By this measure, Obama has been Israel's best American friend in many decades. One wonders why he gets so much antagonism.

from the nyt:

link

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WASHINGTON
— With the Obama administration in its final year, several officials
have said that the president has grown so frustrated with trying to
revive Middle East peace talks that he may lay down his own outline for an Israeli-Palestinian two-state peace agreement, in the form of a resolution in the United Nations Security Council.
If that happens, count on two reactions: Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu,
will oppose it, and a chorus of American politicians and commentators
will suggest that it would be unprecedented — even unthinkable — for an
American president to support a Security Council resolution that Israel
opposed, rather than veto it.
Last spring, when similar reports circulated, Senator John McCain of Arizona said that such an action would “contradict American policy for the last at least 10 presidents of the United States.”
The Republican chairman and ranking Democrat of the House Foreign
Affairs Committee joined in a letter protesting that “for decades the
U.S. has used its U.N. Security Council veto to protect Israel from
undue pressure at the world body.” A bipartisan group of senators
agreed, seeking assurances that the policy would not change.
Remarkably, the assumption beneath those protests — that President Obama
would be committing an unprecedented betrayal of the American-Israeli
relationship if he did not block every Security Council resolution that
challenged the actions or positions of Israel’s government — has gone
unchallenged.
Yet
it flies in the face of truth. Over seven years, Mr. Obama has not
permitted passage of any Security Council resolution specifically
critical of Israel. But a careful examination of the record shows that,
since 1967, every other American president allowed, or even had America
vote for, Security Council resolutions taking Israel to task for actions
and policies toward the Palestinians and other Arab neighbors.

During
Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration, the Security Council adopted at
least seven such resolutions; in Richard M. Nixon’s, at least 15; in
Gerald R. Ford’s, two; in Jimmy Carter’s, 14.
The number peaked at 21 in Ronald Reagan’s administration, when the United States voted in 1981 to condemn Israel’s air attack on an Iraqi nuclear reactor,
a strike intended to thwart Iraq’s nuclear ambitions. That resolution
also called on Israel to place its own nuclear sites under international
safeguards. The Israeli cabinet responded
that “with profound regret, we note that the United States, our friend
and ally” had “lent its hand to the grave wrong done to Israel.”
Other
resolutions passed during the Reagan administration criticized Israel’s
annexation of the Golan Heights, its military activities in Lebanon,
its operations against the Palestine Liberation Organization in Tunisia,
and its activities in the occupied territories. A recurring theme in
several unchallenged resolutions asserted that the Fourth Geneva Convention,
adopted in 1949, applied in the occupied territories, and explicitly
included Jerusalem in that category. The convention states that an
occupying power “shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian
population into the territory it occupies.” In effect, the United States
permitted resolutions saying that all Israeli settlement in the West
Bank and East Jerusalem violated international law.
Under
President George H. W. Bush, the council adopted nine resolutions
critical of Israel, including a condemnation of Israeli security forces
after more than 20 Palestinians died and 150 other civilians were
wounded at the holy site in Jerusalem known to Israelis as the Temple
Mount and to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif. Israel’s ambassador to the
United Nations denounced the resolution as “one-sided,” saying it
“completely disregards the attack against Jewish worshipers on the
holiday of the Sukkot at the Western Wall” and rejecting United Nations
involvement in “any matter relating to Jerusalem.”
Other
resolutions that the first Bush administration allowed to pass
criticized Israel’s deportation of Palestinians and its kidnapping of a
Lebanese religious leader.
The
number of such resolutions fell to just three during Bill Clinton’s
presidency, which was characterized by promising Israeli-Palestinian
peace efforts, and then rose to six under George W. Bush, whose term in
office saw increased violence with the outbreak of the second intifada.
In May 2004, one such resolution, also deemed “one-sided” by Israel,
condemned Israel’s demolition of Palestinian homes in Gaza. Another, in
March 2002, called for a cease-fire and a withdrawal by Israeli forces
from Palestinian cities they had re-entered to stem the uprising; Israel
protested that the resolution lacked “a similar call for an end to
terrorism in all its forms and in particular suicide bombings.”
President
Obama, in contrast with his predecessors, has completely shielded
Israel from such resolutions. This fact is all the more striking given
that his presidency has overlapped with governments that have been among
the most right-wing in Israel’s history — governments that have
continually and openly defied American-led peace efforts and American
policy opposing settlement expansion.
The
rationale behind Mr. Obama’s United Nations policy was hinted at in
2011, when the United States vetoed a draft resolution related to
Israeli settlements. In remarks explaining her vote, Susan E. Rice, then
the United States ambassador to the United Nations, made clear
that the administration objected to the resolution not over its
substance, but over concerns that it could poison efforts to foster
peace negotiations. In other words, the administration hoped that
vetoing the resolution would encourage the Netanyahu government to
engage more constructively in peace efforts.

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