In February, Trump initiated a 90-day assessment of America's involvement in UNESCO, emphasizing the need to investigate any antisemitism or anti-Israel attitudes within the agency. Administration officials, during this evaluation, raised concerns over UNESCO's policies on diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as its apparent pro-Palestinian and pro-Chinese leanings, a White House official told The New York Post.

"President Trump has decided to withdraw the United States from UNESCO – which supports woke, divisive cultural and social causes that are totally out-of-step with the commonsense policies that Americans voted for in November," Deputy White House Press Secretary Anna Kelly stated to The New York Post. "This President will always put America First and ensure our country's membership in all international organizations aligns with our national interests."

 UNESCO's executive board has consistently pursued anti-Israel and anti-Jewish measures, such as classifying sites holy to Jews as "Palestinian world heritage" sites, according to a White House official. Moreover, UNESCO often employs language asserting that Palestine is "occupied" by Israel and denounces Israel's conflict with Hamas without addressing the terror group's oppressive rule in Gaza.

Trump previously directed the US to leave UNESCO in 2017, citing similar anti-Israel biases. The US rejoined in 2023 under former President Joe Biden, pledging to settle over 600 million dollars in membership fees. Israel also left the organization back then and has not rejoined.

In 1983, the US withdrew from the UN agency under former President Ronald Reagan, who noted that the organization "imposed foreign politics on nearly every issue it deals with. It showed hostility toward a free society, especially a free market and free press, and displayed unchecked budgetary growth."

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Israel harshly criticized the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization this week for plans to designate the ancient city of Jericho as a Palestinian World Heritage site.

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Ancient Jericho is one of 53 natural and cultural sites the World Heritage Committee will be voting to include on its list when it convenes in Saudi Arabia in two weeks.

Video: Israeli forces operating in Jericho / Credit: Israel Police

MK Dan Illouz (Likud) blasted the decision, saying "Jericho is first and foremost a city of biblical significance."

According to Jewish tradition, Jericho was the crossing point of the Israelites into the Land of Israel after wandering in the desert for forty years following the Exodus from Egypt.

Illouz called on President of UNESCO Audrey Azoulay to deny the Palestinian Authority's request for the recognition that is "archaeological false."

"This is not only an insult to Jews, but also an insult to Christians around the world who admire the site for its biblical history," Illouz wrote in a letter to Azoulay.

"The Palestinian Authority is systematically working to erase all ties of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel. This is evident on the Temple Mount, where valuable archaeological findings were destroyed, as well as throughout Judea and Samaria, where acts of vandalism and deliberate destruction of biblical evidence frequently occur. It is our duty to stop this and insist on our right to our country against enemies at home and abroad," the letter said.

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The United States on Tuesday formally rejoined the UN's scientific, educational, and cultural organization after a five-year absence.

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The US return to the Paris-based UNESCO was based mainly on concerns that China has filled a leadership gap since the US withdrew during the Trump administration. UNESCO's governing board voted last week to approve the Biden administration's proposal for the US to rejoin.

Video: UNESCO approves US proposal to rejoin organization (Credit: Reuters)

On Monday, the US delivered a document certifying it would accept the invitation. On Tuesday, UNESCO's Director General Audrey Azoulay said it was official. A welcome ceremony with a flag raising and VIP guests is expected in late July.

"This is excellent news for UNESCO. The momentum we have regained in recent years will now continue to grow. Our initiatives will be stronger throughout the world," Azoulay said.

The Biden administration had announced last month that it would apply to rejoin the 193-member organization that plays a major role in setting international standards for artificial intelligence and technology education.

The US is now the 194th member of UNESCO.

"Our organization is once again moving towards universality," Azoulay said. She called the return of the United States "excellent news for multilateralism as a whole. If we want to meet the challenges of our century, there can only be a collective response."

The Trump administration in 2017 announced that the US would withdraw from UNESCO, citing anti-Israel bias. That decision took effect a year later.

The US and Israel stopped financing UNESCO after it voted to include Palestine as a member state in 2011.

