President-Elect Donald Trump Twitted Monday afternoon: “The United Nations has such great potential but right now it is just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time. So sad!”
The United Nations has such great potential but right now it is just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time. So sad! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 26, 2016
At the AIPAC policy conference last March, Trump announced that “the United Nations is not a friend of democracy. It’s not a friend to freedom. It’s not a friend even to the United States of America, where as all know, it has its home. And it surely isn’t a friend to Israel.”
In the part of his speech dedicated to what Trump called “the utter weakness and incompetence of the United Nations,” the candidate quickly shifted to one of his favorite subjects, the soon-to-be-former President Barack Obama.
“He may be the worst thing to ever happen to Israel, believe me, believe me. And you know it and you know it better than anybody,” then presidential candidate Trump continued. “So with the president in his final year, discussions have been swirling about an attempt to bring a Security Council resolution on terms of an eventual agreement between Israel and Palestine.”
“Let me be clear,” Trump stated, “An agreement imposed by the United Nations would be a total and complete disaster. The United States must oppose this resolution and use the power of our veto, which I will use as president 100 percent.
“When people ask why, it’s because that’s not how you make a deal. Deals are made when parties come together, they come to a table and they negotiate. Each side must give up something. It’s values. I mean, we have to do something where there’s value in exchange for something that it requires. That’s what a deal is. A deal is really something that when we impose it on Israel and Palestine, we bring together a group of people that come up with something.
“That’s not going to happen with the United Nations. It will only further, very importantly, it will only further delegitimize Israel. It will be a catastrophe and a disaster for Israel. It’s not going to happen, folks.
“And further, it would reward Palestinian terrorism because every day they’re stabbing Israelis and even Americans. Just last week, American Taylor Allen Force, a West Point grad, phenomenal young person who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, was murdered in the street by a knife-wielding Palestinian. You don’t reward behavior like that. You cannot do it.
“There’s only one way you treat that kind of behavior. You have to confront it.
“So it’s not up to the United Nations to really go with a solution. It’s really the parties that must negotiate a resolution themselves. They have no choice. They have to do it themselves or it will never hold up anyway. The United States can be useful as a facilitator of negotiations, but no one should be telling Israel that it must be and really that it must abide by some agreement made by others thousands of miles away that don’t even really know what’s happening to Israel, to anything in the area. It’s so preposterous, we’re not going to let that happen.”
Finally, obviously anticipating the events of last Friday, Trump promised: “When I’m president, believe me, I will veto any attempt by the UN to impose its will on the Jewish state. It will be vetoed 100 percent.”