The fallout from the entry of Palestine into UNESCO continues. In addition to the US, bound by statute, removing their funds for UNESCO, Canada canceled its voluntary funding. The organization’s budget is probably close to 1/4 smaller than it was just a few days ago. And that can’t help but impact UNESCO’s work around the world.

What’s more, Israel has responded, not by targeting the member states that voted for Palestine’s entry, but by thumbing their nose at Palestine.

The United Nations Educational Scientific Cultural Organization, one of the most important bodies on the planet, voted to give the Palestinian State full membership in the body. The US opposed, and by statute must now stop funding UNESCO.

Gilad Shalit, the Israeli Defense Forces soldier who has been under the control of Hamas since 2006, may be freed in a prisoner exchange deal, according to multiple officials.

Palestine submitted their petition to the United Nations Security Council for membership as a state today, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas delivered a rousing speech before the General Assembly in support of the measure. So what happens next?

The Obama Administration is frantic about stopping the Palestinian effort to secure a vote on statehood at the UN. Today the President meets with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to try and dissuade him from introducing the statehood resolution at the UN Security Council.

US officials are scrambling to broker a deal that avoids a Palestinian statehood bid at the United Nations.

On September 23, one week from tomorrow, the Palestinian Authority will lead an effort to be recognized as an independent state at the United Nations. With serious peace talks stalled for years and with the Palestinians having little alternatives or leverage to force a return to negotiations, they decided that going to the UN was the best course of action. And while the US can veto the effort at the Security Council, a General Assembly petition for “observer status” is more likely to succeed.

This month, the Palestinian Authority plans to go to the United Nations and petition for statehood, against the wishes of the Israelis and the United States. It’s not entirely clear what form this statehood petition will take. The Palestinians could ask for full UN membership, which would go through the UN Security Council, or they could seek “Observer Status,” basically a first step toward eventual statehood, which would be subject to a vote at the General Assembly. The big difference here is that five Security Council states have veto power, and the US has already vowed to use it with respect to the Palestinian statehood push. So Mahmoud Abbas, who is leading the effort, may avoid the Security Council

Fifty years ago today, East German soldiers began overseeing the construction of the Berlin Wall. That wall came down in 1989, but as Der Spiegel reminds us, other walls remain elsewhere in the world.

Even more insidious, though, are the invisible walls we build with money and defend with lawyers, all in an attempt to defend the status quo and nail things down as they are right now.

Sorry, but life is like a river, and you can’t nail it down. Count me among those who yearn for life without such walls.

In midsummer 2006, while my wife and kids were on our yearly trip down to Seattle, to be with our extended Norwegian-Jewish-Cambodian-Icelandic-Swedish-Texan family, the so-called Israel-Hezbollah War was in full rage. My brother-in-law and I were watching Wolf Blitzer on CNN, as he interviewed one pro-Israel talking head expert after another, describing the war not just from the Israeli point of view, but from a right-wing Israeli standpoint.

After the program, he lamented that the voice for Israel in the American media, in public affairs and in politics is almost always from a perspective much further from the right than it should be to reflect the views of the average Israeli, or those of the American Jewish community. He longed for a new organization, based from the positions of moderates, to counter the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other hawkish pro-Israel groups.

“But,” Lee lamented, “that’ll never happen.”

Some say it has now happened.