Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich sent an emergency letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanding that Israel express an official stance against the United States restoring its membership in the anti-Israel United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
According to a report on Monday morning in Israel Hayom, the letter was written due to a lack of an Israeli position on the issue after the Americans announced their intentions to return to the organization, which former President Donald Trump left.
“I ask that you announce an Israeli position that objects to the renewal of US membership in UNESCO. At the very least, you can stipulate such an agreement to demand that UNESCO remove the Palestinian Authority from the organization,” Smotrich wrote to Netanyahu.
This is the first public demand by a government minister to stand up for Israeli interests by working to stop an American move that was already announced.
Since the Biden administration announced its intention to return to the organization, and with that to pay $600 million, due to what the State Department called the need to stand up for American interests against China, which is a member of UNESCO, Netanyahu did not express an opinion on the matter.
In his letter, Smotrich wrote that the Biden administration is advancing the move due to an official agreement with the previous Israeli government. Still, now, the current right-wing government must express opposition to the move before Biden announces it next month in Congress, and with that, the move will be completed, and the chance of stopping it will disappear.
He points out one of the organization’s egregious decisions, which recognizes the Cave of the Patriarchs as a Palestinian heritage site but not a Jewish one. But that is only a drop in the ocean: the organization, which is supposed to work to teach and preserve knowledge and culture, regularly works one-sidedly against Israel, the organization includes the “State of Palestine,” last month it marked the “Nakba” (Arabic for catastrophe, referring to the establishment of the state of Israel), and in the past the organization opposed the Israeli basic law which establishes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and it classifies Israel as an “occupying force” in the city. Due to the list of actions against Israel, among other things, the Trump administration pulled out of the organization, but now Biden wants to return.

“As you know, the US during the Trump administration left UNESCO due to, among other things, a request by the Israeli government, and this is due to the organization’s hostility to Israel, the rewriting of history, and its denial of a deep historical connection between the people of Israel and the land of Israel and its holy sites such as the Cave of the Patriarchs, a historical connection which was even recognized in the Law of Nations and was even anchored in the UN Charter when the organization was established,” Smotrich wrote in the letter which was sent to the Prime Minister and copied to Foreign Minister Eli Cohen.
“Recently, the United States announced its intention to return to the organizaiton, seemingly based on the message by the previous left-wing government to the State Department approving such a move. It is needless to state that Israel’s approval is a central component of the matter. For instance, if the majority of Republican representatives would oppose the funding of UNESCO until solving the PA’s status in it, it would be possible to stop the refunding of UNESCO in the Congressional Budget Committee. Of course, Israel’s support of the US return to an organization that distorts history is in no way consistent with the right-wing government’s Zionist and patriotic policies,” Smotrich added.