Obama Administration Moves to Restore Funding for Anti-Israel U.N. Organization

"The Obama administration is waging a quiet effort on Capitol Hill to restore U.S. taxpayer funding for a United Nations organization that has long been accused of having an anti-Israel bias...

The State Department earlier this month petitioned Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.), a member of the Senate's appropriations committee, to consider restoring funding to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, otherwise known as UNESCO.

Taxpayer funding to the organization was cut in 2011 after UNESCO accepted Palestine as a member state, a move that violated U.S. law barring the funding of any U.N. group that skirts the peace process by prematurely admitting Palestine as a full member nation.

The cutoff in U.S. contributions, which totaled around $80 million annually, brought UNESCO to the brink of financial collapse and sparked further consideration of actions deemed by critics to be anti-Israel in nature...

The effort to start funding the organization has sparked opposition among some lawmakers who say this could be seen as an effort to reward bad behavior. 'The proposed language would undermine over two decades of U.S. policy against funding U.N. organizations that admit the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) or other non-state actors as members,' Sens. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) and Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) wrote in a recent letter to the Senate and House leaders.

'The proposed language also creates a deeply troubling precedent,' according to the lawmakers. 'U.N. organizations, which seek to follow UNESCO's example and grant membership to non-state actors, may be encouraged to do so believing that the United States would eventually create another exception for them and restore withheld U.S. funding.'

Rep. Ileana Ros Lehtinen (R., Fla.) also took the House floor last week to denounce the administration's effort to restart funding for UNESCO...

'Secretary Kerry has been pressuring the Israeli government to relent in its opposition to U.S. funding for UNESCO,' Ros-Lehtinen said. 'It's a shame Secretary Kerry isn't using the full weight of his office' to hold the Palestinian government 'accountable for their incitement violence and continued efforts to delegitimize and isolate the Jewish state at the U.N., while pursuing unilateral state recognition.'

Ros-Lehtinen insisted that U.S. law mandates that the administration continue withholding funding for UNESCO."