UNESCO (United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) earlier today voted to grant full membership to the Palestinian Authority even as the Palestinians in Gaza continue to fire rockets / missiles into Israeli cities and towns.
The vote apparently was not even close as far too much of the United Nations and it's affiliated organizations seem to have willing blinders on when it comes to Israel and in particular the actions of the Palestinian Authority. It is, basically, a recognition of a terrorist organization and one of the steps towards granting those terrorists their request to be recognized by the UN as a state. It also continues the pattern of anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic votes, rulings, and actions by the UN and it's affiliated organizations.
Under a long existing US law, the US is obligated to not fund the UN or any affiliated organization that grants the Palestinian Authority the status of a state or state-like authority (ie full membership in UNESCO). For UNESCO, if the President remains willing to support and uphold the US law, that means they stand to lose about $70 million in annual funding. If the UN reacts favorably to the Palestinian application that is pending, the US, under that law, would withhold it's share of the total UN budget. That share represents 22% of the total UN budget.
The UN is an increasingly irrelevant and dysfunctional organization. While it moved quickly to condemn Qaddafi in Libya and authorized the use of force to protect the Libyan civilians from air and helicopter assault by the Libyan military (which significantly helped the rebels overthrow Qaddafi's regime), the UN Security Council remains at an impasse as to taking similar action to prevent Syria's Assad from killing more than the 3,000 civilians he already has.
In the UN Security Council, vetoes by both Russia and China have prevented similar actions being taken or even permitted substantial economic sanctions from being placed on Syria. When it comes to Syria, the UNSC is as powerless as it was with Saddam Hussein's Iraq (17 ignored UNSC resolutions) or the efforts in Iran to develop nuclear weapons.
The UN and it's affiliated organizations, in past meetings to address human rights issues have routinely ignore human rights violations around the world, in the DPRK, China, Myramar, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Russia, and other nations to focus on countries like Israel. The irony is that Arabs living in Israel have far more rights and protections than those Arabs have living under the Palestinian Authority, in Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Yemen. In fact, within Israel, Muslims have more rights to practice their religion freely and openly there than Christians or Jews do in almost every predominately Islamic nation.
The US has tried to withhold its funding to the UN before. The US made it's participation contingent on fundamental reforms taking place in the UN to address it's corruption, it's biases, and it's lack of relevancy or effectiveness. The US has also sought to have the structure of the financial obligations to the UN restructured so that nations like China pay more than 3% of the total UN budget. None of these steps have been effective.
At some point the US has to decide that trying to work within a fundamentally broken system is far worse than withdrawing from that system so that it can finally whither away in its irrelevancy.
Hat Tip for UNSECO Story - A Blog For All
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