To the editor:
Laura Friedman is correct that various American presidents have allowed a number of one-sided, anti-Israel resolutions to be adopted by the United Nations Security Council. She neglected to point out these were misguided actions which harmed not only Israel, but the prospects for peace and America itself.
It's telling that the first example she gives is the way the United States, during the Reagan Administration, voted in 1981 to condemn Israel for its attack on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor. Thanks to Israel's raid, America wasn't facing a nuclear-armed Iraq ten years later when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.
Mahmoud Abbas has effectively avoided negotiations since walking away from an Israeli offer in 2008 for a Palestinian Arab state in the equivalent of 100 percent of the disputed territories. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has gone to great lengths, including an unprecedented building freeze in the disputed territories and the release of dozens of convicted terrorists, attempting to lure the Palestinian Arabs into serious negotiations.
For the Obama Administration to reward Abbas' intransigence with another one-sided Security Council resolution biased against Israel would be one more historic blunder.
Sincerely,
Alan Stein