"Immediately after Israel's March 17 election, Obama administration officials threatened to allow (or even encourage) the U.N. Security Council to recognize a Palestinian state and confine Israel to its pre-1967 borders. Within days, the president himself joined in, publicly criticizing not just Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom Obama has had notoriously bad relations, but sectors of Israeli opinion and even Israel itself...
America's consistent view since Council Resolution 242 concluded the 1967 Arab-Israeli war is that only the parties themselves can structure a lasting peace. Deviating from that formula would be a radical departure by Obama from a bipartisan Middle East policy nearly half a century old...
Obama's postelection statements demonstrate something much deeper than just animosity toward Netanyahu. Obama said that 'Israeli democracy has been premised on everybody in the country being treated equally and fairly. If that is lost, then I think that not only does it give ammunition to folks who don't believe in a Jewish state, but it also, I think, starts to erode the meaning of democracy in the country.'
With these comments, Obama is criticizing not just Netanyahu, but the very legitimacy of Israel's democracy, giving an implicit green light to those prepared to act violently against it. Obama's remarks are substantially more egregious than Secretary of State John Kerry's 2014 criticism that Israel's unwillingness to follow the White House lead in the Palestinian negotiations made it understandable if there were another Palestinian intifada or further efforts by the international 'boycotts, sanctions, and divestiture' movement against Israel.
Obama is thus going well beyond acting unpresidential or even immature. Whether one takes his or Netanyahu's side, the administration's approach is now squarely contrary to America's larger strategic interests. And the global harm that will be done to common U.S. and Israeli interests through Security Council resolutions if Washington stands aside (or worse, joins in) will extend far beyond the terms of one prime minister and one president...
No end of mischief will flow from even one undisciplined Security Council resolution, let alone whatever else Obama is prepared to allow. Obama's criticisms, with the implied charge of racism not far beneath their surface, have once again brought Israel's very legitimacy into question. We are all too close to resurrecting the U.N.'s 1975 "Zionism is racism" resolution..."