Juan Cole
President Obama called America “the greatest country in the world” on Friday, but the same day the US lost basic voting rights on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The US stopped paying its dues in fall of 2011 because UNESCO accepted Palestine (now a non-member observer state of the UN like the Vatican) as a member. Among UNESCO’s recent activities has been helping with cultural recovery in earthquake-stricken Haiti.
Although the US says it favors a state of Palestine, in fact it has been rather gleefully helping screw over the Palestinians since 1948 and has de facto gone along with virtually any new outrage the Israelis could think up to inflict on them, from putting the children of Gaza ‘on a diet’ to gradually usurping the best land and water resources on the West Bank. Whenever the international community tried to pressure Israel to stop, and to allow stateless Palestinians to have the basic rights of citizenship and property, the US used its veto at the UNSC to ensure the Palestinians were kept down. Now, for the sake of making sure no one recognizes Palestine as a state, the US has cut off its $22 million a year dues to Unesco and has lost its voting rights on the committee.
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