OPINION:
Oh, Nikki Haley. What a gem you’ve become.
The South Carolina flag-flap is forgiven — so, too, the endorsement of Marco Rubio for president. Standing tall against the United Nations has scored well with the people and now, the former governor who saw her star fall while removing the long-loved banner of the Confederacy from her state Capitol is on a decided return to glory.
Comments like this one, from Tammi Lawton, who expressed unhappiness with Haley’s take-down of the Confederate flag by saying, “She’s a stupid idiot,” are being replaced by commentaries like this, taken right from U.S. Ambassador to the United Nation Haley’s Twitter feed: “Thanks for the excellent representation Ambassador.”
The latter was a response to Haley’s message at the annual AIPAC conference, during which she fully defended Israel from the Palestinian Authority’s ongoing attacks by reminding bluntly, there’s a new sheriff in town, unafraid to call a spade a spade, an anti-Jew an anti-Jew.
Some of her remarks: “There are a lot of threats to peace and security, but you are not going to take our number one Democratic friend in the Middle East and beat up on them,” she said, speaking of Israel.
And then there was this, the context of which was discussion of the Palestinian Authority’s anti-Israel push through the United Nations: “I wear heels. It’s not for a fashion statement. It’s because if I see something’s wrong, we’re going to kick them every single time.”
Then there was her announced walk-out, along with 40 other nations, of a U.N. meeting to ban nuclear weapons on the international basis — a silly notion, really, given it’s a rule only the moderate nations would ever abide.
“You are going to see almost 40 countries that are not in the General Assembly today,” she said, in the throes of the meeting boycott. “To ban nuclear weapons now would make us and our allies more vulnerable and would strengthen bad actors like North Korea and Iran who would not abide by it. … Is there anyone that believes that North Korea would agree to a ban on nuclear weapons?”
That question alone points to the distinct difference between this administration, the one of President Donald Trump, of Make America Great Again fame, and the last, of Barack Obama — of Apologize for America’s Greatness, over and over again fame. Under Trump, common sense matters, truth counts and the main guiding compass can be summed: America first. Under Obama? It was concede and debate — diplomacy at all costs.
For the United Nations, Haley is certainly a wake-up call.
In January, right after Trump took his office, Haley strode into the United Nations’ headquarters to deliver her first official ambassador remarks and within minutes, set the world body and its anti-Israel crowd — a crowd which had run rampant under Obama — straight. What followed was simply a middle-finger flip-off to the United Nations.
“You’re going to see a change in the way we do businesses,” she began, back then. “Our goal with [this] administration is to show value at the U.N. and the way to show value is to show our strength, show our full voice — have the backs of our allies and make sure our allies have our backs as well. For those who don’t have our back, we’re taking names and we will make points to respond to that accordingly.”
For Israel, the turn from Obama to Trump, from Obama mouthpiece Susan Rice to Haley, must be nothing short of a godsend. Haley, while governor, actually stood with Israel opposing the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement — a movement from the left aimed at stopping perceived Israeli oppression of Palestinians — and signed a resolution in her state making clear to the United Nations the campaign was based on a false premise. This week, she recommitted to the anti-BDS campaign.
“We should boycott North Korea, we should sanction Iran, we should divest from Syria, not Israel,” Haley said, the Jerusalem Post reported. “[The BDS claim] makes absolutely no sense and it has no connection to any reasonable definition of justice.”
And where was the previous administration on all this?
Busy undercutting Israel. One of Obama’s last acts while president — which was really a failure to act — was to skip out on a vote at the United Nations that condemned Israeli settlements and that, as the American Center for Law and Justice noted, simultaneously strengthened the “pernicious and ill-conceived BDS movement, which seeks to delegitimize Israel.” But Obama’s most egregious act against Israel?
That could very well be his administrative attempt to undercut the Jewish nation’s political elections, something his own Democratic Party — nowadays at least, now that Trump’s in office and political points can be scored over Russia — seems to frown upon.
As Mike Huckabee said in January, according to PJ Media: “There ought to be a Senate hearing about why Obama and so many of his people got involved, spending millions of dollars in the election in Israel a few years ago against Benjamin Netanyahu. That — that’s an issue of intervening in a foreign election.”
So Haley’s fresh voice — Trump’s no-nonsense pro-Israel policy?
Kick it. Kick it good. Like the good ambassador said, those high heels ain’t for fashion. It’s time the United Nations was reeled back to a role of subservience — the U.N. and all the anti-Israel forces that body seems to collect and support.
With Haley, that day of reckoning, it seems, has arrived.
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