US President Barack Obama. Photo: Pete Souza / White House.

America’s abstention from Friday’s vote on an anti-Israeli settlement UN Security Council resolution exposed the outgoing Obama administration’s “animus” towards the Jewish state, the Wall Street Journal said in an editorial on Saturday.

The failure to back Israel at the UN “defines this president’s extraordinary ability to transform matters of public policy into personal pique at adversaries,” the paper noted. “And it defines the reality of the international left’s implacable opposition to the Israeli state.”

The approved resolution, the Wall Street Journal went on to say, will “live on as Barack Obama’s cat’s paw, offering support in every European capital, international institution and US university campus to bully Israel with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.”

Meanwhile, the Washington Post also criticized the US abstention, saying in an editorial, “Whatever the motivation, Mr. Obama’s gesture is likely to do more harm than good.”

Settlements, the Washington Post pointed out, “do not explain the administration’s repeated failures to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace. The Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas proved unwilling to negotiate seriously even during the settlement freeze, and it refused to accept a framework for negotiations painstakingly drawn up by Secretary of State John F. Kerry in 2014.”

Furthermore, it continued, “In past negotiations, both sides have acknowledged that any deal will involve the annexation by Israel of settlements near its borders, where most of the current construction takes place — something the UN resolution, which was pressed by the Palestinians, did not acknowledge or take into account.”

The resolution passed by a 14-0 Security Council vote on Friday says Israeli communities established in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967 have “no legal validity” and represent “a flagrant violation” of international law, constituting “a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-state solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace.” It goes on to demand that the Jewish state “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.”