"For all its anti-Israel declarations and screeds, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has been the diseased limb of a wobbly tree in serious need of pruning. America's announced withdrawal, effective Dec. 31, 2018, was inevitable.
But it remains questionable why the Trump administration would want to retain "non-member observer" status with such a sullied U.N. agency. The U.S. originally left UNESCO back in the 1980s but apparently decided to give it another chance in 2003, Fox News reports. Then in 2011, the U.S. cut off UNESCO's funding when it accepted the 'state' of Palestine as a member.
Writing for The Washington Post, Jared Genser, a lawyer and founder of Freedom Now, makes a valid case for dumping UNESCO:
• UNESCO isn't terribly concerned from whence its money comes, even when its science prize is funded by the despot of Equatorial Guinea, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema.
• UNESCO in 2012 added to its 'Memory of the World' program a collection of works from Che Guevara, the Marxist revolutionary who stood before the U.N. General Assembly in 1964 and declared, 'Yes, we have executed people; we are executing people and shall continue to execute people as long as it is necessary.'
• And UNESCO this summer piled on with its latest Israel insult, discounting any historical Jewish connections to Jerusalem.
Failing to redeem itself in America's eyes, ultimately UNESCO had to go."