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Comment by cooper_ganglia | Hacker News Reader

Obama withdrew all US funds from UNESCO in 2011 as well, due to Palestine being admitted in. This isn't anything particularly noteworthy, just more capitulating to Israel, which is annoying.

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"In 2011, the United States stopped funding Unesco because of what was then a forgotten, 15-year-old amendment mandating a complete cutoff of American financing to any United Nations agency that accepts Palestine as a full member. Various efforts by President Barack Obama to overturn the legal restriction narrowly failed in Congress, and the United States lost its vote at the organization after two years of nonpayment, in 2013."

https://web.archive.org/web/20220503183152/https://www.nytim...

> 15-year-old amendment mandating a complete cutoff of American financing to any United Nations agency that accepts Palestine as a full member

As a non-American, doesn't this seem a little ridiculous to some people in the US? This screams of a kind of melodramatic, overdone theatrics that the US doesn't seem to do to anyone else. I get that the US has a lot of Israeli money/investments/customers and extremely religious people, but even then, why is it going this far to enshrine their relations to specific states in their laws? It ends up coming off as the US bowing on their knees to relatively minor nations on the other side of the world.

I think it has more to do with terrorism and anti-Western sentiment than with religion.

I expect the same treatment for Iran and North Korea.

Not really. It's just the way it works here. If it's enshrined in law, it makes it harder for one person or small group to make a unilateral decision, similar to how things are happening here now.

Not really? The US does its diplomacy substantially by shuffling money around. Writing a conditional into law is how a legislative body expresses a formal commitment. That's business as usual.

The continued existence of these particular laws in 2011 was, in any case, more a convenient excuse to do something they didn't not want to do anyway, than something that couldn't be changed if political will went the other way. It's just a bit stronger of a commitment than the sitting president's whim, which is also a thing that happens.

Perhaps the disconnect is that the US actively engages in foreign policy at all?

> melodramatic, overdone theatrics that the US doesn't seem to do to anyone else

Iran and North Korea. China with Taiwan. This is deeply precedented geopolitical drama.

> It ends up coming off as the US bowing on their knees to relatively minor nations

If Israel and Palestine are your issue, of course. (Everything will tend to be. This is just how pet causes and the availability heuristic work.) If not, it doesn’t.

Sorry, I don't think I articulated the main point of what makes the 'theatrics' seem like such to me. It's not just about putting things about international relations into law - most countries do that in regards to war, economics, immigration, etc. It's that this whole 'punishment' is contingent on something so seemingly minor as UN membership (a.k.a. state recognition?). People hate Iran and North Korea, but I don't think many are arguing for them to be expelled from the UN outright. No sensible person does business with the Taliban's Afghanistan, but it's not like people are saying that Afghanistan is no longer a country. I don't even think this stance ("we will not back an entity that recognizes Palestine in this way") extends to any other countries with limited recognition, but correct me if I'm wrong.

> If Israel and Palestine are your issue, of course. (Everything will tend to be. This is just how pet causes and the availability heuristic work.)

Despite the very-not-subtle-dig at me, this war isn't the most important war for me right now, and it's not one I'm too informed on, given just how much background and historical baggage there is to the Israel/Palestine relationship.

> that this whole 'punishment' is contingent on something so seemingly minor as UN membership (a.k.a. state recognition?)

If the battle lines are on recognition, that's where the fight will be. Once a country is broadly recognised, it's a moot point. (We don't recognise the governments in Tehran, Havana and Caracas, for example.)

> People hate Iran and North Korea, but I don't think many are arguing for them to be expelled from the UN outright

The best analogy is Beijing vis-à-vis Taiwan. Not only does Beijing not recognise Taipei, it also punishes countries and multi-lateral organisations who do.

In this was recognition is analogised to secondary sanctions, and it's something that's been done since the dawn of civilisation.

In the context of the US, is recognizing a government different from recognizing a country? Is a refusal to deal with Taliban functionally equivalent to not recognizing Afghanistan at all?

