The US and the Rest of the World

Taking American exceptionalism to new levels. The United States and Israel officially left UNESCO at the stroke of midnight, a blow to the U.N.'s educational, scientific and cultural agency that was co-founded by the U.S. after World War II to foster peace (Thomas Adamson, 'US, Israel exit UN cultural agency, claiming bias', AP News 1/1/19). This was:

the culmination of a process triggered more than a year ago amid concerns that the organization fosters anti-Israel bias [...] for criticizing Israel’s occupation of east Jerusalem, naming ancient Jewish sites as Palestinian heritage sites and granting full membership to Palestine in 2011. Israeli U.N. envoy Danny Danon said Tuesday that his country “will not be a member of an organization whose goal is to deliberately act against us, and that has become a tool manipulated by Israel’s enemies.”

The goal is actually something else and the tiny paranoid Jewish state with delusions of grandeur (see what it is on the map above) is losing sight of it.

The US State Department couldn’t comment because of the current U.S. government shutdown. It leaves UNESCO having accrued $600 million in unpaid dues, and Israel owes an estimated $10 million.

Никита Сергеевич смеется

The United States has pulled out of UNESCO before. The Reagan administration did so in 1984 because it viewed the agency as mismanaged, corrupt and used to advance Soviet interests. The U.S. rejoined in 2003.

UNESCO will not be removing sites in the US or Israel and their dependent territories from the World Heritage List in recognition of past contributions to the World cultural heritage rather than their present shrinking significance.