US Ambassador Haley is the Noah of the UN
United States’ UN Ambassador, Nikki Haley. Is the Noah of the UN
Passover Issue, 2017
By: Morton A. Klein
Last week, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, wowed her audience at AIPAC with her forthright, plain-spoken support for Israel among the jackals at the UN. She told AIPAC that, “There are a lot of threats to peace and security, but you are not going to take our number one Democratic friend in the Middle East and beat up on them.”
Ambassador Haley was not pandering to her audience. A newcomer to the world of foreign policy, she has been very clear since arriving in office that she has been surprised and appalled by the hateful preoccupation with condemning Israel at the UN.
Already in her Senate confirmation hearings, Ambassador Haley condemned December 2016's UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which falsely condemned Israeli residence in Judea/Samaria as “illegal,” as “the ultimate low,” a “terrible mistake” and a “kick in the gut” to an ally.
She added, “I will not go to New York and abstain when the U.N. seeks to create an international environment that encourages boycotts of Israel … I will never abstain when the United Nations takes any action that comes in direct conflict with the interests and values of the United States.”
And that is the course she has followed.
As she put it on her first day on the job, “You're going to see a change in the way we do business. Our goal with the administration is to show value at the U.N., and the way we'll show value is to show our strength, show our voice, have the backs of our allies and make sure our allies have our back as well. For those who don't have our back, we're taking names; we will make points to respond to that accordingly.”
On February 16, Ambassador Haley told a press conference following her first meeting of the UN Security Council that:
“The outrageously biased resolutions from the Security Council and the General Assembly only make peace harder to attain by discouraging one of the parties from going to the negotiating table. Incredibly, the UN Department of Political Affairs has an entire division devoted to Palestinian affairs. Imagine that. There is no division devoted to illegal missile launches from North Korea. There is no division devoted to the world's number one state-sponsor of terror, Iran. The prejudiced approach to Israeli-Palestinian issues does the peace process no favors.
And it bears no relationship to the reality of the world around us. The double standards are breathtaking. Just a few days ago, the United States sought unsuccessfully to have the Security Council condemn a terrorist attack on Israel, where the terrorist opened fire on people waiting for a bus and then stabbed others. The Security Council would not hesitate to condemn an attack like that in any other country. But not for Israel. The statement was blocked. And that's downright shameful.”
In March, the Trump administration strongly condemned systemic anti-Israel bias at the UN, such as UN monitoring of Jewish communities beyond the 1949 armistice lines. Ambassador Haley's deputy, Michele Sison, denounced the unfair singling out of Israel during a closed session of the UN Security Council, arguing that the UN has allowed valuable time and attention to be hijacked for bashing Israel.
Speaking to her the other day at a meeting held at the UN, Ambassador Haley said that, of 26 recent UN resolutions, 20 had targeted Israel. She has been simply stunned at the toxic preoccupation with Israel in the halls of the UN. She stated that some of her counterparts were now nervous around her and were reluctant to discuss Israel with her, knowing the position she has taken –– they sense a principled opponent.
In this, Ambassador Haley is akin to the biblical Noah. Noah is recorded in the Bible as simply being a decent man whose greatness lay in being completely untainted by the immorality and perversity of his time and place.
Nikki Haley is new to the cynical word of diplomacy and the beltway foreign policy establishment, where hostility and bigotry toward Israel might be regretted or opposed by particular individuals, but is accepted as the norm. Nikki Haley comes to the job without preconceptions, without a need or desire to share the conventional wisdom of the diplomatic community and with her moral compass intact.
With all the moral degradation and perversity surrounding him, Noah remained a mensch. Nikki Haley is doing the same. She deserves our recognition, praise and support.
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Morton A. Klein is the national president of the Zionist Organization of America.