> The best analogy is Beijing vis-à-vis Taiwan. Not only does Beijing not recognise Taipei, it also punishes countries and multi-lateral organisations who do.

This is a close analogy, but the important distinction here is that the PRC is the claimant to the ROC, so they have a straightforward and very strong motivation to thwart their recognition at all costs, as to avoid delegitimizing their own claims on it. The US, on the other hand, is a complete third party to either Israel or Palestine. They have interests and goals in the area, but nothing nearly as extreme as China's situation. That's what makes this situation so unique to me, it seems so disproportional of a reaction for a country that's not a party in the war. It makes sense if Israel does it, but the US?

> In the context of the US, is recognizing a government different from recognizing a country?

In the context of anyone, it depends on what changed. The Iranian Revolution changed Iran's government but not borders or existence. Kosovo, on the other hand, created both a new government and a new state.

> the important distinction here is that the PRC is the claimant to the ROC, so they have a straightforward and very strong motivation to thwart their recognition at all costs, as to avoid delegitimizing their own claims on it. The US, on the other hand, is a complete third party to either Israel or Palestine

Direct versus indirect. Go back to the Cold War (or perhaps more accurately, decolonisation) and the USSR and U.S. were doing this by proxy, too. (And everyone was doing it, almost out of necessity, during the world wars.)

My point is this sort of posturing is deeply precedented when geopolitical maps change because the loser has nothing to lose and something to gain from holding off recognition of whatever just changed. (Even if that gain is just not having to deal with it right now.)

If you want a more-direct example, it would be Pakistan supporting Beijing over its claims over Arunachal Pradesh. Pakistan does this because India is its enemy and China its ally. In the Middle East, Iran is America's enemy and Israel its ally. What the people in Arunachal Pradesh or Palestine think about the matter sort of gets swept under the rug. (Or Beijing giving lip service or North Korea and Iran arms to support Russia's invasion of Ukraine, if you want to rule out the size influence factor.)

Clearly Palestine is as big a threat to the US as China.

> Clearly Palestine is as big a threat to the US as China

Kosovo isn't a threat to Brazil or Madagascar [1].

Countries grant, withhold and withdraw recognition for a variety of reasons.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_K...

What are you talking about, global politics is only melodramatic overdone theatrics

everyone does it. I'm pretty sure your home country, whatever it is, also does it.

it's the equivalent of banging fists on tables to try to get people to toe the line, and the US does it a ton. Russia does it. China does it.

even small countries does it too.

There is also a US law banning military aid to Israel since they have nukes outside of the NPT. Pakistan got an exception after a deal with their cooperation in the war on Terror.

Obama didn't do anything (other than follow the law at the time):

https://web.archive.org/web/20141224180231/https://foreignpo...

So would it be fair to say that this is just a reiteration of a 30+ year-long trend.

Edit: 40+ year-long trend?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44648359

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000012506323&seq=...

The is a good point: the decision was made by Congress, not by Obama. Although I disagree with that decision, that is the correct way to make it. Now, Trump is withdrawing unilaterally, without Congressional approval.

Remember when presidents followed the law?

I've been complaining about the increasing power being ceded to the Presidency, like, forever now. This isn't specifically a GOP or DEM thing, it's been happening consistently at least since FDR, and probably even beyond that.

That said, the one area where the Constitution really does give the President a fairly free hand is in foreign policy.

And congress increasingly wanting to do nothing.

I think it's a little more subtle. It's not that they want to do nothing. It's that they're terrified of being seen to have done something, if for some reason that thing turns out to be a mistake.

For all the talk about wanting to do things scientifically, there's a remarkable lack of willingness to actually experiment. If a failed experiment is fatal, then we'll never do anything, bad or good.

Was the law repealed?

You seem to be conflating two things. That Obama was bound by law to withhold funds, and that the president cannot leave UNESCO unilaterally. The president in fact can just withdraw as the commander in chief and head of foreign policy, and they have withdrawn already in 1984 (Reagan) and 2017 (Trump).

