Threshold Radio with Johnny Blue Star

Johnny Blue Star & Hugo Rodier, an integrative physician with a concern for the political health of the citizens of the U.S.- discuss the legal, human rights and political challenges following the Trump Presidency decision to move the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel. Considering Trump’s earlier commitment to help resolve the Israeli/Palestinian issue, his manner of doing so more or less shocked the world. In the interest of quickly resolving the issue of Israel’s more-or-less annexation of the whole of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in 1980- and the virtually immediate Security Council denial of the legality of that move, Israel did not capitulate, although most countries eventually complied with the Council’s demand to have all embassies remove themselves from Jerusalem. Later, in the 1990s, the U. S. Congress decided to move the Embassy, going against Resolution 478 of the Security Council. Still, Congress granted the right for the President to defer the move for six months through a signed waiver- and no President until Trump actually made that move. Our discussion, in this show, focuses a great deal on the time period before and after the Security Council resolution- meant to keep the United States from making that move. The move was preceded by Nikki Haley, the UN representative from the United States, threatening to “take names” and possibly hold back funds based on the votes of individual members. This was countered by Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki, who noted that Haley was attacking their sovereign right to vote by attaching a price tag to their voting. Haley’s speech after the vote was even more emphatic. Blue Star and Rodier discuss the kind of imperialistic motivation lying behind so much of the behavior of the United States and its effect on various states in the United Nations.