The new Israeli ambassador to the United Nations has issued a stern warning to the international body amid escalating tensions with Hezbollah and concerns that Iran could be close to obtaining a nuclear weapon. 

Ambassador Danny Danon told Fox News Digital that Security Council Resolution 1701 ‘said very clearly that there would be no military force in southern Lebanon besides the Lebanese military, but look what happened since 2006.’

‘Hezbollah took over, they controlled the region, and they made this area a hub for terrorism with tens of thousands of rockets that, unfortunately, in the last few months, we felt the capabilities,’ he argued. ‘I think if the U.N. is not capable of implementing the resolution, we will have to implement the resolution and push Hezbollah away from our community in the north.’

Part of tackling the various groups in the Middle East – such as Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon or the Houthis in Yemen – requires dealing with Iran. 

‘I think it’s about time that not only Israel will deal with Iran, but the Western democracies will realize that they have to put pressure on Iran, they have to be active in order to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear capabilities,’ he said. 

‘We thought on April 14 when they sent hundreds of projectiles into Israel and their intentions … imagine they had nuclear capabilities,’ Danon noted. ‘We will not wait for that day. We will not allow them to achieve nuclear capabilities.’

Danon replaced Gilad Erdan, who in May decided to end his tenure as the permanent representative to the U.N. Danon previously held the role from 2015 until 2020, after which he took the role of Minister of Science, Technology and Space. 

Erdan served in the U.N. during the Oct. 7 attack and roughly the first nine months of Israel’s incursion into the Gaza Strip as the Israeli Defense Forces hunted down Hamas. 

Erdan rose to international prominence for his fiery rhetoric, his bold speeches – including symbolically shredding the U.N. charter – and labeling the United Nations as a broken institution. Just last week, he declared that ‘the U.N. building in Jerusalem needs to be closed and erased from the face of the Earth.’

Danon, on the other hand, believes that the U.N. can be saved – but it requires the U.S. to step in and make demands to seek reform. 

‘Let’s look at the facts,’ Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon told Fox News Digital. ‘The facts are that the UN was not able to condemn  … October 7th. I cannot accept that.’ 

‘Not the Security Council, nor the General Assembly, not even a small show condemnation: Zero. Nothing. Silence. That’s unacceptable, and it showed that the double standards of the U.N. when it comes to Israel,’ Danon argued. 

‘I think we should reform the U.N., and I expect the U.S. to lead the action to change the U.N.,’ he added. ‘I think the U.N. is an important organization, and we have to reform it and make sure that the U.N. will focus on the real objects of promoting security and peace and not becoming a platform for hate and incitement by radical countries.’ 

‘I think that the major country – the strongest country, that allocates most of their budget should come with demands and look at the performance of the U.N., the resolution of the U.N. and ask for accountability and make sure that the focus will be on the right places,’ Danon argued. ‘It’s not happening today.’ 

The U.S. contributed more than $18 billion to the United Nations in 2022, accounting for one-third of funding for the body’s collective budget, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. 

Many Americans were surprised to recently see a coalition of the country’s most radical politicians — Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Rep Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and Sen. Richard Blumentha l, D-Conn., to name a few — teaming up to introduce heavy-handed legislation against the peer-to-peer payment companies (like PayPal, Venmo, Zelle and CashApp) that have improved all our lives. Blumenthal even went so far as to dispatch a separate letter to the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) demanding an investigation into Zelle.   

I wasn’t surprised to see any of these developments. When I served on the U.S. Congress’ Financial Services Committee, including its Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit, I can’t tell you how many times I witnessed my Democratic colleagues attempt to directly or indirectly knife these upstart payment processors.  

Most Americans know that big-government politicians have long had a vendetta against Bitcoin and today’s other cryptocurrencies. They, of course, view them as competition to the hegemony of the U.S. dollar, which the radical left relies upon to fund its reckless spending priorities. These progressive politicians see regulating these private marketplace options and ultimately replacing them with a government-run cryptocurrency as the only sustainable path forward. 

However, fewer Americans are aware that these same big-government politicians have also had it out for PayPal, Venmo and the rest of the peer-to-peer payment processors for quite some time now — and for quite the same reasons. 

The Biden administration brass, especially CFPB Director Rohit Chopra, have fought aggressively to convince the American people to stop using PayPal, Zelle and the like as ‘substitutes for a traditional bank or credit union account,’ — which they laughingly contend present safety concerns. But their pleas haven’t fooled the American people, millions of whom continue using these new financial tools every day.  

Which brings us back to the legislation introduced in July. Left with no other options to get their way other than government coercion, the administration handed the ball off to its favorite relief pitchers in Congress — Warren, Waters and Blumenthal — to reshape the nation’s laws in their favor. 

The resulting new bill that this left-wing cabal released, the Protecting Consumers from Payment Scams Act, would put peer-to-peer payment processors on the hook for every single instance of scamming that occurs on their platform. Meaning that every time an American gets fooled by a bad actor into sending money for nonexistent goods and services, these companies would have to pick up the tab. 

However, fewer Americans are aware that these same big-government politicians have also had it out for PayPal, Venmo and the rest of the peer-to-peer payment processors for quite some time now — and for quite the same reasons. 

The legislation’s sponsors claim this bill is necessary to protect public safety, but everyone knows this argument is completely nonsensical. Scams don’t even comprise a single percentage point of the transactions on these platforms. 

Do consumers sometimes make mistakes? Sure, but these errors are not the result of security flaws on these apps.  

The mistakes that consumers make on PayPal and Zelle are no different than when members of the citizenry occasionally send bank wire transfers to scammers, but you don’t hear the Biden administration or its congressional relief pitchers calling for the banks to pick up these tabs. Why is that?  

Well, it’s because their goal for their anti-PayPal and Zelle legislation isn’t actually to protect the public.  

The true purpose behind the bill is two-fold: to make it increasingly financially difficult for these companies to continue operating, and to generate negative press against their businesses in hopes of shrinking their massive user bases. 

The American people won’t fall for their scare tactics, and the rest of Congress won’t either. I fully expect the Republican-led House Financial Services Committee to kill this bill before it receives even a few breaths of oxygen. Millions of everyday Americans will stand to benefit.