The Biden administration has requested $150 million for the 2024 budget to go toward UNESCO dues and arrears. The plan foresees similar requests for the ensuing years until the full debt of $619 million is paid off.

That makes up a big chunk of UNESCO's $534 million annual operating budget. Before leaving, the US contributed 22% of the agency's overall funding.

The United States previously pulled out of UNESCO under the Reagan administration in 1984 because it viewed the agency as mismanaged, corrupt and used to advance Soviet interests. It rejoined in 2003 during George W. Bush's presidency.

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Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich this week called on Prime Minister Netanyahu to take an official stance against the United States rejoining the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization that has a reiterated bias against Israel.

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In a letter sent to Netanyahu as well as Foreign Minister Eli Cohen and obtained by Israel Hayom, Smotrich stressed that it was crucial to express opposition to the move as soon as possible – before President Joe Biden formally announces the move to Congress next month.

Smotrich gave several examples of anti-Israel bias, such as UNESCO declaring the Cave of the Patriarch in Hebron, where patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as well as matriarch Sarah, Rebeccah, and Leah are buried, a Palestinian – rather than Jewish – heritage site. He also criticized the organization for marking the so-called Nakba Day, when Palestinians mourn the "catastrophe" of the establishment of the State of Israel.

He wrote, "The US withdrew from UNESCO under the Trump administration, among other things, at the Israeli government's requests, due to the organization's hostility, which rewrites history and denies the Jewish people's deep historical connection to the land."

Smotrich stressed that while the previous Israeli government led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid gave its consent to the US rejoining UNESCO, that is certainly not the case with the current leadership.

"It goes without saying that Israel's consent plays a central role in this case … Support for an organization that twists history is not in line with the government's Zionist and right-wing vision."

Smotrich also said that Israel's support for the move should be conditioned on the removal of the Palestinian Authority from UNESCO.

Last December, Congress approved a bill to allocate over $500 million to pay the US debt to UNESCO and allow its return as a full member. The US plans to rejoin the organization in July.

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UNESCO announced Monday that the United States plans to rejoin the UN cultural and scientific agency – and pay more than $600 million in back dues – after a decade-long dispute sparked by the organization's move to include Palestine as a member.

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US officials say the decision to return was motivated by concern that China is filling the gap left by the US in UNESCO policymaking, notably in setting standards for artificial intelligence and technology education around the world.

The move will face a vote by UNESCO's member states in the coming weeks. But approval seems a formality after the resounding applause that greeted the announcement in UNESCO's Paris headquarters Monday. Not a single country raised an objection to the return of a country that was once the agency's single biggest funder.
The US and Israel stopped financing UNESCO after it voted to include Palestine as a member state in 2011. The Trump administration decided in 2017 to withdraw from the agency altogether the following year, citing long-running anti-Israel bias and management problems.

UNESCO's director general, Audrey Azoulay, has worked to address those concerns since her election in 2017, and that appears to have paid off.

"It's a historic moment for UNESCO," she said Monday. "It's also an important day for multilateralism.''
US Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Richard Verma submitted a letter last week to Azoulay formalizing the plan to rejoin. He noted progress in depoliticizing debate about the Middle East and reforming the agency's management, according to the hand-delivered letter, obtained by AP.
The decision is a big boost to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, known for its World Heritage program as well as projects to fight climate change and teach girls to read.

While Palestinian membership in UNESCO was the trigger for the US fallout with the agency, its return is more about China's growing influence.

Undersecretary of State for Management John Bass said in March that the US absence from UNESCO had strengthened China, and ''undercuts our ability to be as effective in promoting our vision of a free world."
He said UNESCO was key in setting and shaping standards for technology and science teaching around the world, "so if we're really serious about the digital-age competition with China … we can't afford to be absent any longer."
The US decision doesn't address the status of Palestine. While it's a member of UNESCO, on the ground, the Palestinians are further away from independence than ever. There have not been serious peace talks in over a decade, and Israel's new government is filled with hardliners who oppose Palestinian independence.

The Palestinian ambassador to UNESCO didn't comment on the US decision. The only envoy who wasn't gushing with praise was China's ambassador, Jin Yang. He noted the negative impact of the US absence, and expressed hope that the move means Washington is serious about multilateralism.