Sure, it was a Democrat president enforcing laws passed by a Democrat-controlled House and Senate in 1990 and 1994, under at least one Democrat president.

There are no real "sides" when it comes to the U.S. and Israel. Every party bends the knee and kisses the wall. It’s one big club, and we’re not in it.

Excuses and explanations can feel the same. I do not intend this to be an excuse, but a partial explanation. Before the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, there was a feeling of a possibility of peace in some form; in this context, those laws could be viewed as the stick of a carrot and stick approach.

At this point in time, you can make your own determination about how that has worked out.

Because Israel alone bears all the responsibility for the lack of peace in the region… it’s not like these people are perpetually looking for war

> It’s one big club, and we’re not in it.

I’m not sure what you’re trying to imply here, but like it or not, most Americans do support Israel.

it's a reference to a famous George Carlin skit.

That's no longer true, nor should it be:

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/04/08/how-ameri...

From the article:

  >The public’s views of Israel have turned more negative over the past three years. More than half of U.S. adults (53%) now express an unfavorable opinion of Israel, up from 42% in March 2022

It turns out when you invade a country and commit a genocide, you become less popular. Putin figured that out. Hitler figured that out. Netanyahu’s still mulling it over.

> It turns out when you invade a country and commit a genocide, you become less popular.

Well, Israel's been committing a genocide for, conservatively, nearly 60 years, so, yeah, its probably a suprise to them that after that long of not having an adverse effect on US public support, that has changed.

Ah yes, the genocide where the people being genocided continue to outpace the population growth of the nation doing the genocide. The ethnic cleansing where the only time it happens is to remove Jews from an area. The apartheid where the “subjugated” sit on the Supreme Court, have 10+ seats in parliament (which matches voting demographics), were recently part of the majority, and share all the same rights as their supposed oppressors.

The same state which is right now defending another people from an actual genocide being carried out by self proclaimed jehadis in Syria, and the Druze are now begging to be annexed by Israel.

Literally anyone who makes any claims of genocide or ethnic cleansing or most hysterically, “apartheid” outs themselves as a complete ignoramus of the region, history and reality and is openly declaring their bigotry.

@grok what is the Nakba

In his book Ma'na al-Nakba (The Meaning of the Disaster), Constantin Zureiq described the Arab defeat not just as a military loss, but as a civilizational setback. He believed the Arab states had been unprepared, disorganized, and overconfident, and that their failure to prevent the establishment of Israel revealed deeper problems in Arab society—like a lack of modern institutions, unity, and strategic thinking.

i.e the failure to prevent Israel existing.

From the River to the sea Palestine will be Arab indeed

Answer: a war of genocide and extermination attempted by 6+ Arab/muslim majority states against the nascent nation of Israel, fortunately for all involved they completely failed and in fact ended up losing land. While they did succeed in ethnically cleansing the Jews from any land that did end up under Jordan and Egyptian occupation, and they did expel (ie ethnically cleanse) Jews from most Muslim majority countries, they failed in their overarching goal of finishing Hitler’s work of exterminating all Jews.

Certain morally degenerate groups see this failure (of killing all Jews) as an absolute catastrophe and thus name it the Nakhba.

It’s hard to believe anyone can manage the mental gymnastics required to genuinely believe what you’ve just written, yet there it is.

The irony is that the only ones taking notes from Hitler’s playbook are Netanyahu and the leaders who came before him. Justifying their actions has become the modern-day equivalent of “just following orders.”

You’re not the first person in history to blame the joos for all the world’s ills and unfortunately you probably won’t be the last. But hopefully here on HN such rhetoric will be unwelcome.

Nothing I wrote is untrue or even remotely eye opening. It’s all just plain facts, that the Palestinians themselves admit as supported by the sibling comment quoting from a book written by one of them.

“Modern-day Israel caused the deaths and displacement of hundreds of thousands who had lived there for centuries, all so a group exiled 400 years earlier could barge in, kill the occupants, and drive out the survivors.”

