Is This What True Friendship With Israel Looks Like, America?

A Rubicon has just been crossed. For the first time since the barbaric Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, a resolution has passed the UN Security Council calling for an immediate ceasefire during the remainder of the month of Ramadan. This is the first time that the United States has not vetoed, but abstained, on such a resolution. This stands in opposition to the expressed wishes of the government of the state of Israel. The U.S. was the only abstention, with the other 14 members voting in favor of the resolution, who immediately erupted in applause as it passed.

The fact that the United States did not veto a Security Council resolution that employs the word “ceasefire” indicates a hardening of Washington’s position towards Jerusalem. Yes, there was language calling for the release of the hostages, but not conditioning the ceasefire upon their return.

This vote only encourages Hamas to engage in more attacks like on Oct. 7, when 1,200 Israelis were savagely murdered, women sexually abused in the most heinous ways imaginable, and at least 253 Israelis were abducted from their homes.

Absent from this resolution is any reference to all the ceasefire proposals that the United States and Israel have already put forth. Hamas latest proposal calls for the release of 700 to 800 Hamas prisoners, many with blood on their hands, for only 40 Israeli hostages.

These hostages have been held in a 500-mile labyrinth beneath Gaza, as was the plan from the beginning. Hamas killed and kidnapped as many Israeli men, women, and children as they could. Those taken are hidden in their vast system of underground tunnel system, under UNRWA-sponsored schools, hospitals, and nurseries. (UNWRA is the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency). And when Israel comes to save these hostages, Hamas uses Gazan children and women to hide beneath, like trembling cowards, preying upon the world’s sympathy when they are killed.

U.S. Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield didn’t vote in favor of today’s resolution in the Security Council because there was no condemnation of Hamas for their Oct. 7 massacre. “Now let’s be clear,” said Thomas-Greenfield, “a ceasefire could have come about months ago if Hamas had been willing to release hostages months ago. Instead, Hamas continues to stand in the way of peace to throw up roadblocks, cower in tunnels beneath Gaza cities and under civilian infrastructure, and hide among the civilian population.”

By abstaining rather than an explicit veto, the U.S. allowed the Security Council to put Israel in the defendant’s docket, alongside Hamas. It’s an astounding degree of moral equivalency between an Iran-backed terrorist organization and the democratically elected government of the State of Israel.

Or, as Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan put it, “It was the Hamas massacre that started this war… Nearly six months has passed, and the Security Council still has not condemned the child-murdering rapists that started this war. The resolution just voted upon makes it seem as if the war started by itself… Israel did not start this war, nor did Israel want this war.”

Erdan also brought up a key point today. In 2005, Israel totally disengaged from Gaza and removed every remnant of a Jewish presence. In 2007 there was a full coup by Hamas, which threw members of other terrorist groups off rooftops. Members of the Palestinian Authority were not exempted.

In a recent poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, fully 71 percent of Palestinians are in favor of the attack upon the people of Israel on Oct. 7.

It is the will of the government and the people of Israel to totally eradicate the possibility that Hamas, or any other group, can again inflict such atrocities, the worst to happen to the Jewish people since the Holocaust.

What the United States needs to remember is the Iran is the real moving force behind Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. Iran lacks the courage to brings the war to its own soil, and instead uses its many terror proxies.

The United States, by abstaining on this resolution, ignores the fundamental fact that Israel is—in effect—fighting the war the Islamic Republic of Iran declared against the U.S. in November 1979 with the taking of American hostages at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

Most essentially, this abstention ignores the fact that the U.S.’ one reliable friend in the region is Israel, which is sacrificing its own blood to fight Iranian terror proxies on all of its borders.

Is this what true friendship in all about?

Sarah N. Stern is founder and president of EMET, an unabashedly pro-American and pro-Israel think tank and policy institute in Washington, DC, that frequently educates members of Congress.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.