On Monday, the Israeli foreign ministry sent a formal letter to the United Nations declaring that in three months it will cease all cooperation with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA), pursuant to a recent Knesset bill. As Shany Mor pointed out in his October essay, UNRWA—besides actively collaborating with Hamas—makes Hamas’s rule of Gaza possible by freeing it of civilian responsibilities.

Then there’s the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which was tasked with keeping Hizballah away from the Israeli border and did nothing of the sort. Now that its failure has led to war, it shrilly condemns Israel whenever it gets a pretext for doing so. And that’s not to mention the way the UN secretary-general has responded to the war that began last year, or the constant stream of anti-Israel resolutions passed by the UN bodies. Danielle Pletka and Brett Schaefer comment:

A myriad of laws dictate how the executive branch manages America’s relationship with and funding of the United Nations and its specialized agencies. Notwithstanding a web of legislative restrictions and instructions, many involving the Palestinians, terrorism, or instability in the Middle East, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development managed in 2023 to shovel $12.97 billion into the UN system undeterred by the world body’s single-minded targeting of Israel and de-facto support for its adversaries after October 7.

Part of the problem is that UNRWA, like the rest of the UN, does not consider Hamas and Hizballah to be terrorist organizations. This creates a glaring loophole in vetting that the State Department has not addressed effectively. In fact, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has repeatedly certified that UNRWA is following U.S. legal strictures. State’s disingenuousness is why Congress suspended funding to UNRWA earlier this year.

It is against the law to provide any U.S. resources to a terrorist entity, but cynical administrators have used humanitarian exceptions as a blanket excuse for supporting terrorism.

The United States is sending billions annually to the United Nations. The question must be asked: why does the Biden administration fail to exercise its leverage effectively to fight the UN’s institutional anti-Semitism? We have the tools but choose not to use them.

In October, a young Mauritanian national murdered an Orthodox Jewish man on his way to synagogue in Chicago. This alone should be sufficient sign of the rising dangers of anti-Semitism. Nathan Diament explains how the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act (AAA) can, if passed, make American Jews safer:

We were off to a promising start when the AAA sailed through the House of Representatives in the spring by a generous vote of 320 to 91, and 30 senators from both sides of the aisle jumped to sponsor the Senate version. Then the bill ground to a halt.

Fearful of antagonizing their left-wing activist base and putting vulnerable senators on the record, especially right before the November election, Democrats delayed bringing the AAA to the Senate floor for a vote. Now, the election is over, but the political games continue.

You can’t combat anti-Semitism if you can’t—or won’t—define it. Modern anti-Semites hide their hate behind virulent anti-Zionism. . . . The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act targets this loophole by codifying that the Department of Education must use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism in its application of Title VI.