Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee says the U.S. should take the billions of dollars it now gives to the United Nations and instead give it to American soldiers who served "under the U.S. flag."

Huckabee's comments came in an interview with the Fox News Channel's Eric Bolling on "The O'Reilly Factor." He referenced the massive funding in the U.S. budget for the international organization.

"We should eliminate it, and I'll tell you something," said Huckabee, a candidate for president in 2012 and 2016.

"We ought to take that money that's going to the U.N. and make it available to veterans who have served under the U.S. flag and make sure they get the benefits they need," he said.

"We are getting zero benefits" from the U.N., he continued. "And we are getting embarrassed by the actions of the U.N.

"That's money that ought to be spent on American service men and service women, and I hope Donald Trump make it one of the first acts of his presidency."

He was reacting to the Obama administration's decision to allow a resolution to be approved in the U.N. that condemns Israel as operating outside of international law. The focal point is the Jewish communities in territory recaptured by Israel in the 1967 war launched by its Arab neighbors.

Arabs want the disputed territory to be part of a Palestinian state and view the Jewish towns and settlements as obstacles to long-term peace in the Middle East.

Analysts say the bigger problem is that Palestinian leaders have declared that they do not recognize Israel's right to exist, publishing maps with "Palestine" printed across the nation of Israel.

Huckabee is one of a number of figures who have criticized the Obama administration for its part in the U.N. resolution. An online petition urges Congress and President-elect Donald Trump not only to defund the U.N.'s operations, including at its headquarters in New York, but also to withdraw from the global body and even expel it from America.

Sign the petition encouraging Congress and President-election Donald Trump to defund, discount and deport the United Nations.

Here are Huckabee's comments:

Huckabee noted that Secretary of State John Kerry, in a speech on Wednesday, spent nearly an hour blasting Israel and paying only "lip service" to the "unremitting campaign of terrorism that has been waged by the Palestinians against the Israel state."

"Let's be real mindful here it was Obama's people who did everything they could and spent millions of dollars trying to defeat [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and involve themselves in a foreign election," he said. "Yes it's personal."

He added: "I don't think a lot of people fully understand the complexities of this. I'm going to just quickly show you. This little map. All that green, those are Arab countries. You can't even see it but there's a tiny little red dot right there. That's Israel.

"Now Israel has one 640th of the land mass of all those Muslim countries. In John Kerry's fantasy, Israel is supposed to give up land and give it to people who could get it from those who have 640 times the amount of land that Israel has.

"Explain why that makes sense."

Others just a day earlier had predicted that the conflict would end up in a "war" between the U.N. and the U.S.

Josh Rogin, who writes on international issues for the Washington Post, on Wednesday started out with the headline, "Inside the coming war between the United States and the United Nations."

He explained that Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., already has started work on ways to keep U.S. money away from the U.N., because, "the U.N. has made it impossible for us to continue with business as usual."

The senator said Republicans in Congress likely "will feel like this is a betrayal of Israel and the only response that we have is the power of the purse."

Obama had the option, since the U.S. is one of the permanent members of the group, to veto the resolution, but decided not to.

Sign the petition encouraging Congress and President-election Donald Trump to defund, discount and deport the United Nations.

Already, Rogin reported, "three Republican senators and their staffs have been working up options behind the scenes for how to convert their threat into action: Graham, Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Tom Cotton (Ark.). They believe they will have support for quick Senate action from both Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and incoming Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), a strong support of Israel."

Nor is acting financially the only option open to Congress.

Fox News noted other punitive actions by Congress "could include expelling Palestinian diplomats from U.S. soil and scaling back ties with foreign nations that voted in favor of the controversial measure."

Rogin wasn't the only to charge that the Obama administration was creating a "war."

Giulio Meotti, a Italian journalist and commentator, wrote at the Gatestone Institute that this year has been a good one for "anti-Semites" at the U.N.

The resolution, No. 2334, "is a cultural genocide that is no less dangerous than terror attacks. It is based on anti-Semitic lies and creates the atmosphere not for achieving 'peace,' as disingenuously claimed, but for perpetuating war."

"According to the liars at the United Nations, the most evil country in the world is Israel," he wrote. " The U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra'ad, and Jordan's Prince Seid al Hussein are sponsoring even now a 'blacklist' of international companies that have ties with Israeli companies in Judea, Samaria, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights, to facilitate boycotting Israel in the evidence hope of economically exterminating the only democracy and pluralistic nation in the region: the Jewish State."

