto an anti-Israel resolution in the closing weeks of his administration.
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield delivered remarks on Monday at the world body but did not address the pending draft resolution. However, she noted, "The United States has exercised leadership and resolve in pursuing clear objectives: End the war in Gaza — end the war in Gaza by securing the release of hostages, while surging aid to Palestinians, who did not start and cannot end this conflict. Avoid a broader regional war while forcefully countering Iran’s terrorist proxies and destabilizing activities, and demonstrating an ironclad, unprecedented commitment to Israel’s security."
Fox News Digital approached the U.S. State Department and the United States mission to the U.N. for comment about the proposed draft.
Anne Bayefsky, President, Human Rights Voices in New York, told Fox News Digital, "Allies of Hamas are licking their chops at the prospect of the outgoing Biden administration refusing to veto an Israel-bashing resolution scheduled for adoption at the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday." She claimed, "For weeks, the United States has been busy massaging the terms of a draft, leaked to news outlets Al Jazeera and Al-Arabiya."
"The U.N.-U.S. operation is to pretend it's all about humanitarianism, when it is exactly the opposite. It guarantees to prolong the war and the suffering of the hostages and ignore the actual root causes: Iran, antisemitism and the illegal denial of Israel's right of self-defense. If adopted, it would be the fifth Security Council resolution President Biden has allowed to pass since Oct. 7 that doesn't even condemn Hamas," she said.
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Speaking earlier at the Security Council, Israel's Ambassador to the U.N., Danny Danon, criticized the draft resolution, stating, "Any resolution that does not condition the cease-fire on the release of the hostages means abandoning the 101 hostages to the hell of the terrorist monsters."
Danon added, "The decision being promoted in this Council only strengthens Hamas and terrorism and abandons the hostages. We cannot allow the U.N. to tie the hands of the State of Israel from protecting its citizens, and we will not stop fighting until we return all the kidnapped men and women home."