“Oh, you always just blame the joos!”

Sure, buddy lmao

So you’re for colonization then? Fascinating.

You're living in a colony.

You don't exist in a tabula rasa

The jews have now recovered their population numbers to where thy were prior to the holocaust. Therefore the holocaust was not a genocide. Thoughts?

The (arguably) relevant metric is population change during a purported genocide, not afterward.

If a definition of genocide is sensitive to where we mark the start and end of the genocide, then it isn't a very good definition of genocide. We can do the same thing with area: suppose some ethnic group was being genocided in a particular region, but overall population growth of that group was positive. Does that make it no longer a genocide? Clearly not.

The term genocide was coined specifically to refer to what happened to the Jews during WWII. Your nonsense logic doesn’t apply.

The definition of the term genocide doesn't mention net population decrease - or in fact any population decrease at all. I think I've demonstrated why it can't possibly include such a requirement. The way I did so involves, exactly as you imply, assuming that the holocaust was a genocide. Then I show how such a requirement would contradict that assumption.

I don't quite see where the miscommunication is. Serious claims about genocide normally come with (at least rough) temporal and geographic scopes. If we use too broad a scope, like "the Holocaust occurred from 1933-2025", then the claim becomes false. Right?

I think most people claiming a genocide is occurring are using a broad scope, like the conflict in Gaza since Oct 7 (if not something even broader), so it seems appropriate to look at the population change within that time period.

OTOH noone is claiming a genocide of Jews occurred from 1933-2025, so it wouldn't make sense to look at population change for that entire period.

This is both categorically false and completely irrelevant.

The first claim is that genocide has been happening since 1948, the second claim is that it has increased in intensity in the last two years, both claims can be completely dismissed as fabrications by simply looking at the population growth of the nation that is supposedly being killed.

I honestly don’t know why you would bring up the fact that the Jewish population is climbing after the eponymous genocide was attempted.

The point is that genocide has to do with deliberately killing people with the goal of destroying their people or culture. Hitler failed at destroying the jewish culture, does that mean he wasn't a genocidist? Whether an attempted genocide is successful does not alter that it is a genocide, population growth numbers are irrelevant.

The term Genocide was specifically coined to refer to what happened to the Jews in WWII, its meaning doesn’t change to fit your own hateful ideology.

Population numbers are very relevant as are the intentions, actions, and policies. The only people talking about and actually attempting to commit genocide are the Arab/Muslim colonists who have been attempting to colonize and genocide the native people for over 500 years. Most recently last week in southern Syria, before that was 2 months ago in western Syria, but before that obviously Oct 7th. Due in no small part to the IDF all these attempts have failed, but until the colonists either go back to the Arabian peninsula, where they came from or at the very least stop trying to kill their neighbors there will no peace.

> invade a country

Arab colonizers invaded Israel on Oct 7th (and many times before that too) and kidnapped 100s of civilians. Israel is now trying to retrieve them.

> commit a genocide

Arab/Muslim colonizers have been attempting genocide since before the 1600s, their most recent attempt was on Oct 7th. Again Israel is simply trying to reclaim their own people and prevent any future genocide attempts.

Not according to the latest polls that I can find.

Most American evangelicals support Israel. I'm not so sure if the rest of the remaining Americans also support Israel.

According to Gallup the majority of the US public supports Israel over Palestine, just as it has for decades. It's now "at it's lowest in 25 years" but it's still 46% vs 33% for Palestine, down from around 60% pro Israel in prior years.

https://thecradle.co/articles/us-popular-support-for-israel-...

About 10% of Americans identify as evangelical protestants

https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/how-many-evangelicals-...

That drops quite bad for Israel though if means more Americans wouldn't mind cutting off support for them.

A lot more Americans support helping Ukraine.

> According to Gallup the majority of the US public supports Israel over Palestine

Gotta love you turning this into a concept similar to "which sports team do you support more". Following your link, the actual question is "In the Middle East situation, are your sympathies more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians?". which has a lot different nuance (nuance? Oh wait I forget where I am...)

