Israel says it plans to pull out of the United Nations cultural and education agency, UNESCO, hours after the US announced its decision to do the same, accusing the body of “anti-Israel bias.”
According to a statement released by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office on Thursday, the premier “instructed the foreign ministry to prepare Israel’s withdrawal from the organization alongside the United States.”
Tel Aviv’s move came just a few hours after US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert announced that the White House would withdraw from the Paris-based agency, citing growing “arrears” at UNESCO, the need for “fundamental” reform in it and its “continuing anti-Israel bias.”
The Israeli premier’s office further said that Netanyahu welcomed “the decision by US President (Donald) Trump to withdraw from UNESCO.” It described the move as a “courageous and moral decision because UNESCO has become the theater of the absurd and because instead of preserving history it distorts it.”