(From Creeping Sharia)

Newt Gingrich said:

I believe if somebody goes around and says you don’t have a right to exist, they’re probably not prepared to negotiate for peace. I think if someone says they wanna wipe you out, you should believe them. So I see a much more tougher-minded, and much more honest approach to the Middle East in a Gingrich administration. … If I’m even-handed between a civilian democracy that obeys the rule of law, and a group of terrorists who are firing missiles everyday, that’s not even-handed. That’s favoring the terrorists. …  I believe that the Jewish people have the right to have a state … remember there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. And I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs, and were historically part of the Arab community. …  For a variety of political reasons we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940’s, and I think it’s tragic.

Newt Gingrich is absolutely right. There never was, in all history, a State of Palestine.

There could have been. In 1947, and many times since, Arab leaders turned down offers of territory which could be a Palestinian state. Their condition of acceptance has always been that a State of Palestine must exist instead of a State of Israel. Not beside it, but exactly where it is – all the territory over which the Israelis have legitimate sovereignty.

Arab historians attest to there having been no “Palestinian nation”.

Professor Philip Hitti told the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry into the Palestine problem in 1946:

There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not.

Professor Albert Hourani wrote on September 3, 1967, in The Observer:

A common land and language, a common political fate, and the shock of exile created a Palestinian Arab nation.

When Israel came into existence in 1948, on a tiny part of what had been the vast Ottoman empire – out of which several Arab states had also been created – the Arab states launched a war against it, and some 700,000 Arabs fled from their homes. Most of them remained within the borders of the area that had been the British mandate of “Palestine” since the end of the First World War. They were kept by their fellow Arabs – the Jordanian and Egyptian governments – in a condition of homelessness. Those governments could have created one or even two Palestinian states, but to allow the refugees a state of their own would have meant accepting the fact that Israel existed on what they claimed was “Arab land”, and that they would not do.

It was this homelessness and enforced separateness from other Arabs which turned the Palestinian Arabs into a nation. It can therefore be said that Zionism evoked “Palestinism”; that Israel cast a shadow – Palestine. The “Palestinians” came into existence alongside and because of the Israeli nation.

Contrary to widespread belief among politicians and would-be peace negotiators of the Western world, it is not the size of Israel that the Arabs object to, but that it should exist at all. The Arab case is that Israel has no “right” to exist. And this being so, negotiations for a “two state solution” are nugatory. If the Arab side enters talks at all, it is only to reiterate that they will never recognize Israel as a legitimate state; never recognize its “right to exist”. As Israelis are being asked absurdly to negotiate their own elimination, it is never Israel’s fault that such talks make no progress.

This is the first time a leading Western politician has spoken the truth about the “Palestinians” publicly, boldly and clearly. If Newt Gingrich becomes president of the USA, and does not allow the State Department to program him to utter its traditional falsehoods (which it won’t if John Bolton is appointed Secretary of State), the political tide that has been flowing so strongly and for so long in favor of the Arabs, may turn at last. It may have already begun to turn with candidate Gingrich’s statement of the truth. The degree of outrage with which Arab leaders and their sympathizers have reacted, is a signal that they see and fear a rising opposition at last to their campaign of lies, denigration, and relentless violence against Israel.

Jillian Becker  December 11, 2011

The job satisfaction of  TSA (Transport Security Administration) assaulters and voyeurs employed at airports to feel up their victims and ogle naked bodies may be spoilt soon. They may be replaced by mice.

Here’s a report on new technology for the detection of drugs and explosives:

Israeli startup Bioexplorers has developed a new and unique way to sniff out terrorists – literally. After years of research, company CEO Eran Lumbroso [says that] Bioexplorers has hit upon a foolproof, non-invasive and easy method to detect contraband in purses, luggage and even cargo – using mice.

