On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at the United Nations. As described by George Jahn at the Associated Press, it was "an impassioned speech interspersed with bouts of dramatic silence."
Jahn failed to report the absence of U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power and Secretary of State John Kerry. So did Rick Gladstone and Judi Rudoren at the New York Times. An unbylined Reuters report drily noted that U.S. representation at Netanyahu's speech consisted of "Ambassador Samantha Power's deputy, David Pressman, and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro." Breitbart also noted the presence of "Richard Erdman, Alternate Representative to the UN General Assembly." Reuters uniquely explained why Power and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who was in town, did not attend (bolds are mine throughout this post):
Power and Secretary of State John Kerry are both in New York, but Power's spokeswoman, Hagar Chemali, said they had to join a video conference call with Obama that ended up coinciding with the Israeli speech.
How convenient.
Apparently the videoconference was a fig-leaf pretext to cover up a desire that this nation's two leading diplomats not be there:
Richard Grenell, a former U.S. diplomat and Fox News contributor, says a State Department source told him U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power was instructed to skip the remarks of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations on Thursday.
Over at PJ Media, longtime foreign affairs commentator Claudia Rossett, whose career includes over two decades at the Wall Street Journal, interpreted the clearly timed stunt as follows: "America's enemies have read John Kerry's and Samantha Power's absence from Netanyahu's speech as open season on Israel."
Obama, Power and Kerry apparently wished to avoid having major U.S. leaders put into an uncomfortable position over criticism of the nuclear "deal" with Iran — the one containing "side agreements" which still are far less than fully known, and which appears to virtually guarantee that the "death to America" nation will have nuclear weapons in just over 15 years, if not sooner. They also surely expected criticism of the world's virtual silence over Iran's stated desire to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.
Well, Power and Kerry certainly would have felt uncomfortable. But as architects of that disastrous "deal," which appears to have given Iran everything it wanted and more, they certainly deserved to squirm during the following segment of Netanyahu's speech:
As reported by David Rutz at the Washington Free Beacon:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted the United Nations on Thursday for its “deafening silence” in the wake of Iran’s threats to exterminate his country, followed by 45 seconds of silent glaring at the General Assembly.... “Seventy years after the murder of six million Jews, Iran’s leaders promise to destroy my country, murder my people and the response from this body, the response from nearly every one of the governments represented here, has been absolutely nothing,” Netanyahu said. “Utter silence. Deafening silence.”
Netanyahu then looked slowly around the room with a glare fixed on his face, and there wasn’t a sound in the chamber. The U.N. has been hit with charges of anti-Semitism on numerous occasions.
“Perhaps you can now understand why Israel is not joining you in celebrating this deal,“ he said, breaking the quiet. “If Iran’s rulers were working to destroy your countries, perhaps you’d be less enthusiastic about the deal. If Iran’s terror proxies were firing thousands of rockets at your cities, perhaps you’d be more measured in your praise. And if this deal were unleashing a nuclear arms race in your neighborhood, perhaps you’d be more reluctant to celebrate."
It was much easier for Kerry and Power, and by extension Obama, to avoid the discomfort entirely, especially when they knew that most of the establishment press would fail to report their calculated, cowardly absence.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
