The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) this week hosted meetings on the status of Palestine, again drawing attention to its position on an issue that forced the United States to cut off funding for the agency.

At the three days of meetings in Paris, which began Wednesday, speakers charged Israel with “systematic terrorism,” “throttling the people” of Gaza, pursuing “criminal” policies and a “policy of racist violence.”

They also accused Israel of “operating a torture machine” and spreading propaganda to downplay the Palestinians’ plight, CNS News reported.

Last November, the U.S. government cut funding to UNESCO after it became the first U.N. agency to grant full membership to “Palestine.”

A U.S. law enacted in 1990 bars funding to “the United Nations or any specialized agency thereof which accords the Palestine Liberation Organization the same standing as member states.”

Prior to the cutoff, the organization received 22 percent of its operating budget from the U.S. — around $80 million a year.

The Obama administration wants to restore the funding and is looking for support in Congress for a waiver that would make that possible.

But Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said on Wednesday: “UNESCO is once again directly engaged in promoting Israel-bashing, this time by hosting and participating in this anti-Israel U.N. confab.

“This reminds us that UNESCO’s admission of ‘Palestine’ was not a fluke, and that UNESCO is reverting to anti-Israel bias and is unworthy of U.S. funding.”

UNESCO’s deputy director-general, Getachew Engida, spoke at the agency’s gathering on Wednesday and called the meeting “a watershed moment,” noting that “seven months ago, Palestine became the 195th member of UNESCO.”

Engida was followed by Palestinian Authority women’s affairs minister Rabiha Diab, who hailed the role of Palestinian women in “all forms of the struggle” against Israel.

Palestinian women living in Jerusalem, she said, were “the subject of a policy of systematic terrorism that is aimed at complicating their lives and weakening them.”

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, an Obama appointee, said in March that UNESCO was “essentially an anti-extremist organization” involved in “essential work, from girls’ education to tsunami warning, that serves U.S. interests,” adding that “it’s not in our interests for these critical programs to go without 22 percent of funding.”

But Rep. Ros-Lehtinen said: “Rather than trying to defend the indefensible, the Obama administration must stop spinning for UNESCO, condemn that body’s anti-Israel behavior, and withdraw its request for Congress to amend U.S. law to restore funding to UNESCO.”

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