Nikki Haley: "We've Lost All Hope On UN as a Body, Israel Loses its Staunchest at the UN System" - TimesofIsrael

WASHINGTON — With Nikki Haley’s surprise resignation Tuesday as US ambassador to the United Nations, Israel will be losing its most outspoken champion at the world body, a figure dubbed “Hurricane Haley” by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for her muscular defense of the Jewish state in front of an often hostile crowd.

Sitting in the Oval Office Tuesday morning, not even an hour after news broke of her departure, Haley listed what she considered her achievements in the diplomatic posting. Chief among them was standing up to the UN’s “anti-Israel bias” and defending the Trump administration moving the US embassy to Jerusalem.

It’s not clear who will take Haley’s place — US President Donald Trump said he would name a successor in a few weeks — but it’s safe to say they will be somebody simpatico with Trump on America’s place vis-a-vis the UN and defending Israel there.

It’s harder to say whether whoever does get the nod — some have speculated the president’s daughter Ivanka could get the job — will be able to match Haley’s zeal as an Israel supporter in Turtle Bay.

Haley’s predecessor, Samantha Power, also spoke out loudly against anti-Israel bias at the UN, but it was a smaller part of her role as envoy, and she never earned the kind of cheers Haley did from the pro-Israel community. Power, moreover, represented the Obama administration when it allowed an anti-settlement Security Council resolution to pass by withholding the US veto in December 2016.

Haley’s tenure in New York was widely noted — and, in some corners, criticized — for its defiance in the face of international diplomats who challenged US President Donald Trump’s approach to the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“Her departure was unanticipated and took the pro-Israel community by surprise,” Matt Brooks, the Republican Jewish Coalition CEO, said on Twitter. “Stunned and shocked by the surprise resignation of @nikkihaley as UN Amb. She was a consequential and impactful force at the UN.”

Beyond rhetorically supporting the embassy move, she was a major proponent of the United States exiting the UN Human Rights Council , citing its reflexively critical posture toward Israel, cutting aid to UNRWA , the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, and

blocking a resolution condemning Israel as responsible for the deaths at Gaza border clashes this spring.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley speaks at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference in Washington, DC, on March 5, 2018. / AFP PHOTO / Nicholas Kamm)

For those moves, she was treated as a rockstar when she spoke before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) annual conference the last two years.

At her first address before the confab, in 2017, she told the crowd of 20,000 that “there’s a new sheriff in town” to massive applause.

“I wear heels. It’s not for a fashion statement,” she said. “It’s because if I see something wrong, we’re going to kick ’em every single time.”

Those words came shortly after Trump assumed office and vowe to reverse course of the Obama administration, which allowed passage of a Security Resolution in December 2016 that condemned Israel for its settlement enterprise.

Haley, like her boss, often bucked precedents set by past administrations to not weigh in on final-status issues on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, the most sensitive issues that veteran negotiators have long insisted should not be dealt with until the conclusion of peace negotiations.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, left, speaks to Israel Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon before a Security Council meeting on the situation between the Israelis and the Palestinians, Friday, June 1, 2018 at United Nations headquarters. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

Most notably, she has questioned the Palestinians’ claim to a “right of return,” in which all Arabs who were displaced between 1947 and 1949, including millions of their descendants, would “return” to modern Israel.

UNRWA claims there are more than five million registered Palestinian refugees, when there were roughly 750,000 after the 1948 war, of whom it is estimated tens of thousands are still alive. Unlike every other refugee population, which shrinks every year, the Palestinian.