It’s no joke. “Mice have an excellent sense of smell, and they’re relatively easy to train. And they’re easier to use for odor detection than other animals traditionally used for their olfactory capabilities.” …

Here’s how it works: A person passes through a passageway in which a Bioexplorers system is installed. A fan passes air into a sensor receptor, and delivers it into a chamber with several mice. The mice, having gone through intensive behavioral training, sniff the air. If the odor is one associated with items the mice have been trained to recognize, like drugs or bombs, they move into another chamber – setting off an alarm. Security officers can then move in and stop the appropriate suspect. …

“The entire procedure is far less invasive or intimidating than the alternatives, like using dogs or X-ray machines,” says Lumbroso. “There’s no radiation, and no concern about being seen naked,” he adds.

The system is appropriate for use in any setting – airports, government buildings, shopping malls. In fact, the company has conducted several tests at sites in Israel to ensure that the sensors work in real situations, including at Tel Aviv’s Azrieli Mall. More than 1,000 people passed through a Bioexplorers sensor – some having been given “suspicious” objects and substances to hold – and the mice made the right call every time, says Lumbroso.

The mice won’t touch you. You won’t even see them.

The rodents employed on this security detail are specially raised lab mice, “which are very clean, and there is no chance that they will transfer diseases to humans, since there is no contact between the mice and the people passing through the sensor,” says Lumbroso. …

They enjoy exemplary work conditions.

The mice are treated well; they “work” for four hours, and then rest for eight, to ensure they don’t experience sensory overload.

Each mouse’s “career” can be expected to last for about two years, and each sensor installation is staffed by four to eight mice. In order to prevent “false positives,” more than one mouse has to respond to the odor and move into the second chamber. …

Their future is bright – to hospitals and beyond.

“We are also looking at developing systems for medical use, in which the mice can detect growths or other problems by smell, without the need for invasive procedures,” Lumbroso says. …

The invention is selling. The mice will go abroad to many countries as mercenaries in the “war on terror”:

“Chances are good that in another year or so, you’ll be passing through a Biosensor system when you travel somewhere.”

A Melbourne Israeli Dancing group was dropped from participating in a Victorian dance festival [ie a festival held in Victoria, Australia] after refusing organisers’ moves to drop all references to Israel.

Find the full report here.

The Machol Israeli Dancing Club was scheduled to appear at Multicultural Folk Dance Festival of High Country in the Victorian country town of Mansfield earlier this month.

The festival was organised under the auspices of the Victorian Multicultural Commission and a grant had been awarded to Marta Balan who according to a submission to the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission approved the performance of the Machol Group.

When the participants’ names were released, Esther Blumenthal-Skop of Machol was surprised to learn that the name of the Machol Israeli Dancing Club had been truncated to Machol Group and all references to Israel had been removed with the club being described as a Jewish dance group.

But that wouldn’t be an accurate description since not all the members of the Machol dance group are Jewish. (How many are not, and what they are is not reported.)

No change had been made to [the names of] other groups including Chinese, Hungarian, Armenian and Ukrainian Traditional Folk Dances and the Irish Reel and Jigs.

In her submission to VEOHRC, Blumenthal-Skop said she asked for an explanation and was told that the organiser would not be held responsible for consequences if the words “Israel” or “Israeli” were used to describe the group. 

Consequences? What might they be? Whose reaction to the name was to be dreaded? The Chinese? The Hungarians? The Armenians? The Ukrainians? The Irish? The Australian hosts? All of them?

Or was there an invisible presence, a ghostly threat hovering over the Multicultural Event? If so, what could it be? What –  invited or uninvited – “culture”? What is its name? What might it do? And was the organiser quite sure that it wouldn’t find the name “Jewish” just as offensive as the name “Israeli”?

Would Israelis be saved from this unnamed terror, we wonder, if their country were to change its name to – say – Judea?

The politically correct organisers of multicultural events could try putting it out there; dub any old Israeli troupe or team of any art or sport “Judean”, and see how it floats.

Multiculturalists simply have to become more resourceful in dealing with these anonymous forces of evil.

Earlier today there was another explosion in Iran, this one in Isfahan, “said to be the primary location of the Iranian nuclear weapons program” and “the site of Iran’s largest missile assembly and production plant … built with North Korean assistance … Involved in the production of Scud-B and Scud-C surface-to-surface missiles by assembling components bought in North Korea and China …  Development and production … was said to include the Shehab 1 and Nazeat missiles …,  the Chinese M-11 …, HY-2 anti-ship and Chinese M-type missiles …, Nodong/Sahab-3 missiles … ”

According to this report, the Iranians are claiming both that it was an accident and that there was no explosion at all.

