Council vote

For months now, many have speculated that Obama's former National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, was the controversial figure behind all the unmaskings of Trump associates in the waning days of Obama's final term in the White House.  That said, new details seem to suggest that Rice's successor as U.N. Ambassador, Samantha Power, may emerge as the administration's convenient scapegoat is this particular scandal.

Pope Francis met with the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday for the opening of a Palestinian embassy in Vatican City. The inauguration of the embassy came just one day before representatives from 70 countries gathered in the French capital for an Israeli-Palestinian peace conference and amid threats by President-elect Donald Trump to illegally move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The Paris talks began just weeks after a historic U.N.

 This article by David Haggithwas first published on the Great Recession Blog: 

Israel's anger mounted for a second day after Friday's United Nations snub, when on Sunday it summoned ambassadors of countries from the UN Security Council for a Christmas Day reprimand for their support of a resolution condemning Israel’s illegal settlements on Palestinian lands. The vote passed in the 15-member Security Council on Friday because the United States broke with its long-standing approach of diplomatically shielding Israel and did not wield, as a permanent member of the forum, its veto power, instead abstaining.

Israel lashed out at the Obama administration  "friends don't act that way" after Ambassador Power abstained (refusing to veto) as The United Nations passed a resolution demanding Israel to stop settlement building on occupied Palestinian territory. As NYTimes notes, the administration’s decision not to veto the measure broke a longstanding American tradition of serving as Israel’s sturdiest diplomatic shield, and defied extraordinary pressure from President-elect Trump.