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US Defunds UNESCO After Palestine Vote
gzipped_tar writes "The U.S. withdrew funding after the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's Palestine membership vote yesterday. The decision was triggered by a 1994 US law that requires financial ties to be cut with any UN agency that accords the Palestinians full membership. As Palestine actively pursues entrance to other UN agencies, the defunding list could grow. Interestingly, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) could also be among Palestine's next target, and U.S. is the big supporter of WIPO. A much more disturbing scenario is Palestine joining the International Atomic Energy Agency, cutting American funding to the organization that monitors nuclear proliferation in states like Iran."
Pft.
The palestians have and regularly trashed historical artifacts belonging to other cultures in the region, they should have never been invited to join it. Canada is looking to defund from it as well, and with good cause.
Om, nomnomnom...
So if certain countries want to have the U.S. removed from certain U.N. affliates, all they have to do is vote the Palestinians as members and the U.S. will defund their contributions. Consequently the U.S will have no vote, and no influence as it's no longer providing any funding.
Thus the U.S. has given countries who don't like the U.S. some power over the U.S. ability to influence U.N. organizations. The law of unintended consequences.
The Palestinians are hoisting the U.S by it's own petard. The U.S. government passed the 1994 law as a "do what we say or else" measure, under the false belief that this would force the UN to follow U.S. policy. Instead, the Palestinians are being admitted to UN agencies anway, and we're cutting our own throat automatically.
It's not the Palestinians who should be worried.
All about me
Under the Symington Amendment, we're not allowed to give aide to nuclear nations who won't sign onto the NTP. They get around the legality of it, with a don't ask, don't tell policy. But everyone knows Israel has nukes, so it really is a flagrant violation of US law.
I actually spent several summers working in Israel, and regularly visited the West Bank. Couldn't get access to Gaza though.
As for your questions: The West Bank and (especially) Gaza are effectively light-duty concentration camps. (Not dedicated, but high-density with low access to food, water, sanitation, or jobs.) Mass graves tend to draw attention. (And direct killing isn't the system being used here.) The ~10% of the Knesset (none of whom are Palestinian: they have to be Israeli) aren't a major political force of their own. And the random police checks, and the requirement that every Palestinian who wants to enter Israel (which means any of them who want to leave their home town for any reason...) register for travel papers, in person, every year, would be similar in effect.
Of course, a closer parallel would be with aparthied-era South Africa.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Are you sure that most Americans actually support that 1994 law? How many even know that it exists?
Personally, it sounds like an extremely silly law to me. I understand why U.S. would oppose recognition of specific Palestinian organizations that are terrorist in nature, like HAMAS. But why the mere recognition of Palestine as a separate and distinct entity from Israel (which it defacto is) such a big issue in U.S. politics, other than the major Israeli political lobby that it has?
>There's no apartheid beyond what the media is telling you there is.
So there is apartheid, and only what the media is telling us? There isn't any further apartheid than what the media has already exposed?
Apartheid, according to the Rome statute is
While Palestinians have done nasty things to the Israelis just like Africans did to the Boers, that doesn't negate the fact that there is indeed a legal and institutional mechanism to keep Palestinians apart from Israelis.
The differentiation is entirely based on race, not on other factors like education, income, etc.
A Palestinian cannot buy into an Israeli (Jewish) area even if he had the money to.
There are separate roads for Jews vs. aboriginals. There are separate residential colonies for Jews, no aboriginals allowed.
Much land in Israel is owned by the Jewish National Fund, which, after acquiring land by one means or another, leases it back to only Jews:
The government of Israel wants to make the citizenship of Arab Israelis dependent upon loyalty oaths to the "Jewish character" of Israel. What would people say about asking Africans to take an oath to the "Boer character of South Africa"? Or the "white character of Alabama"?
Similar to the way the Ku Klux Klan operated as a quasi-citizens council, the Rabbinical councils pass decrees about not renting to aboriginals, which are enforced through threats of violence.
If the state has no intention of discriminating on the basis of race, why do Israeli ID cards note race?
Infrastructure (water, roads, etc.) is allocated on a preferential basis to Jewish settlements. The wall (which exceeds the limits of the 1968 line) cuts aboriginals off from their farmlands and orchards. In order to go from one place to another, they must travel a circuitous network of paths, often by foot. Humans who differ from the aboriginals by accident of birth can travel on wide, new highways.