The Revolutionary Guard said the accidental explosion occurred while military personnel were transporting munitions.

The deputy governor of Iran’s Isfahan province on Monday said however he had no reports of an explosion in his region. “So far no report of a major explosion has been heard from any government body in Isfahan,” he was quoted as saying by the semi-official Mehr news agency. …

A top Israeli security official said that the recent explosion that rocked an Iranian missile base near Tehran [see our post Ah, mighty Worm, all praise to thee!, November 18, 2011] could delay or stop further Iranian surface-to-surface missile development.

This one should make delaying or stopping it even more likely.

Was it the work of the mighty Stuxnet computer worm again? Or of Duqu, son of Stuxnet?

We may never know. But don’t let not knowing delay or stop the celebrations.

According to this report, the Stuxnet worm was the cause of a recent explosion that killed a bunch of nuclear experts and again postpones the nuclear war capability of Iran:

Exhaustive investigations into the deadly explosion last Saturday, Nov. 12 of the Sejil-2 ballistic missile at the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Alghadir base point increasingly to a technical fault originating in the computer system controlling the missile and not the missile itself. The head of Iran’s ballistic missile program Maj. Gen. Hassan Moghaddam was among the 36 officers killed in the blast which rocked Tehran 46 kilometers away.

(Tehran reported 17 deaths although 36 funerals took place.)

Since the disaster, experts have run tests on missiles of the same type as Sejil 2 and on their launching mechanisms. …

Maj. Gen. Moghaddam had gathered Iran’s top missile experts around the Sejil 2 to show them a new type of warhead which could also carry a nuclear payload. No experiment was planned. The experts were shown the new device and asked for their comments.

Moghaddam presented the new warhead through a computer simulation attached to the missile. His presentation was watched on a big screen.

So proud of it. And his pride came before his fall.

The missile exploded upon an order from the computer.

The warhead blew first; the solid fuel in its engines next, so explaining the two consecutive bangs across Tehran and the early impression of two explosions, the first more powerful than the second, occurring at the huge 52 sq. kilometer complex of Alghadir.

Because none of the missile experts survived and all the equipment and structures pulverized within a half-kilometer radius of the explosion, the investigators had no witnesses and hardly any physical evidence to work from.

Iranian intelligence heads entertain two initial theories to account for the sudden calamity: a) that Western intelligence service or the Israeli Mossad managed to plant a technician among the missile program’s personnel and he signaled the computer to order the missile to explode; or b), a theory which they find more plausible, that the computer controlling the missile was infected with the Stuxnet virus which misdirected the missile into blowing without anyone present noticing anything amiss until it was too late.

It is the second theory which has got Iran’s leaders really worried because it means that, in the middle of spiraling tension with the United States and Israel or their nuclear weapons program, their entire Shahab 3 and Sejil 2 ballistic missile arsenal is infected and out of commission …

Good, good, excellently good.

Iran’s supreme armed forces chief Gen. Hassan Firouz-Abadi was playing for time when he announced this week that the explosion had “only delayed by two weeks the manufacturing of an experimental product by the Revolutionary Guards which could be a strong fist in the face of arrogance (the United States) and the occupying regime (Israel).” …

If indeed Stuxnet is back, the cleanup this time would take several months, according to Western experts – certainly longer than the two weeks estimated by Gen. Firouz-Abadi.

And now Son of Worm has been born. Hallelujah!

Those experts also rebut the contention of certain Western and Russian computer pros that Stuxnet and another virus called Duqu are linked.

The head of Iran’s civil defense program Gholamreza Jalali said this week that the fight against Duqu is “in its initial phase” and the final report “which says which organizations the virus has spread to and what its impacts are has not been complete yet. All the organizations and centers that could be susceptible to being contaminated are under control.”

Sure they are. But by whom?

Apparently by Arrogance and the Occupying Regime.