"Being a member of an international organization is a serious issue, and we hope that the return of the US this time means it acknowledges the mission and the goals of the organization," the ambassador said.
UNESCO director Azoulay, who is Jewish, won broad praise for her personal efforts to build consensus among Jordanian, Palestinian, and Israeli diplomats around sensitive UNESCO resolutions. She met with Democrats and Republicans in Congress to explain those efforts. Thanks to those bipartisan negotiations, she expressed confidence that the US decision to return is for the long term, regardless of who wins next year's presidential election.

"What's happened over the last years meant that UNESCO matters," she said. "And when you're absent from that ... you lose something. You lose something for your influence in the world, but also for your own national interest."

Under the plan, the US government would pay its 2023 dues plus $10 million in bonus contributions this year earmarked for Holocaust education, preserving cultural heritage in Ukraine, journalist safety, and science and technology education in Africa, Verma's letter says.

The Biden administration has already requested $150 million for the 2024 budget to go toward UNESCO dues and arrears. The plan foresees similar requests for the ensuing years until the full debt of $619 million is paid off.
That makes up a big chunk of UNESCO's $534 million annual operating budget. Before leaving, the US contributed 22% of the agency's overall funding.

A UNESCO diplomat expressed hope that the return of the US would bring "more ambition, and more serenity" – and energize programs to regulate artificial intelligence, educate girls in Afghanistan and chronicle victims of slavery in the Caribbean.

The diplomat said that the agency would also "welcome" Israel back if it wanted to rejoin. There was no immediate response from the Israeli government.

Israel has long accused the United Nations of anti-Israel bias. In 2012, over Israeli objections, the state of "Palestine" was recognized as a nonmember observer state by the UN General Assembly.

The United States previously pulled out of UNESCO under the Reagan administration in 1984 because it viewed the agency as mismanaged, corrupt, and used to advance Soviet interests. It rejoined in 2003.

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One of the Middle East's most famous cities is undergoing a revival, as Egyptian authorities have launched a project to restore historic areas of Cairo to its former glory.

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The history of Historic Cairo – that existed before the city's expansion during the 19th and 20th centuries - dates back centuries, but currently many parts of the thousand-year-old World Heritage Site are deteriorating.

This has prompted architects and restorers to begin the project, as they fear that ancient artifacts might otherwise be lost.

According to the lead coordinator of the project, during renovations, residents will relocate to low-rise apartments that will be built on vacant lots in the district. Several courtyards will also be turned into boutique hotels for tourists. The government aims to renovate about 10% of the area within the first two years of the plan.

Restorations have already begun on one site, an ancient cemetery and burial site of a pharaoh.

Historic Cairo was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO – the United Nation's cultural heritage agency – in 1979.

This article was first published by i24NEWS.

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A 3,500-year-old clay tablet discovered in the ruins of the library of an ancient Mesopotamian king and looted from an Iraqi museum 30 years ago is finally headed back to Iraq.

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The $1.7 million cuneiform clay tablet was found in 1853 as part of a 12-tablet collection in the rubble of the library of Assyrian King Assur Banipal. Officials believe it was illegally imported into the United States in 2003, then sold to retail company Hobby Lobby and eventually put on display in its Museum of the Bible in Washington.

Federal agents with Homeland Security Investigations seized the tablet, known as the Gilgamesh Dream tablet, from the museum in September 2019. The Gilgamesh tablet is part of a section of a Sumerian poem from the Epic of Gilgamesh. It is one of the world's oldest works of literature and one of the oldest religious texts.

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York, began a civil forfeiture court proceeding that resulted in a repatriation ceremony on Thursday at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian with officials from Iraq.

Farreed Yasseen, the Iraqi ambassador to the United States, said the looting of the museum in the 1990s hit Iraqis hard.

"The real core of what happened, though, is that people, individual people, did the right thing," he said, noting much more needed to be done to preserve cultural heritage across the world. "Artifacts are still being stolen, they are being smuggled out," he said.

