Plenty of talk in recent times has focused on what President Obama’s legacy while serving in the White House will be – and on Tuesday, former Arkansas governor and presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee offered up this, as a possible tag: Pro-Iran. Anti-Israel.
“If I were Obama, I probably wouldn’t plan a vacation to Tel Aviv anytime soon,” Huckabee said, during a Fox News appearance.
Huckabee’s comments refer in part to Obama’s recent slap to Israel via his administration’s abstention of vote at the United Nations on a resolution that demanded the Jewish state stop building in settlement spots wanted by Palestinians. Obama told his U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, to sit out the vote, rather than veto, thereby allowing it to pass with a 14-0 voice.
Israel denounced the move as a betrayal; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Obama’s failure to vote and veto “shameful.”
And Israeli authorities have since come forward with what they characterize as ironclad evidence from a reputable source and accused the Obama administration of not just abstaining to vote, but actually taking a lead role in creating and wording the resolution in closed-door discussions.
The White House has denied that accusation, but Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, told Don Lemon on CNN his country would present evidence of Team Obama’s doings at the United Nations to the incoming Donald Trump administration, and Trump could then pass along the information to the U.S. media and public, if he saw fit.
Huckabee, meanwhile, on Fox, called the whole fiasco yet another dark notch in Obama’s legacy belt.
“It certainly forever damages his legacy,” Huckabee said. “His legacy is to embrace Iran, the biggest sponsor of terrorism in the world, and to reject Israel, the only democracy that exists in the entire Middle East.”
