President Obama was given a dressing-down by the rabbi performing the National Hanukkah Menorah lighting ceremony in Washington, DC on Sunday for the decision to allow a UN vote condemning the West Bank settlers.

Rabbi Levi Shemtov gave a speech after Obama's proxy, acting treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence Adam Szubin, spoke of dealing with the 'darkness' of terrorism by 'drowning [it out] with light'.

The Orthodox Jewish rabbi took that speech and turned it around, transforming Obama's actions into the 'darkness' that he said settlement-supporting Jews must fight, The Washington Examiner reported.

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'Darkness': Rabbi Levi Shemtov (pictured) said on Sunday that Jews were in 'darkness' after the US refused to block a UN motion that declared Israeli West Bank settlements to be illegal

'Grief': Shemtov said that after the vote Jews were 'in grief and darkness' - drawing a parallel with a speech by an Obama representative who likened the terrorist threat to darkness

Shemtov was motivated by the UN vote held on December 23 that condemned as illegal the settlements created by Israeli citizens in the West Bank.

The UN voted 14-0 in favor of the resolution. The US allowed the measure to pass by abstaining from voting - a major shift in the US's long-standing policy of backing Israel.

'Secretary Szubin spoke before of fighting darkness with light,' said Shemtov, who is also the executive vice president of Orthodox Jewish group American Friends of Lubavitch.

'I remember those words being spoken to a particular man by the rabbi many many years ago on Simchat Torah,' he continued, referring to the time of the year in which one reading of the Torah ends and another begins.

'The rabbi told him: "You are working in a place where there is great grief and darkness, but remember that in that place of darkness, you can only counter it by lighting a candle. By creating light."

'That man was Benjamin Netanyahu, and he was at the time the ambassador to the United Nations.'

He continued: 'So as I know that some of us are so sad at what happened there with regard to Israel, we must remember that the way to counter any darkness, any disappointment is not with harsh rhetoric, not with anger, but when we create light, the darkness dissipates.'

Abstained: The US abstained from voting on December 23, foregoing its right to a veto allowing the motion to pass - a controversial change in American policy

The Obama administration has faced harsh criticism from several quarters for the UN resolution, including President-elect Donald Trump.

Trump had demanded the US exercise its veto rights on the vote, and later said that things would be 'different' at the UN under his watch.

On Friday Ben Rhodes, the White House's deputy national security adviser, dismissed Trump's objections.

'Our position is that there is one president at a time,' he said. 'President Obama is the president until January 20, and we are taking this action of course as US policy.'

'We could not in good conscience veto a resolution that expressed concerns about the very trends that are eroding the foundation for a two-state solution.'

The reverberations from Friday's vote were still being felt in Israel on Friday, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a meeting with the ambassadors of the ten countries that voted in favor of the resolution, as well as the US ambassador.

A furious Netanyahu even accused Obama of organizing the vote itself, according to NPR.

'From the information that we have, we have no doubt that the Obama administration initiated it, stood behind it, coordinated on the wording and demanded that it be passed,' he said in Hebrew.

Furious: On Sunday Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu claimed the Obama administration had orchestrated the vote, and demanded a meeting with the relevant ambassadors

His rant then continued in English.

'Over decades, American administrations and Israeli governments had disagreed about settlements, but we agreed that the Security Council was not the place to resolve this issue.

'We knew that going there would make negotiations harder and drive peace further away.

"And, as I told John Kerry on Thursday, friends don't take friends to the Security Council. I'm encouraged by the statements of our friends in the United States, Republicans and Democrats alike.

'They understand how reckless and destructive this UN resolution was, they understand that the Western Wall isn't occupied territory.'

The Obama administration said Friday that the US's support for Israel is undiminished but blamed Netanyahu for accelerating the settlement process.