Dr. Yasser Dasmabebi –  amazingly in the light of what he writes here at Front Page, from which we quote – holds the Edward Said-Noam Chomsky Linguistics Chair at Abdul Abulbul Amir University in Cairo.*

With a degree of sarcasm that suggests an angry (and justifiable) bitterness, he lists some of the choice sayings of Palestinians expressing their hate of Israel and Jews:

As our Palestinian national culture has exploded onto the world stage (so to speak) and now has come to embody a more mature wisdom and calm that anyone can plainly see in the conduct of public life in Palestine, the appreciation for the use of language to the fullest extent of purity of purpose, clarity of vision, subtle nuance, harmonic overtone, mellifluous allusions have likewise matured and deepened. All this inspires a linguistic heart such as mine to sing!

So, in the service of creating a discourse for which the expression of the yearning for peace and brotherly love are the ultimate fulfillment, and for which Palestinian society is universally known, I have compiled a short, though naturally far-from-complete, list of quotations from notable Palestinian political and devout religious leaders — almost all of whose salaries are paid by Palestinian governing bodies, and whose money is therefore donated by European and American governments, and thus by you, the taxpayers — SHUKRAN! –, who yearn for nothing more than a Jew-free country living in peace and harmony, so that we can return to our first love: reading and reciting beautiful poetry. …

Many of these statements inevitably lose a bit of their inherent beauty and majesty in translation. Furthermore, it is far from easy to compile such a list, the more for what must be omitted than for what may be included, there being such a plethora of rich material. Please consider mine but a meager offering, a beginning, and, more importantly, a small contribution to the dream of Peace in Our Time. …

3-1-44: Haj Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem: “Arise, Oh Sons of Arabia! Fight for your sacred rights. Slaughter Jews wherever you find them. Their spilled blood pleases Allah, our history and our religion. That will save our honor.” (The Grand Mufti, a true prophet, was fighting the occupation a full 23 years before it began!)

– 2006: Yasser Ghalban, Hamas leader: “The Jihad for Allah is the way of the truth and the way for salvation and the way which will lead us to crush the Jews…”

– 12-3-2008: Imam Safwat Higazi: “Dispatch those sons of apes and pigs to the Hellfire on the wings of Qassam rockets.”

– 5-15-2009: Dr Wafa Musa, psychologist (!): “The Jews deserved their annihilation by Hitler.”

– 9-1-09: PA Presidential advisor Omar Al-Ghoul: “Israel is a rogue country trafficking in the organs of Palestinians it kills.” (Note — notice the beautiful congruence of the poet’s name — “al- Ghoul” — with the content of his speech. How indeed can one not be moved by the utter beauty!)

– 11-15-09: Tawfik al Tirawi, PA Security Chief: “Israel recruits Palestinians to sexually harrass their sisters and mothers.”

– 1-29-10: Al Aqsa TV (PA TV): “Even if donkeys cease to bray, the Jews will not cease to be hostile to the Muslems.”

– 2-28-10: Al Aqsa TV, Deputy Minister of Religious Endowments, Abdallah Jarbu: “Jews are bacteria, not human beings.” (…reflecting Palestinian commitment to medical research and healing by means of research into bacteriology.)

– 3-31-10: Al Aqsa TV, Dr Salah Sultan, President of American Center for Islamic Research: “Jews murder non-Jews and use their blood to knead Passover matzos.” (Yum!)

– 4-25-10: Al Aqsa TV, Bassam Abu Sharif, Advisor to Yasser Arafat: “Israel assasinated JFK.”

– 5-5-10: Yasser Arafat: “Israel uses depleted uranium to cause cancer and infertility.”

– 6-5-10: Imam Salem Abu Al-Futuoh: “The Jews use human blood in Passover and wedding ceremonies.”

– 8-25-10: Al Aqsa TV: “Muslems should wage jihad to liberate the Al Aqsa mosque from the filth of the Jews, the brothers of apes and pigs.”

– 9-3-10: Imam Sheik Ismail Aal Radhwan: “Those who negotiate with Israel will be gathered in the hell-fire along with the apes and pigs.”

– 3-19-11: Al Aqsa TV: Deputy Minister Religious Endowments, Abdallah Jarbu: “Only a madman would think Jews are human.”

