Trump Withdraws U.S. From UNESCO Over Its Bias Against Israel, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That A Body Promoting Literacy And Holocaust Remembrance Was Still Receiving American Support

WASHINGTON. The Trump administration announced Thursday that the United States would withdraw from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, resolving long-standing concern that the world's foremost body for protecting literacy, scientific cooperation, and Holocaust remembrance was still able to count the United States among its members.

The State Department, which framed the decision as a stand against the agency's perceived bias toward Israel, said the withdrawal would take effect at the end of 2018, by which point officials expressed confidence that the burden of belonging to an organization devoted to world heritage and girls' education could be fully lifted.

UNESCO, founded in 1945 with the United States as a charter member, oversees the World Heritage Site program, coordinates global literacy efforts, defends press freedom, and maintains educational materials on the Holocaust. Administration officials noted that the country had already managed to stop paying its dues to the body in 2011, accruing more than $500 million in arrears, and characterized the withdrawal as the logical next step in a relationship the United States had long since ceased to fund.

"UNESCO has demonstrated continued anti-Israel bias," read a State Department statement, a sentiment Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised before announcing that Israel, too, would be leaving the agency from which it had just been defended. Sources within the administration confirmed that the move freed the United States from any further obligation to participate in the designation of cultural landmarks, the preservation of endangered languages, or the international coordination of tsunami early-warning systems, none of which, officials stressed, had ever produced a single dollar of revenue for the President.

The departure marked the second time the United States had left UNESCO, having previously withdrawn under President Reagan in 1984 before rejoining in 2003, a precedent administration officials said proved that membership in the body was a problem the country was fully capable of solving more than once.

At press time, UNESCO had elected a new director-general and was proceeding with the remaining member states on the matter of safeguarding the world's shared heritage, a project the United States had determined it could observe just as easily from outside.