US and Israel to withdraw from Unesco

The United States is pulling out of Unesco after repeated criticism of resolutions by the UN cultural agency that Washington sees as anti-Israel.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel plans to follow suit.

While the US stopped funding Unesco after it voted to include Palestine as a member in 2011, the state department has maintained a Unesco office at its Paris HQ and sought to weigh in on policy behind the scenes.

The withdrawal was confirmed yesterday by US officials.

Unesco director-general Irina Bokova, who is Bulgarian, expressed “profound regret” at the decision and said the departure was a loss for “the United Nations family” and for multilateralism.

Ms Bokova defended Unesco’s reputation, noting its efforts to support Holocaust education and train teachers to fight anti-Semitism.

Mr Netanyahu said yesterday that Israel will also withdraw from the agency, which had become a “theatre of the absurd because instead of preserving history, it distorts it”.

Picture: Getty. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has criticised Unesco.