46% is a plurality, not a majority.

Good point!

Friendly reminder that all polls are biased based on a willingness to engage in polls. Response rates are stunningly low (10% is normal [0]) so whatever your polls are saying, they're saying it specifically about a statistically insignificant portion of the population that is biased towards trusting institutions and polls.

0 - https://academic.oup.com/poq/article-abstract/83/S1/280/5520...

This is one dimension. Another is Dem/Rep. But another, that doesn't get enough attention, is the generational one:

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/02/younger-a...

> Most American evangelicals support Israel

Most American boomers support Israel.

Most American voters in almost every demo see the Israeli people favourably. Per your source, a majority of 18 to 49-year olds leaning Democrat see Palestinians favourably. But even in those demos, 42 to 56% see the Israeli people favourably, too.

Outside those demos, the advantage to Israelis is significant enough to drown that partisan youthful signal everywhere but in local primaries where there are large numbers of young Democrats. (Support for Israelis is dropping. But support for Palestinians is lower.)

The dimension that doesn’t get attention is that most Americans don’t care about foreign policy. They may have views. But they won’t vote on them.

Just like how Ted Cruz believes that Bible says that they have to defend Israel. Now if you ask him where exactly in Bible?

He will deflect because his Bible is the American Evangelicals. So much for separation of state and religion.

Numbers 24:9 is the verse that states that those who support and help Israel will be blessed and those that curse it cursed.

Numbers 24:9 (and Genesis 12:3) were about ancient Israel, but Paul reinterprets them in Galatians 3:16. The true “seed of Abraham” is Christ, and the promise applies to those in Him: Christians, not Jews.

There’s no biblical mandate to support modern Israel.

You’ve got to consider Romans as well, half of which is dedicated to the question of the Jews. (Summarising aggressively: Is there anything special about being a Jew? Yes and no, but more no. Has God replaced them? Yes and no, but ultimately more no than yes.) Romans 11 is especially relevant.

I think that means there's a biblical mandate to evangelize and convert Jews to Christianity, but it doesn’t change the fact that there is no scripture requiring Christians to support the modern nation or government of Israel.

To me, Romans 9:8 and Romans 11:13–32 (especially verses 30–32) summarize this well. In Romans 11:26-27, Paul is referencing the promise in Isaiah 59:20:

  “The Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who repent of their sins,” declares the Lord.

But that promise is conditional, it’s directed at those who repent. And you can't repent of the sin of denying the Holy Spirit, the very testimony of Christ, if you refuse to even acknowledge that He exists!

On specific issues, perhaps. (such as against Hamas)

Overall, it seems that support is waning. (46% according to Gallup)

https://news.gallup.com/poll/657404/less-half-sympathetic-to...

But even fewer support Palestine, which is what the UNESCO policy is about.

>most Americans do support Israel

This is just not true. Most Americans are actually unaware how much influence Israel and its lobby has over our politicians and are also mostly unaware of what is actually happening over there.

There is a set of evangelical Christians who have misinterpreted a passage in the book of Genesis to mean that blessing the tribe of Israel means sending unlimited weapons to the modern nation state of Israel. But that is not even close to the majority of Americans.

Did you... look up the override votes that failed in 2011 to see what the partisan breakdown was?

I know it makes you feel good to imagine a world of enemies, and "every party bends the knee and kiss the wall" is some top notch imagery. But in the real world you have allies in this particular fight, and working against them is in fact doing the opposite of what you claim to want.

I never made inaccurate claims about those things!

I really wish we weren't a puppet state of Israel. What they're doing in Palestine currently turns my stomach. It's one thing to get your people back after the horrible attack from Hamas, it's another to mow down people who are just trying to get food with a submachine gun.

> mow down people who are just trying to get food with a submachine gun

not to mention that Hamas was supposed already destroyed 6 months ago

Thanks for reminding us that Obama also sucked.

Well, as long as Israel is fighting Iran's terrorist proxies, the U.S. must stand by her.

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