The U.N.'s multiple moves this year against Israel came under fire from Meotti.

"It is a dreadful manipulation to try [to] erase all Jewish and Christian history, to make believe that all the world was originally and forever only Islamic. It is a jihad. That is what a jihad looks like. … If one can erase and rewrite history, one can redirect the future."

He pointed out that just months ago, UNESCO, the U.N.'s "cultural" agency, "by magically declaring ancient biblical Jewish sties 'Islamic,' even though Islam did not historical exist until the seventh century, hundreds of years later – pretended, with the villainous complicity of the West, to erase the Jewish-Christian roots of Jerusalem."

The Hill reported Netanyahu wasn't pleased with Kerry's attack on Israel.

Netanyahu described Kerry's diatribe as "almost as unbalanced" as the resolution itself.

"Israelis do not need to be lectured about the importance of peace by foreign leaders," he said. He said the focal point of the long running fight has been "about Israel's very right to exist."

"I can only express my regret and say that it's a shame that Secretary Kerry does not see this simple truth."

Sign the petition encouraging Congress and President-election Donald Trump to defund, discount and deport the United Nations.

The new online petition calls for the U.S. to cease all payments to the U.N., withdraw, and "expel it from American soil."

"We further urge President-elect Donald J. Trump and the Republican Congress to declare all United Nations resolutions, treaties and other explicit and implicit commitments to be no longer binding on the United States and violations of American sovereignty. … We urge President-elect Donald J. Trump and the Republican Congress to use all available means to encourage allies of the United States and Israel to withdraw from the United Nations and withhold all funding and official recognition from that organization."

David Greenfield at FrontPage Magazine wrote, "The United Nations does only two things consistently and effectively: waste money and bash Israel. Sometimes it manages to do both at the same time."

He pointed out for its money, the U.S. gets a U.N. email system that was "used to distribute child pornography … U.N. staff members have smuggled drugs, attacked each other with knives and pool cues, not to mention a tractor." Greenfield also mentioned bribery cases.

Defunding? "It's something that we and every sane country should have done decades ago. If you give money to the U.N., it will end up anywhere and everywhere except where it's supposed to go. But defunding the U.N. isn't enough. There is no reason for us to remain there at all."

He finished: "We should defund and withdraw. … The billions we waste on the U.N. will go toward taking care of our people. And once we are free of the U.N., we will actually be able to promote real human rights instead of pandering to the dictators and Islamists of the United Nations."

"The U.N. is a massively corrupt and hopelessly broken institution," said Joseph Farah, founder, editor and CEO of WND. "If ever there was a time and the right opportunity to put this on the front burner of a new administration that clearly opposes the kind of globalist vision that the U.N. offers and promotes, this is it. Enough is a enough! Why are we supporting this twisted, anti-Israel rogues gallery with our tax dollars and debt? Why do we continue to permit them to operate within our country? If Donald Trump and the U.S. Congress don't seize this moment, a future administration will undoubtedly humiliate the U.S. and our allies, again, through the auspices of the United Nuisances."

The petition continues: "It is outrageous an organization hosted on American soil, protected by American arms, funded by American tax dollars and built upon a global order sustained by the United States seemingly spends all its time attacking America and its ally Israel. It an insult to global decency that Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, is continuously targeted with the most outrageous slander and vitriolic attack as the United Nations allows some of the worst tyrannies on the planet to sit in judgment. Finally, as an independent republic, the United States of America has a responsibility to itself and to the world to cease subsidizing an institution which has not only proven hostile to the sovereignty of the United States and the security of Israel, but which has also shown itself to be a breeding ground of anti-Semitism and support for Islamic extremism."

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Sign the petition encouraging Congress and President-election Donald Trump to defund, discount and deport the United Nations.

A report released last year said the U.S. pays about $3 billion year to the general budget and its peacekeeping efforts.

It's more than what 185 other countries combined are paying.

"The 35 countries contributing the least will pay just $28,269 each," the report said.

Al the while demanding Western nations accept millions of Muslim "refugees," who could include terrorists, the U.N. "has deliberately sought to undermine American sovereignty and independence through global initiatives such as the '2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development' and 'New Urban Agenda.'"

Bipartisan support already is in evidence, from "Republican President-elect Donald J. Trump and Democratic senators Chuck Schumer, Joe Manchin, Bob Casey, Richard Blumenthal, Mark Warner and Chris Coons."

It continues, "American [Republican] senators including Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz have already called for cessation in funding for the United Nations until that organization becomes more responsible."