UNESCO punished based on two obscure US legislations: does this serve well any of the involved parties?

For a reminder, here is a one sentence mission statement of UNESCO:

“UNESCO’s mission is to contribute to the building of peace, the eradication of poverty, sustainable development and intercultural dialogue through education, the sciences, culture, communication and information."

This is how this story started, as quoted from The Washington Post:

By Colum Lynch, Published: October 31


NEW YORK — UNESCO voted Monday to admit Palestine into the organization as its newest member, and the United States promptly responded by cutting off funding for the agency.


Acting under a legal requirement to cut U.S. funds to any U.N. agency that recognizes a Palestinian state, the State Department on Monday announced that the United States has stopped funding the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization because of the vote. Department spokesman Victoria Nuland told reporters that the Obama administration would not make a planned $60 million payment to the agency due this month.

Another excerpt from the same article sums up the two legislative pieces that justifies the US move:

The prohibition on U.S. funding of U.N. agencies that recognize a Palestinian state was included in two pieces of legislation that were signed into law by President George H.W. Bush in 1990 and President Bill Clinton in 1994.


The 1990 law prohibits the appropriation of funds “for the United Nations or any specialized agency thereof which accords the Palestine Liberation Organization the same standing as a member state.”

In 1994, Congress barred funding “any affiliated organization of the United Nations which grants full membership as a state to any organization or group that does not have the internationally recognized attributes of statehood.”

There is much telling in these two legislative actions signed by two consecutive presidents.

The first thing that comes to my mind reading the first law is noticing an unashamed, outright stipulation against the Palestinian people. The second law four years later, on the other hand, seemed to have tried softening the blow of the first one by making the statement more general, thus giving it the air of broader legitimacy. The second law was signed by Bill Clinton, perhaps the first and last US president since Jimmy Carter, who truly wanted to facilitate a relatively equitable peace in the Middle East.

Still contemplating on the above two legislations, my next thought leads me to the perceived beneficiary(ies) of the two laws: were they really in the best interest of the US? At this point the speculation may diverge into various directions that, for the purpose of this writing, I don’t find productive to pursue.

Finally, here is the last excerpt from The Washington Post article:

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said she supports a cutoff of aid as mandated under U.S. law.


“Today’s reckless action by UNESCO is anti-Israel and anti-peace,” she said in a statement. “It rewards the Palestinian leadership’s dangerous scheme to bypass negotiations with Israel and seek recognition of a self-declared ‘Palestinian state,’ and takes us further from peace in the Middle East.”

Really! Is there anything that “takes us further apart from piece in the Middle East” more than the continued, and now accelerated building of foreign settlements on stolen lands? Is there anything that is more detrimental to peace than the permanent humiliation and oppression of over 3 million people who live in today’s “Palestine Territories” and 'have the audacity' to consider themselves a Nation? Is there anything more inhuman and uncivilized and therefore less conducive to peace than allowing generations of Palestinian refugees growing up by the hundreds of thousands without ever having a permanent address?

I could go on by quoting who ignored UN resolutions and why or why a presumed US ally resists US and international propositions to address the plight of all Middle East nations, but right now there is only one point worth noting:

The madness continues in the Middle East and it continues with the blessing of the US while the rest of the world remains largely silent.

When I say madness, I mean grave inhumanity on both sides. There are the desperate murderous acts carried out regularly by the weaker side. These are frequently provoked and then mercilessly answered by the other side in the form of masterfully planned, perfectly executed high tech military actions, painfully effective economical sanctions, and even highly unethical financial wrongdoings (e.g. withholding Palestinian revenues).

As I did several times earlier in my blog entries, I want to emphasize again that my full sympathy is with the Jewish people for their centuries of persecution that culminated with Hitler’s Holocaust.

But isn’t it time for Israel to shake off that horrifying past of the Jewish people?

Few would doubt that by now Israel achieved a powerful military and economical position that could guarantee her security depending on her willingness to make certain reasonable compromises and concessions. However the two most important parties Israel and the US, vehemently resist recognizing this incontestable fact.
I know that the wounds are deep on both sides and the healing shall take a long time. If it were to happen, the most important elements of peace at first would need to be patience and forgiveness. I have no doubt however that, in due time, well recognized mutual benefits would reclaim the battle fields in the Middle East.

As to Israel’s current policy, no matter how many nuclear facilities of surrounding nations they can blow up, and regardless how many bunk-busting ammunition the US will provide for them, the six million Jews will have no chance of long term survival if they continue to be surrounded by hundreds of millions hostile non-Jews.

Therefore, Israel needs to find a policy that builds on the tremendous values the country and its citizens are endowed with. They need to make their excellence available to its neighbors and, in fact, to the whole world, instead of burying themselves into fruitless isolationism relying on the unconditional support of a single superpower, the US.

An effective policy for Israel has to be pragmatic and cannot be guided by orthodox religious beliefs, or overemphasized geopolitical calculations having their roots in the Holocaust.

Israel simply has to believe, for the sake of its survival it HAS TO, that the world will not let another Holocaust to happen and should start acting accordingly.

As history proved so many times, might and power are shifting sand. In the final analysis only providing fair and just treatment to others will reassure receiving the same. Sadly, today’s Israel does not seem to move in the direction of treating the Palestinian people justly.

In closing, the unconditional US support of Israel’s current policy - which, in my opinion is suicidal on the first place -, is ill-advised. Furthermore, withholding support from humanitarian organizations such as the UNESCO, cannot possibly strengthen the US position in the world, and potentially can be detrimental to its security.