As a defender of Israel, you know how easy it is to curse the United Nations. No wonder so many pro-Israel advocates cheered last March when President Trump announced his intent to cut 50% of U.S. funding to the U.N.

But Mr. Trump's objection to the U.N. was not focused on Israel alone. We Americans now spend some $10 billion in hard-working-taxpayer dollars a year to support the world body, and there are dozens of reasons to question the U.S. investment.

The White House has targeted so-called peacekeeping missions, such as the one in South Sudan, as areas of waste. It also objects to state sponsors of terrorism and dictatorships, such as Iran, being placed in positions of power in various U.N. agencies. Finally, Mr. Trump wants to cut funding for programs that run counter to his domestic issues, such as the U.N. Population Fund (abortion) and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

But surely the most egregious offenses committed by the United Nations and its agencies are those against our ally, Israel. Indeed, most of these travesties bear the stain of blatant anti-Semitism.

• The U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has declared Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem and the Tomb of the Patriarchs (Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob and Leah) in Hebron to be Muslim sites, despite their centrality in Jewish history and tradition. UNESCO also termed the sites part of "occupied Palestine" and falsely accused Israel of "aggression and illegal measures taken against the freedom of [Muslim] worship."

• The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA) is the bloated organization whose only charter is to provide services to about 750,000 "refugees," most of whom fled their homes during Israel's War of Independence in 1948. This agency is distinct from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which handles all the world's other refugees. Since the UNRWA uses a perverted definition of "refugees"—including all descendants of the original Arab refugees—the agency is now responsible for some five million "refugees," a number that multiplies every year. UNRWA also employs members of the Hamas terror group in Gaza, and its schools have hidden terrorist armaments and are documented hotbeds of vicious anti-Semitic teaching and jihadist incitement . (See FLAME's position paper on U.N. School for Terror here .)

• Finally, and most offensively, the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC), has issued more resolutions against Israel than all other nations combined, including Iran, North Korea, Syria and Sudan. Indeed, the Council's meetings includes a permanent agenda item dedicated to Israel's "offenses" against the Palestinians. (For more on this notorious organization, please see the P.S. to this letter.)

This week's FLAME Hotline featured article, below, is by Claudia Rosett, an investigative reporter who specializes in U.N. abuses. While Rosett's brief piece (from March of this year) lends a skeptical perspective to the issue of U.N. funding, she pleads most passionately for critically questioning the cost and benefits of the U.N. to the United States, which for decades has been neglected.

I think the facts in this letter and Rosett's op-ed will help raise your skepticism about so much American funding going to support such an unaccountable organization. While cutting the U.S. contribution by 50% may be excessive, certainly the admirable efforts of U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley to enforce fairness with the threats of U.S. withdrawal or funding cuts are on target.

Finally, while we're on the topic of U.N. abuses, I hope you'll also quickly review the P.S. immediately below, which describes FLAME's latest hasbarah campaign demanding that the U.S. exit from the UNHRC.

What America Really Needs to Do About the UN

By Claudia Rosett, PJ Media, March 14, 2017

This week brings fresh reports that the Trump White House wants to slash funding to the United Nations, possibly by as much as 50%. That would be a wise move, and if that's what actually happens, it would be a good start and a welcome signal—the first from an American president in many years—that it is time for the UN to stop treating Washington as a moronic sugar-daddy. It is way past time for the UN (and Washington itself) to stop treating U.S. tax dollars as a multi-billion-dollar annual entitlement for the bigots and thug governments that so amply populate Turtle Bay. It is time for the U.S. to stop shelling out roughly $10 billion per year for the benefit of a UN in which, for instance, the member states have just elected—I'm not kidding—the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, Iran, as head of the largest voting caucus at the UN assemblies in Vienna.

But behind any move to slash UN funding loom a number of questions. What, precisely, might America hope to achieve? Where can this go? If the aim is to reform the UN, is that even possible?

These are among the questions I address in a Broadside pamphlet published this week by Encounter Books, on "What To Do About the UN."

The usual defense of the UN is that it may be "imperfect," but "it's all we've got"—a refrain that tends to be accompanied by prescriptions for reforms that either won't stick, or won't work at all.

My argument is, if the UN is all we've got, then it is way past time to come up with something else.

And while it happens fairly often that columnists here and there (myself included) will call for defunding the UN, replacing the UN, supplanting the UN, and so forth, there is very little in the public domain that actually explores, in serious ways, in detail, with the benefit of real expertise, exactly how America might divorce itself from the UN, and avail itself of arrangements more appropriate to the 21st century.

In the elite circles of Washington and New York, there has long been an implicit taboo on any serious call for the U.S. to shrug off the UN. It's time to end that taboo. It is time for a real debate. It is time for some of those with the know-how, resources, and genuine goodwill toward future generations, to take a serious, in-depth look at the opportunity cost to America of cleaving to the UN. What possibilities are we passing up, in order to maintain this multilateral morass? Is the UN really the best we can do? Could we please start asking these questions not as a rhetorical flourish, but as serious questions?

Given the United Nations' Lack of Accountability—and Anti-Israel Obsession—Should the U.S. Cut Its Funding?

What America Really Needs to Do About the UN

THIS MONTH'S AD APPEARED IN PUBLICATIONS REACHING 10 MILLION READERS

IF YOU SUPPORT PUBLISHING FLAME'S BOLD PR MESSAGES, PLEASE HELP US!!

FLAME'S WEEKLY HOTLINE E-NEWSLETTER