– 5-11-11: Imam Yunis Al-Astal: “The Jews were brought to Palestine for the Great Massacre through which Allah will relieve humanity of their evil.”

– 5-17-11: Imam Yasser Qachlaq: “…Human filth…”

– 7-18-11: Imam Safwat Higazi: “The foreign riffraff who live in Palestine are not really Jews; they have brought corruption and evil upon the world ever since trying to kill Christ.”

– 8-11: ‘Atallah Abu al-Subh: “The Jews are the most despicable and contemptible nation to crawl upon the face of the earth.”

– 9-20-11: Muhammed Abdu: “Israel, that plundering, crude, cruel and criminal [notice the artful alliteration!] entity, which wants to devour the remainder of our lands…Oh! sons of a sow, your hands are soiled with the blood of the people…!”

– 9-23-11: Ahmad Bahr, speaker Hamas Gaza Parliament: “We will sweep the siblings of pigs and apes out of our land.”

– 10-19-11: Khalil Al-Khayeh, Gaza legislator: “The heroes of the knife, the heros of martyrdom operations, Jihad and the resistance.”

– 10-25-11: Khodhr Habib [which, appropriately, means “Friend” in Arabic]: Islamic Jihad, Gaza: “We will give you nothing but bombs, spears and swords, which will slit your throats.”

– 11-8-11: Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade: “The number of heroic operations reached 4,300…which included 61 martyrdom operations [i.e., suicide attacks], 24 abductions, 230 armed clashes, 33 incursions, 423 bombing operations, 90 sniping operations, 146 ambushes, and 25 raids on Zionist targets.”

But the winner of our annual Helen Thomas Award for Poetry must go to the eloquent Dear Leader:

– 10-23-11: Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority:

“I will never recognize a Jewish State.”

Note to Islamophobes: Print this list and keep it handy. It’s top grade ammunition.

And read more by this extraordinary writer here.

* We have a growing feeling that the Abdul Abulbul Amir University in Cairo, and even Dr. Yasser Dasmabebi himself, are fictitious.The words he quotes, however, and their sources are genuine.

Two videos from Creeping Sharia to remind the West that Islam is waging war against us.

We all have opinions on issues about which we are ignorant. They arise from our characters, our prejudices, and our emotions. Fortunately, in our private lives, our opinions seldom matter enough to cause much harm. But when persons in power form policies based on uninformed opinions arising from their deep-seated prejudices, they affect the lives of millions, necessarily for the worse.

And in the arena of politics, the prejudices and uninformed opinions of many individuals can all too easily influence the actions of the powerful.

One of the dangers of democracy is that the vote of the know-nothing counts for exactly the same as the vote of the well-informed, and the know-nothings can swing an election.

It’s the business of the mass media to inform the public. When journalists let their own opinions keep them from telling the truth about an issue or a candidate for office, they empower the ignorant. The media failed in their duty to inform the electorate that Barack Obama was a poorly-educated, inexperienced, far-left ideologue with close ties to terrorists and jihadists. The votes of the uninformed gave him the presidency. The result is a wrecked economy, and the weakening of the United States as a power in the world and so of Western civilization as a whole.

If there is one issue in world politics on which opinions are held most strongly while being least informed it is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Vast numbers of people, almost certainly a majority, believe these falsehoods:

1. The Palestinians had their country taken away from them by the Jews.
2. The Israelis expelled the Palestinians.
3. The Israelis illegally occupy territories that belong to the Palestinians.
4. The Israelis refuse to negotiate for peace with Palestinian leaders.
5. Israeli intransigence impeded a peace process that Palestinian leaders pursued in good faith.

We summarily dismiss points 1 and 2: –

1. There never was, in all history, a State of Palestine.
2. There is no evidence that any Arabs were expelled from the State of Israel. There is evidence that in at least one city – Haifa – they were implored to stay. There is also evidence that the Mufti of Jerusalem and Arab leaders urged them to leave before five Arab armies invaded the newly-declared State of Israel, promising them a victory after which the refugees would return to their homes. And there is absolute certainty that hundreds of thousands of Jews were forcibly expelled – stripped of all they possessed – from the Arab states. 

