Former national security adviser John Bolton criticized President Biden after the United Nations Security Council rejected a U.S.-backed resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire and said the proposal was “very detrimental to Israel.”
“We saw on Friday something almost unimaginable in the U.N. Security Council. The Biden administration had proposed a resolution really, very detrimental to Israel and its efforts to defeat the Hamas terrorists,” Bolton told radio host John Catsimatidis in a Sunday interview on “The Cats Roundtable” on WABC 770 AM.
The council voted Friday to reject the resolution that called for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and the release of all hostages held by Hamas. The final vote had 11 in favor, three votes against and one abstention. Russia and China, who are permanent members of the council and therefore have veto power, voted against it.
The Biden-backed resolution signaled a big shift for the U.S., which had previously blocked any attempts to call for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war. The resolution also called for the release of hostages, as Hamas is believed to be holding about 100 hostages still alive in Gaza.
Bolton said the change from the Biden administration is “not linked to an agreement to exchange the hostages” to give Israel what it wants and said the proposal is “what the Europeans wanted, it’s what Hamas wanted.”
He argued that Hamas wants a cease-fire to get “the same relief from Israel’s attack on their underground tunnels.”
“The U.S., this [is] a real slap at Israel, and … that resolution was vetoed by China and Russia, which is just a slap in the face of the Biden administration,” he said.
Bolton said the veto by China and Russia shows that the countries “view Biden as weak and ineffective, and they’re showing Biden can’t get out of his own way.”
The U.S. vetoed three previous resolutions before the Security Council that called for a cease-fire without any conditions. This most recent resolution from the U.S. shows that Biden and his administration have shifted gears on the war, as more humanitarian aid is delivered to civilians in Gaza and leaders and voters put pressure on the administration to temper Israel’s wartime conduct.
Since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, when they killed 1,200 people and took roughly 250 hostages, Israel has waged a deadly counteroffensive. More than 31,000 people in Gaza have been killed in the war, and the U.N. warns that the territory’s northern region faces a dangerous risk of famine.