Christmas spirit: UN quietly appropriated money on Christmas eve to create a blacklist of Israeli companies to target for BDS

Thanks to Barack Obama and John Kerry, the United Nations quietly appropriated $138,000 on Christmas eve to create a blacklist of Israeli companies for boycotting, divestiture and sanctions (BDS).

Lost amid the angry words that followed the Dec. 23 UN Security Council vote that critics called an American betrayal of Israel was a Christmas Eve appropriation of $138,700 to fund a database of companies doing business in the West Bank. The measure puts UN prestige behind the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, say critics.

“The types of data they are talking about acquiring would be to form the basis for future sanctions against companies that did business on the West Bank,” Fox News contributor and former U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton told FoxNews.com. “That’s the only purpose of it that I can see.”

The request for funding, first adopted last April, would “investigate the implications of the Israeli settlements on the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” which extends to East Jerusalem, and would “produce a database of all business enterprises” working in territories disputed between Israel and the Palestinians.

Bolton said the database is an “effort to lay the groundwork” for the UN Security Council to follow up on its anti-settlement declaration by imposing costly economic sanctions.

The US opposed the appropriation, but in the General Assembly, it does not have a veto. This appropriation is yet another consequence of Obama-Kerry stabbing Israel in the back on the Security Council vote. The only thing Congress can do in response is to stop funding the UN.