Former Aide to Amb. Rice: Obama “Standing Up for Fair and Equal Treatment for Israel at the U.N.”

Max Samis — March 1, 2012 – 3:57 pm | Barack Obama | Foreign Policy | Iran | Israel Comments (0) Add a comment

Recently, Warren Bass, a senior fellow at the RAND Corporation, spoke with Israel Policy Forum on the United States’ approach to issues regarding Israel in the United Nations. Until last year, Bass served as the Director of Speechwriting and Senior Policy Adviser to U.N. Ambassador Susan E. Rice.

Bass discussed, among other matters, the success that Ambassador Susan Rice and the U.S. team have had in defending Israel in U.N. bodies:

The administration has wound up on a day-in, day-out basis standing up for fair and equal treatment for Israel at the UN. This was guidance that came from the President and Secretary of State Clinton and Ambassador Rice on down to my rather modest level. It was very clear that the senior leadership of the administration was troubled by the way Israel was singled out at the UN and wanted it stopped. Ambassador Rice, I should say, has used some very strong language about this. She called the type of bashing Israel often comes in for at the UN ‘relentless, obsessive, and ugly’-which it is not terribly diplomatic language but, unfortunately, I think is quite accurate….

[t]he President himself raised this in his speech at the UN General Assembly in 2010. He said that ‘efforts to chip away is Israel’s legitimacy would only be met by the unshakable opposition of the United States,’ and I think you see that in the day-in and day-out of American policy, and on a range of issues.

Just to tick off some of the most prominent: there was the Palestinian bid last September for UN membership…. they just didn’t have the votes required in the Security Council, and the landscape is not that different right now….

There was also an attempt by the Palestinians in February 2011 to insert the Security Council into the settlement issue. That triggered a veto from Ambassador Rice, which is still the first and only veto that the Obama administration has cast in the Security Council.

The United States also refused to participate in the ten-year commemoration of the 2001 Durban Conference because the administration felt that the Durban process, which is supposed to be an anti-racism process, has been marred all the way along by ugly displays of intolerance and anti-Semitism.

There was a huge fight, as you know, over the release of the Human Rights Council’s Goldstone Report into the 2008-2009 war in Gaza. The United States under this administration said that the report was deeply flawed and stood up strongly for Israel’s right to defend itself. The United   States voted against a barrage of Goldstone-related resolutions in both the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council.

This, I think, gives you some sense of the scope of it, but really, in my personal experience-and I should say that I don’t speak for the administration or for RAND and am speaking strictly as a private citizen today-this was something Ambassador Rice and the rest of her team were dealing with on a pretty daily basis, and the record, I think, is very hard to criticize from a fair-minded point of view.

On the cooperation between the Obama Administration and Israel:

Just as one example, Gabriela Shalev, the first Israeli permanent representative that the administration dealt with, personally had a very warm relationship with my old boss, Ambassador Rice. They really worked well together, and part of that was the fact that Ambassador Shalev had a view of Israel at the UN pursuing a positive agenda that went beyond the conflict and sought to have Israel as a full participating member of the UN, with all of the rights and responsibilities of any member state. That was something we were enthusiastic to get behind, including trying to get the Israelis into the consultative bodies at the UN, which enable Israel to be a full member of the UN.

On U.S.-led sanctions against Iran:

You not only have Iran today talking about cutting off all oil sales to the EU, which makes up about 19 percent of Iran’s oil sales, but you also had, on February 22nd, Reuters reporting that China, India, and Japan are planning cuts of at least 10 percent in Iranian crude imports. Those three countries together buy about 45 percent of Iran’s crude exports, which is a serious sign that we are in a different type of era of sanctioning against Iran. Much of that is due to the president’s emphasis on working through the UN, bringing the world together on this, and bringing Iran to a moment of isolation the likes of which it has not experienced.

You can read the transcript of the full interview here, and listen to the audio of the interview here.

Click here to read more about President Obama’s support of Israel.

Click here to read more about Obama’s efforts to stop Iran’s nuclear program.

 

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