On January 3rd at the US mission to the UN in New York, Nikki Haley hosted a “Friends of the US” reception for the 64 countries that did not support the United Nations Jerusalem resolution.
The non-legally binding UN resolution, passed 128-9 on December 21st in an emergency General Assembly session, condemned US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and beginning the process of moving its embassy there two weeks earlier.
Instead, a majority of the UN members said that the move would hinder peace negotiations in the Middle East and condemned Israel’s illegal “actions in Occupied East Jerusalem.”
Following the condemnation, Haley extended the invitations to the eight other countries that voted against the resolution, the 35 abstaining countries, and 21 absent countries, thanking them for their “friendship to the United States” and for allowing its right to exercise its own sovereign policy.
She said, “The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in this assembly. We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the world’s largest contribution.”
The reception marked the beginning of the US “taking names” of its supporters and non-supporters, as Haley previously informed it would do in a letter to most of the 193 UN member states ahead of the vote, warning of possible budgetary retaliation.
Likewise, Former US envoy to the UN John Bolton said in an interview with Fox News, “the Trump administration needs to use this as a fulcrum to look at funding of the UN system more broadly.”
The day before the reception, Haley announced, “As I said in December, we won’t forget the Jerusalem vote.”
On his way to the reception, Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon praised Haley and the US’s support of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, saying to CNN, “It was a courageous decision by President Trump and Ambassador Haley, and we thank the United States for this courageous decision, and tonight the US is continuing to show leadership in the Middle East, real leadership in the UN.”
He continued, “There’s a lot of hypocrisy in the UN. I think tonight the countries who stood with the US will come and hear that the US is thanking them for standing for the truth and not joining the show of the Palestinians inside the UN.”
Following the reception, the U.S. Mission to the UN tweeted, “It’s easy for friends to be with you in the good times, but it’s the friends who are with you during the challenging times that will never be forgotten. Thank you to the 64.”