Hassan Nadhem, the Iraqi minister of culture, tourism, and antiquities, spoke of the pride he felt in seeing the artifacts returned.

"Restituting the Iraqi artifacts for me means restituting our self-esteem and confidence in Iraqi society," he said, speaking through a translator.

The move is part of an increasing effort by authorities in the US and around the world to return antiquities pilfered from their home countries. In years past, such items probably would never have made it back. The black market for these relics is vast, as are criminal networks and smugglers dealing in stolen items and falsifying ownership data.

"By returning these illegally acquired objects, the authorities here in the United States and in Iraq are allowing the Iraqi people to reconnect with a page in their history," said Audrey Azoulay, director-general of the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. "This exceptional restitution is a major victory over those who mutilate heritage and then traffic it to finance violence and terrorism."

For the acting head of Homeland Security Investigations, which found and investigated the origins of the tablet, the repatriation is personal. Steve Francis' parents were born in Iraq, part of a small sect known as Chaldean Iraqis who are Christian, and he was assigned to a US Customs unit in 2003 that was sent to Iraq to help protect looted artifacts.

"It's really special to me. I'm a Chaldean Iraqi and leading the agency that did this work," Francis said. "It is really something."

Authorities are also repatriating a Sumerian Ram sculpture that was seized during a separate case.

The sculpture, from 3000 B.C., was used for religious vows in Sumerian temples. Investigators believe it had been stolen from an archaeological site in southern Iraq, and then passed off as part of a collection that had been discovered years earlier. Homeland Security Investigations teams, curious about the size of the collection, looked the sculpture up and discovered the ram was not among the listed items. The dealer eventually fessed up.

Homeland Security Investigations has returned more than 15,000 items to 40 countries, including at least 5,000 artifacts to Iraq since 2008. Many of the cases have come from the agency's office in New York, where a team of agents is investigating the trafficking of cultural property and stolen artifacts, which have included other tablets and clay seals.

The owners of Oklahoma City-based Hobby Lobby, devout Christians, collected artifacts for the Bible museum on a large scale. Prosecutors said Steve Green, the president of the $4 billion company, agreed to buy more than 5,500 artifacts in 2010 for $1.6 million in a scheme that involved a number of middlemen and the use of phony or misleading invoices, shipping labels, and other paperwork to slip the artifacts past US customs agents.

Prosecutors say Hobby Lobby was warned by its own expert that acquiring antiquities from Iraq carried "considerable risk" because so many of the artifacts in circulation are stolen. Yet Green, who had been collecting ancient artifacts since 2009, pleaded naiveté in doing business with dealers in the Middle East.

In 2018, the executives agreed to settle the case for $3 million and return thousands of objects. The lead agent on the case, John Labbatt, based in New York, said Homeland Security was repatriating items from that case in 2018 when they were made aware of the smuggled tablet, too.

Getting it back wasn't simple. Agents had to prove it was wrongly acquired.

Labbatt pored over records and tracked the tablet from London to the United States in 2003. It had been bought by a couple who admitted they were aware at the time they were purchasing it from someone who may not have been above board, he said. They mailed it to themselves in the US, so it didn't go through customs.

A false provenance letter was used to sell the tablet several times before Hobby Lobby bought it from a London-based auction house in 2014.

By then, the statute of limitations had passed to charge the couple with any crimes.

"But really, in the end, the most important part is getting it back where it belongs," Labbatt said. "And that's what we're doing."

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World Heritage Site status was awarded to the Roman Limes along the Rhine River and Germany's Jewish cultural heritage by UNESCO, the UN's cultural body said on Tuesday.

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The relevant committee took the decision at its meeting in the Chinese city of Fuzhou, awarding the coveted recognition to the German cities of Mainz, Worms and Speyer as one of the cradles of Jewish culture in Europe.

The cities Mainz, Worms and Speyer were centers of Jewish culture in the Middle Ages and are referred to as "Jerusalem on the Rhine." Among the Jewish centers preserved from the period are cemeteries, a synagogue and a ritual bathhouse.

Meanwhile, the term Limes refers to the border defense along the edge of the Roman Empire where it ran along the Rhine and the Danube rivers.

