Did the U.S. ever decide to not protect Israel at the U.N. or other international bodies?

Question

While the call for a cease-fire has wider support among U.N. member states, building consensus for it among the five permanent members of the Security Council has been difficult if not impossible.

“The threat of a U.S. veto will make it impossible for China to get anything out of the UNSC that’s critical of Israel, but if the fighting continues and Washington concludes that this is damaging its position, China may be able to get a resolution for a cease-fire that takes a neutral stance and does not single out Israel,” Stephen Walt, a professor of international affairs at Harvard Kennedy School, told VOA.

Traditionally, every time Israel is involved in a war, the U.S. has shielded it at the U.N. and other international bodies even at the cost of appearing isolated and partial, experts say.

https://www.voanews.com/a/us-viewed-as-isolated-in-diplomatic-fallout-of-gaza-war-/7345721.html

Did the U.S. ever decide to not protect Israel at the U.N. or other international bodies? The quote suggests it often did so, but not every time, so I am wondering what would be those instances where the U.S. didn't do anything to protect Israel.

Answer 1

The first instance to spring to mind is during the Suez Crisis, when the US intervened against the French-British-Israeli coalition, and even authored UNGA Resolution 997, which called for an immediate ceasefire, a withdrawal of all forces, and for the parties to desist from raids across armistice lines.

The resolution passed 64-5 (the other two votes against, in addition to France, Britain and Israel, were Australia and New Zealand). The US also supported other UN resolutions during the crisis, in opposition to the position of Israel, and President Eisenhower exerted pressure along with the Soviet Union which led to a withdrawal from Egypt.

Answer 2

Also Obama (who though his tenure didn't exactly get along with Netanyahu) allowed UNSC 2334 resolution to pass as a parting shot, at the end of his mandate.

High pressures were exerted to avoid the vote. On 22 December, United States President-elect Donald Trump called on Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to withdraw the proposal, and Egypt withdrew the nomination after what its ambassador called an "intense pressure". Then on 23 December, the draft was taken up and proposed again by Malaysia, New Zealand, Senegal and Venezuela. Israel unsuccessfully pressured New Zealand to withdraw its support, with Netanyahu telling Foreign Minister Murray McCully that support for the proposal would be considered by Israel as a "declaration of war". Britain encouraged New Zealand to keep pushing for a vote. Following a telephone conversation between Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin, the Russian ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin requested that the vote be postponed until after Christmas. His proposal failed to gain any support.

The resolution was passed 14 to 0; all members voted for the resolution except for the United States, which abstained. The United States ambassador, Samantha Power, explained the abstention by saying that on one hand the United Nations often unfairly targets Israel, that there are important issues unaddressed by the resolution, and that the US did not agree with every word in the text; while on the other hand the resolution reflects facts on the ground, that it reaffirms the consensus that the settlement activity is not legal, and that the settlement activity has gotten "so much worse" as to endanger the viability of the two-state solution.

Media and observers contrasted the US decision to abstain with its long-standing tradition of vetoing resolutions targeting Israel over the issues of settlements.

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Something more weird happened in Carter's time. A similar resolution passed, but the US then said it voted "incorrectly".

March 4, 1980

President Carter said last night that, because of a foulup, the United States incorrectly voted Saturday for a United Nations resolution calling on Israel to dismantle its settlements in occupied Arab territories.

The error, he said, centered not on the resolution's main thrust regarding the settlements but on its references to the status of Jerusalem.

In a statement issued last night by the White House, the president said the United States should have abstained during the U.N. Security Council vote, but did not because of a mistake in transmitting his instructions clearly to U.N. Ambassador Donald F. McHenry.

OTOH back then, the overall US position in terms on UN actions was a bit different

The United States abstained on two similar votes in the Security Council last year.

The United States has long opposed the establishment of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza. But it has taken a much more ambivalent position toward East Jerusalem, asserting that the city should be considered indivisible.

Answer 3

Israel is the US ally in the Middle East, and its support for Israel mostly has to do with promoting US interests, rather than upholding this or that moral position vis-à-vis Israel and Palestinians (although political moves are always presented as moral ones to the public, and it has been so since the birth of humanity.)

It is necessary to note that the US has not always been the Israeli ally. Indeed, although the US was among the countries that readily recognized Israel's declaration of independence in 1948, so did the USSR. It is likely that both super-powers expected Israel to become their client state, and both were quickly disappointed, imposing embargoes on arms supplies. Thus, up till the 1960s Israel's main backers were Britain and France. The Suez Crisis (1956) mentioned in the answer by @CDJB occurred in this period.

Only when it became clear that Israel was likely to survive in the long run, did the US adopt pro-Israeli stance - this resulted in cooling of the relationships between Israel and its previous backers, while the USSR threw its full support behind the Arab states opposed to Israel (notably Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq - although the former two would later switch to the American side.)

Still, during the Six-Day War (1967) the relationships were still not so warm - the poor communication between the US and Israeli Navy is cited as one of the causes of the USS Liberty Incident.