Report Washington Cuts Ties with UNESCO Over Palestine and Policy Disputes

[webfact]

 

The United States has once more severed ties with UNESCO, accusing the UN cultural body of being biased against Israel and promoting divisive causes. This decision underlines long-standing tensions, as President Donald Trump previously ordered a similar withdrawal in 2017 during his first term.

 

State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce stated that involvement is "not in the national interest" of the US and criticised UNESCO's focus on sustainability as a "globalist, ideological agenda." She further highlighted the organization's admission to Palestine as a member state as problematic and contrary to US policy.

 

UNESCO, known for its world heritage sites, aims to promote education, scientific cooperation, and cultural understanding. Its preservation projects span globally, from the Great Barrier Reef to the Pyramids of Egypt. Despite these efforts, criticisms regarding its inclusions and policies have persisted.

 

Bruce stressed that UNESCO's decision to admit the 'State of Palestine' fostered anti-Israel rhetoric within the organisation. This move has contributed to the strained relationship between the US and UNESCO, leading to the recent withdrawal.

 

This isn’t the first split; President Ronald Reagan also withdrew the US from UNESCO in the 1980s, citing similar issues. The US later rejoined under President George W. Bush, before the Trump and Biden administrations saw fluctuating membership statuses.

 

While President Joe Biden restored US membership, citing the importance of global cooperation, the latest decision reflects ongoing diplomatic differences. This exit raises questions about future cultural collaborations and commitments.

 

UNESCO continues to advocate for global cultural and educational cooperation, but the US departure echoes historical criticism, revealing deep-seated disagreements about the organisation’s direction and impact.

 

The implications of the US withdrawal will be closely watched by both supporters and critics of UNESCO, as the organisation navigates its future role without one of its prominent members.

 

  Adapted by ASEAN Now from Thai PBS World 2025-07-24

 

 

[Chris.C]

3 hours ago, webfact said:

Bruce stressed that UNESCO's decision to admit the 'State of Palestine' fostered anti-Israel rhetoric within the organisation. This move has contributed to the strained relationship between the US and UNESCO, leading to the recent withdrawal.

It’s becoming clear that Israel American Miriam Adelson, the largest political donor in US history, is calling the shots in the US policy.

[spidermike007]

There's a very good reason why any eight organization would be biased against Israel. 

 

In recent weeks, two significant developments have dominated the news from Gaza. One is the daily deadly violence surrounding the operations of the new Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a highly controversial Israeli- and US-backed initiative to replace the United Nations-led system of delivering aid to what has been called the “hungriest place on earth.” The second, related, development is the widespread hunger and even starvation of Gaza’s 2.1 million people.

 

This crisis, ongoing since 2024 and made even more severe by Israel’s March-May 2025 total blockade on food, fuel, water, medicine, and other humanitarian supplies into the ravaged coastal enclave, has unfolded against the backdrop of Israel’s 21-month-long military campaign in Gaza. Far from being a “humanitarian response operation” to address the forced starvation of Gazans, GHF’s food distribution since its late May 2025 launch has been humiliating, totally inadequate to the scale of the crisis—and, most alarming, deadly.

The widespread killings are unprecedented in an aid-delivery context, even in a war zone.

 

The specter of starving civilians walking long distances, often through active combat zones, trying to reach the few GHF hubs only to be shot by Israeli troops is a daily recurrence. Some of GHF’s American contractors reportedly also have used live ammunition against Gazans trying to reach food handouts.

 

Indeed, Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA commissioner-general, called GHF a “death trap.”

Israel has badly damaged or destroyed residential buildings, entire neighborhoods, public institutions, and basic infrastructure across the entire Gaza Strip. Some ninety percent of the Gaza population has been forcibly displaced, often multiple times. All this created a humanitarian catastrophe that has left Gaza, in the words of the International Committee of the Red Cross, as “hell on earth.”

 

Israel aims to forcibly displace—through massive aerial bombardment, intensive ground offensive, and repeated evacuation orders—the entire Gazan population and concentrate Gazans into three small “humanitarian zones” in the remaining 25 percent of the Strip. On May 5, 2025, Israel launched a major military operation, dubbed “Gideon’s Chariots,” to execute its strategy.

 

Israel is using intensified airstrikes and ground operations across the Gaza Strip; expanding the security buffer zone inside Gaza by razing all existing structures and forcing the population to relocate; and taking direct control of food aid distribution in Gaza through the use of armed private contractors—hence GHF.

 

In July 2025, a new WFP assessment found that nearly one in three people in Gaza was not eating for days at a time.

Meanwhile, Gaza’s capacity to domestically produce food has been nearly destroyed by the war. An April 2025 assessment by the FAO and the UN Satellite Center found that less than 5 percent of the Gaza Strip’s cropland area remains available for cultivation.

 

There are at least three reasons to doubt that Israel will achieve its goals. First, as described earlier, Israel’s attempt to control humanitarian aid to Gaza has turned its sponsored-GHF distribution sites into killing fields. Second, Israel’s intent to facilitate “voluntary emigration” (a euphemism for expulsion) from Gaza to other countries has, so far, found no takers willing to receive displaced Gazans. Third and most important, the Israeli military plan to confine 2.1 million people within 25 percent of the enclave’s land, thus increasing the pre-war population density (already one of the highest in the world) fourfold, from about 6,000 to 24,000 people per square kilometer (0.39 square mile), is spatially inconceivable. 
 

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[koolkarl]

What are the names of top executives at Unesco?

[Olav Seglem]

US soon going to be as isolated as north corea, iran, israel and russia.

Choose your friends.... 🙂

 

[BritManToo]

14 minutes ago, Olav Seglem said:

Choose your friends.... 🙂

From organizations and countries not in the leftie New World Order.

Next they need to ditch NATO and the UN.

[Chomper Higgot]

24 minutes ago, koolkarl said:

What are the names of top executives at Unesco?

The Director General of UNESCO is Audrey Azoulay, a French Jew.

[pacovl46]

That’s ok! Keep your f.cking head in the sand about it while the rest of the world wakes up to what’s really going on. I mean the US have not have had a good reputation internationally for quite some years now, but the idiot you voted in does his best to screw up what little is left of it! 

[Hanaguma]

IF UNESCO just stuck to their mandate and didn't get mired in politics, I could see being against thsi decision. But like much of the UN, it is becoming yet another venue to bash free countries at the expense of the sh!tholes of the world.

[Eric Loh]

13 minutes ago, Hanaguma said:

IF UNESCO just stuck to their mandate and didn't get mired in politics, I could see being against thsi decision. But like much of the UN, it is becoming yet another venue to bash free countries at the expense of the sh!tholes of the world.

Quite a fit of pique. I have not seen nor heard UNESCO bashing another country in the sense of a public verbal attack. Do you have any example of that? Yes they have faced criticism and withdrawal from some member countries for various reasons. They do engages in public condemnation of attacks on cultural heritage sites but bashing another country; I have never know of any 

 

[mrwebb8825]

On 7/23/2025 at 7:57 PM, Chris.C said:

It’s becoming clear that Israel American Miriam Adelson, the largest political donor in US history, is calling the shots in the US policy.

No, Sorry. Wrong. What's increasingly clear is the incredible amount of fake, phony and bought positions there are being paid for by nations with "Decisions" being sold to the highest bidder. (Remember WHO during covid?)

President Trump has been saying the US needs to cut these people loose and stop funding bias groups for the last 20+ yrs. Now he's got the power to do it and they're being exposed as frauds. 🤠