The committee postponed a discussion concerning the Danube Limes for procedural reasons, but the designation to the section along the Rhine was awarded without delay.

The application for the section along the Rhine was made by the Netherlands and the western German states of North Rhine Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate. It runs from Rheinbrohl in Rhineland-Palatinate to the Dutch North Sea coast.

The award closes a gap. The Upper Germanic Rhaetian Limes and Hadrian's Wall in Britain already enjoy World Heritage status. A decision on the Danube Limes could be taken this week.

During the weekend, the committee awarded World Heritage status to 11 European spa towns in recognition of their key role in European society more than a hundred years ago.

Cited for the international significance they achieved as health resorts from the late 18th to the early 20th centuries, the towns sharing the award include the German resorts of Baden-Baden, Bad Ems and Bad Kissingen; Carlsbad and Marienbad in the Czech Republic, Spa in Belgium, Vichy in France and Bath in Britain.

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Australia's government said Tuesday that it would oppose the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) plan to downgrade the status of the Great Barrier Reef following years of climate change-induced damage, reported Deutsche Welle (DW).

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Stretching 2,300 kilometers (1,400 miles) along Australia's northeast coast, the world's largest coral reef system, a huge draw for tourists, has been battered by global warming.

In the past five years rising ocean temperatures have caused three episodes of mass coral bleaching, when the invertebrates expel the algae living in their tissues that supply a crucial source of nutrients.

The site, which has also been lashed by cyclones and attacked by crown-of-thorns starfish, has lost half its corals since 1995.

In 2015 and 2017, Canberra narrowly avoided having UNESCO put the reef on its endangered list.

Four years on, UNESCO acknowledges the government's efforts to shore up the site but notes that Australia's own outlook for the ecosystem has been downgraded from "poor" to "very poor."

Australian Environmental Minister Sussan Ley protested the move stressing that the country had spent billions of dollars on trying to protect the reef.

"I agree that global climate change is the single biggest threat to the world's reefs but it is wrong, in our view, to single out the best-managed reef in the world for an 'in danger' listing," she said in a statement.

Other top tourist sites in danger of losing their World Heritage status include Venice, Budapest, Liverpool, and the Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania.

This article was first published by i24NEWS.

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The oldest tool identified to date, discovered near Haifa, was used some 350,000 years ago – before the advent of modern humans, an article in the Journal of Human Evolution by a group of Israeli archaeologists reveals.

Article authors Dr. Ron Shimelmitz, Dr. Iria Groman Yroslavski, Professor Mina Weinstein-Evron, and Professor Danny Rosenberg, all from the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at the University of Haifa, describe the artifact as a round dolomite stone that bears microscopic signs of grinding. The rock was discovered at the Tabun Cave on the Carmel, one of the most prominent prehistoric sties in the world.

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The tool dates from a period some 150,000 years earlier than any other tool used for grinding found to date.

According to the researchers, the rare find indicates that homonids used grinding as a way of processing various materials, which they described as "major technology" indicative of a desire and capability to process various materials to improve the ways in which they could use the resources of their environment.

"At such an early stage a very significant technology was added to [the hominids'] 'toolbox,'" researchers pointed out.

"The small cobble is of immense importance because it allows us to trace the earliest origins of the abrasion action and how cognitive and motor abilities that developed during human evolution eventually evolved into important phenomena in human culture to this day, primarily involving abrasion and development of food production techniques, stationary settlement, agriculture, storage and later an increase in social and

"We concluded that the ancient stone was used for the grinding of soft materials, although we do not yet know which ones exactly," Groman Yroslavski said.

The Tabun Cave is part of a complex of sites that make up the UNESCO World Heritage Site on the Carmel. Evidence of human and pre-human activity over the last 500,000 years has been uncovered in the cave, which for 90 has supplied material that has contributed to understanding of human evolution.

The rock, originally excavated in the 1960s, was identified as part of a new project that Shimelmitz and Weinstein-Evron are leading to re-examine past findings from the site.

"We concluded that the ancient stone was used for the grinding of soft materials, although we do not yet know which ones exactly," Groman Yroslavski said.

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