Why Trump Is Pushing the U.S. to Abandon the World's Main Organization for Protecting Historic Sites

More depressing news about the power of the Israel lobby. At first glance, the decision last week by the Trump administration, followed immediately by Israel, to quit the United Nation’s cultural agency seems strange. Why penalize a body that promotes clean water, literacy, heritage preservation and women’s rights? Washington’s claim that the UN’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is biased against Israel obscures the real crimes the agency has committed in U.S. eyes. The first is that in 2011, UNESCO became the first UN agency to accept Palestine as a member. That set the Palestinians on the path to upgrading their status at the General Assembly a year later. It should be...