It Begins: US To Participate In Both Durban2 And UN Human Rights Council

In his article Hillary’s incredible, shrinking role, Dick Morris wrote about members of Obama's cabinet who would serve to limit the power and authority Hillary Clinton would be able to exercise. Among them:

o Samantha Power, Obama’s former campaign aide, who once called Hillary a “monster,” has been appointed to the National Security Council (NSC) as director of “multilateral affairs.”

o Susan Rice, Obama’s new United Nations ambassador, insisted upon and got Cabinet rank for her portfolio, and she will presumably also have the same kind of access to Obama that she had as his chief foreign policy adviser during the campaign.

Now the names of Clinton, Power and Rice have come up again:

The Obama administration said late Saturday it would participate in planning a United Nations conference on racism, despite concerns the meeting will be used by Arab nations and others to criticize Israel.

The U.S. will decide later whether to participate in "Durban 2," the second UN-sponsored World Conference Against Racism.

According to the Haaretz article, Israel asked Clinton to not attend the Durban conference and thereby give it added validity--but

One of the leading officials pressuring Clinton on "Durban 2" is the new U.S. ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, who was Obama's close campaign adviser.

Rice is also pushing for the U.S. to join the UN Human Rights Council, which is based in Geneva. The body had been boycotted by the U.S., in part because of its one-sided criticism of Israel.

President George Bush had accused the HRC of opting to focus on Israel instead of dealing with the genocide in Darfur.

The other official pushing for American participation in "Durban 2" is Samantha Power, another Obama adviser at the National Security Council.

Power participated in the initial Durban conference as the representative of a non-government organization and is known for her strong criticism of Israel. In the past, she expressed support for cutting U.S. military assistance to Israel and transferring the funds as aid to build a Palestinian state. [emphasis added]

Any assumptions that Clinton's addition to the Obama administration was going to be a plus for Israel were apparently misplaced. If anything, Obama's declared policy of talking and negotiating will not be limited purely to countries, as the US participation in both Durban and the UN Human Rights Council indicate.

Now that we know that the US will participate in both, the next question is how long will they stay as part of each of these blatantly anti-Semitic groups. The answer to that question will be a further indicator of where the Obama presidency is headed.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Obama.