UN Ambassador John Bolton has rolled up his moustache sleeves and is at work at the UN, firing his first big verbal shot at UN funding of a Palestinian propaganda campaign:
The United Nations’ funding of a Palestinian Arab propaganda campaign timed to coincide with Israel’s pullout from the Gaza Strip has increased tensions between the U.N. and American officials.
America’s newly installed ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, labeled “inappropriate and unacceptable” the United Nations Development Program financing of materials bearing the slogan “Today Gaza, Tomorrow the West Bank and Jerusalem.”
According to this story in the New York Sun, Mr. Bolton was not amused:
Mr. Bolton said yesterday that the UNDP had failed to explain why it funneled money to the Palestinian Authority to back the production of banners, bumper stickers, mugs, and T-shirts bearing the provocative slogan as well as UNDP logos.
Responding to angry reactions from Jewish and Israeli leaders, UNDP officials yesterday said financial support from the agency was intended to help the Palestinian Authority communicate with Palestinian Arabs during Israel’s evacuation of Jewish settlers from Gaza.
Oh.
That sounds like a great way to communicate — to stir up ideas of expansionism that could help contribute to future conflicts. Now we understand completely…AND:
In a letter to the American Jewish Congress, which had decried the funding of the propaganda materials, a UNDP administrator, Kemal Dervis, said it was “not at all acceptable” that the agency’s logo was placed on the propaganda.
“We cannot be involved in political messaging,” Mr. Dervis wrote. The UNDP manages nearly $4 billion in donor resources annually, operating in 166 countries.
The response from the UNDP was not sufficient, Mr. Bolton said yesterday. “Funding this kind of activity is inappropriate and unacceptable. We plan to raise the issue with UNDP and with others,” he said in a statement to The New York Sun. In effect, Mr. Bolton expressed to the UNDP that the most serious problem for his office was not the logo, but the fact that the agency supported that message with its checkbook.
Bolton is RIGHT. The UN’s logo shouldn’t be funding something in that powder-keg area of the world that is so blatantly propagandistic and provocative. (We’ll send him a pack of razor blades as a thank you..)
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.