As for points 3, 4, and 5, we quote from an excellent recent column by Melanie Phillips at the Mail Online. She writes:

One of the most egregious signs of western irrationality and bigotry over the issue of Israel is the way in which its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is routinely scapegoated for causing the breakdown of the so-called peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.

This charge is based on the widespread fallacy that the ‘peace process’ has stalled because Israel keeps building more Jewish ‘settlements’ on ‘Palestinian land’. This reasoning is not only totally wrong but utterly perverse on the following grounds:

1) The actual reason for the collapse of the ‘peace process’ is that Mahmoud Abbas repeatedly maintains that he will never accept that Israel is entitled to be a Jewish state, hails Palestinian terrorists as heroes for murdering Israelis and does nothing to end the incitement to murder Jews disseminated in schools, mosques and media under his control. In other words, Abbas is not a legitimate interlocutor in any civilised ‘peace process’ since he remains committed to the eradication of Israel [as are all Arab and Muslim leaders – JB]. Yet Netanyahu is blamed for the impasse.

2) It is only Israel that has made concessions in this ‘peace process’ [giving up vast areas of land conquered in defensive wars in exchange for peace that was never granted]. The Palestinians not only failed to deliver what was expected of them under the Road Map [or under any of the signed agreements] but now, with their UN gambit, have unilaterally reneged on their previous treaty obligations. Yet Abbas is given a free pass while Netanyahu is blamed instead for the impasse.

3) The claim that the ‘settlements’ are the key to resolving the dispute is ridiculous. First, they take up no more than one or two per cent of West Bank territory. Second, even when Netanyahu froze such new building for ten months as a sign of good will, Abbas still refused to negotiate. Yet this is all ignored, and Netanyahu is blamed instead for the impasse.

4) The claim that the establishment of a Palestine state would end the dispute is also ridiculous. Such a state was on offer in 1948; Israel offered to give up more than 90 per cent of the West Bank for such a state in 2000; and an even more generous offer was subsequently made by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The Palestinian response was in every case war and terror. Yet all this is ignored, and Netanyahu is blamed instead for the impasse.

5) Whatever land Israel may choose to give up in its own interests, under international law Jews are entitled to settle anywhere in the West Bank. There is no such thing as Palestinian land and never was.The West Bank and Gaza never belonged to any sovereign ruler after the British withdrew from Mandatory Palestine; before that it was part of the Ottoman empire. Israel’s ‘borders’ are in fact merely the cease-fire lines from its victory in 1948 against the Arab armies that tried unsuccessfully to exterminate it at birth. It is therefore more correct to call the West Bank and Gaza disputed territory. Yet this history and law are denied and Netanyahu is blamed instead for the impasse.

6) The Jews alone have the legal – as well as the moral and historical – right to settle within the West Bank and Gaza, a right given to them by the Great Powers after the First World War on account of the unique historical claim by the Jews to the land then called Palestine. This Jewish right to settle anywhere in that land was entrusted to Britain to deliver under the terms of the Mandate for Palestine – an obligation which it proceeded to break. [Even giving away the greater part of the territory to the Arabs to create the Emirate of Transjordon – now the Kingdom of Jordan – which is therefore an Arab state of Palestine.] Yet this history and law are denied, and Netanyahu is blamed instead for the impasse.

This information is the bare minimum a commenter needs before he is justified in expressing an opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. An opinion formed with any less knowledge is worthless and potentially dangerous.

A non-entity called “Palestine” has been admitted as a member of UNESCO.

The US promptly stopped funding the UN agency, as it was bound to do by law. But with what degree of reluctance in the minds of Obama and his foreign affairs appointees?

Claudia Rosett, always the best commentator on the nefarious goings-on of the UN and its agencies, wrote this at Canada Free Press:

If the U.S. has one big lever right now within the many organizations of the United Nations system, it is the threat to cut the money with which U.S. taxpayers pay the biggest share of the U.N.’s bills. Yet despite a U.S. threat to cut funding, the assembly of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) voted Monday to grant full membership to the Palestinian Authority. What happened?

The answer may be that the U.N. has little reason to take U.S. threats seriously. That might sound odd, since UNESCO’s decision to seat the Palestinians has indeed choked off U.S. funding for the Paris-based organization. At least for now.

Under U.S. law, the U.S. must deny funding to any part of the U.N. system that grants membership to the Palestinians — at least until they achieve viable statehood by way of negotiating in good faith with Israel. On Monday, following the UNESCO vote, a State Department spokeswoman confirmed that a $60 million U.S. payment for UNESCO, planned for this month, will not be made. Overall, U.S. dues account for 22% of UNESCO’s budget, plus the U.S. throws in millions in voluntary contributions on top. A U.S. cutoff should mean that UNESCO will lose about $80 million per year.

But while money talks, so do U.S. diplomats. For the U.S., the UNESCO vote was a debacle, with the assembled states voting 107 to 14 in favor of admitting the Palestinians, and 52 states abstaining. That would have been the moment for the U.S. ambassador to read UNESCO’s assembly the riot act and announce that the U.S. was pulling out, as it did in 1984, under President Ronald Reagan; returning only in 2003, under President George W. Bush.

Instead, the U.S. diplomatic message to UNESCO has been one of apology, regrets and fawning statements of support for a U.N. body that has just slapped the U.S. in the chops. U.S officials have even been hinting that they are looking for some kind of workaround, to get the money flowing again. …

State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland described UNESCO’s admission of “Palestine” as “regrettable” and premature.” But she went on to say the U.S. “will maintain its membership and commitment to UNESCO.” Most telling, she added that the administration would “consult with Congress to ensure that U.S. interests and influence are preserved.”

Why might the administration now wish to consult with Congress? Congress appropriates the money that the U.S. gives to the U.N., and Congress has the power, should it choose, to change the laws now cutting off funds for UNESCO, and for any other U.N. organizations the Palestinians might now seek to join.

In Paris, America’s ambassador to UNESCO, David Killion, had even sweeter words for UNESCO. … Sounding more like an envoy of UNESCO than of the U.S., Killion …  came close to issuing an outright apology: “We sincerely regret that the strenuous and well-intentioned efforts of many delegations to avoid this result fell short.” [And he]  concluded by hinting that UNESCO might not suffer quite as much as expected: “We pledge to continue our efforts to find ways to support and strengthen the important work of this vital organization.”

As for the “strenuous efforts” of the U.S. administration to head off UNESCO’s admission of the Palestinians, American moves in the run up to the Oct. 31 vote included topping up UNESCO’s coffers. On Oct. 18, with the vote already looming, and the Palestinians fielding a clear majority at the impending assembly, the U.S. tipped $1.77 million in voluntary, extra-budgetary funding into UNESCO’s till. …

And, as UNESCO’s delegates prepared on Monday to cast their votes, U.S. Under Secretary of Education Martha Kanter addressed the assembly. She did not bother to mention that Palestinian TV, schools and summer camps still indoctrinate Palestinian children in hatred of Israel, nor did she note that the Palestinian Authority’s logo shows a map on which Israel has been obliterated. She was there to tell the delegates that … “This General Conference is an opportunity for us to renew our commitment, because the world needs a strong UNESCO.”

Does it? A truth that seems lost on the current U.S. administration is that UNESCO’s assembly of member states, with its jubilant nose-thumbing vote against American policy and interests, is no anomaly. It is a pretty accurate reflection of the General Assembly of the United Nations, which is substantially mirrored in voting and governing bodies throughout the U.N. system. …

Right now the U.S. is also shelling out more than $400 million for a $1.9 billion renovation of the U.N.’s headquarters in Manhattan, kitting out U.N. delegates and staff with state of the art equipment and comforts. All this translates into a lavish entitlement system, in which U.N. member states, and the U.N. organizations they largely control, are accustomed to using one hand to poke America in the eye, while holding out the other hand for more U.S. tax dollars.

With UNESCO membership a done deal, the Palestinians are shopping for other U.N. organizations to join. A UNESCO seat confers automatic access to a number of other U.N.-affiliated organizations, including the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva and the U.N. Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in Vienna. Palestinian officials have also been floating mentions of applying to the World Health Oragnization (WHO), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the World Bank and beyond. …

The UN must be destroyed.