5 Wasteful and Harmful UN Organizations That Delegitimize Israel

As the Trump administration undertakes a review of U.S. support for the United Nations, it should defund and seek the elimination of five UN organizations that exist primarily to delegitimize Israel. Toward that end, former President Joe Biden banned U.S. funding of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in 2024 for one year, with President Donald Trump permanently extending the ban in February 2025. However, four other UN anti-Israel organizations still benefit from the UN regular budget, of which the United States is the largest contributor, accounting for 22 percent of the $3.7 billion total, or roughly $800 million per year.

These organizations all purport to advance the Palestinian cause but instead harm all parties involved by promoting the agendas of terrorist groups, endangering Israel, and undermining U.S. interests by extension. The United Nations does not maintain a dedicated infrastructure to promote the interests of any people other than the Palestinians.

UN Organization #1: The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP)

The UN General Assembly (UNGA) established the CEIRPP in its 1975 session during which it also incorrectly proclaimed Zionism to be a form of racism. The CEIRPP says it seeks “to enable the Palestinian people to exercise their inalienable rights to self-determination.”

The CEIRPP describes Israel’s founding as the “nakba,” meaning “catastrophe” in Arabic, and has played a role in numerous disinformation campaigns against Israel. Notably, the CEIRPP convened anti-Israel nongovernmental organizations in the early 2000s, helping launch the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

The CEIRPP’s secretariat, the Division for Palestinian Rights (DPR), runs the UN International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, which has served as a vehicle for disinformation against Israel. In 2023, the DPR’s Day of Solidarity platformed speakers who compared Israel to Nazi Germany. In 2018, a DPR event hosted a speaker who concluded his speech with “free Palestine from the river to the sea,” a slogan calling for the ethnic cleansing of Jews in Israel.

UN Organization #2: UN Information System on the Question of Palestine (UNISPAL)

In 1991, the UNGA established UNISPAL, which is overseen by the DPR, as a tool to help disseminate disinformation created by anti-Israel UN organizations. Notably, the United Nations does not maintain a similar propaganda arm for any other issue.

Many of UNISPAL’s documents contain factual errors. A lengthy five-part report prepared by the DPR, found on UNISPAL’s site, erroneously implies that Jews are not indigenous to the land of Israel. The organization’s database also contains documents that falsely accuse Israel of genocide in the war that began with Hamas’s atrocities on October 7, 2023. Similarly, the database includes the UN Human Rights Council’s March 2025 report, which contains unverified allegations of systematic sexual violence against Gazans by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

UN Organization #3: Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories

Established by the UNGA in 1968, the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices has a one-sided mandate to investigate alleged Israeli crimes against Palestinians and other Arabs, excluding scrutiny of human rights violations committed by Palestinian terror organizations. In a report published on October 25, 2023, that examined the historical context of Israeli security policies, the Special Committee made no mention of the atrocities committed by Hamas against Israelis earlier that month.

A September 2024 Special Committee report on the Israel-Hamas conflict falsely claimed that the IDF used mass starvation as a tactic of war, an allegation contradicted by the United Nations’ own reporting. The report also incorrectly claimed that Israel indiscriminately bombed Gazan civilians. By contrast, top U.S. military experts, including retired Gen. David Deptula and West Point’s John Spencer, state that Israel has worked strenuously to clear civilian areas prior to striking Hamas targets embedded within them.

UN Organization #4: UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)

The UNGA created UNRWA following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 to provide humanitarian aid to Palestinians displaced by the Arab-Israeli war. UNRWA has embraced a uniquely expansive definition of Palestinian refugees, which includes the descendants of those under its original remit. Under this definition, the agency’s refugee count has ballooned from 750,000 in 1948 to 5.9 million worldwide in 2024. UNRWA also supports an imagined “right of return” that would allow all of these individuals to move to Israel, which, if implemented, would threaten Israel’s existence and its ability to provide a safe haven for Jews.

Today, UNRWA provides critical support for Hamas. The United Nations investigated 19 UNRWA employees suspected of participating in Hamas’s 2023 atrocities and fired nine of them. But according to Israeli authorities, out of 13,000 UNRWA employees in Gaza, some 2,000 are Hamas operatives. Additionally, the head of UNRWA’s teachers’ union in Lebanon was a senior Hamas commander. Palestinian schools run by UNRWA freely call for violence against Jews and incorporate pro-Hamas propaganda into lessons.

UN Organization #5: United Nations Register of Damage Caused by the Construction of the Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (UNRoD)

The UNGA established UNRoD in 2007 to record the alleged damage caused to Palestinians by Israel’s security barrier in the West Bank. Israel built the barrier during the Second Intifada (2000-2005), which featured more than 3,000 Palestinian terrorist attacks largely stemming from the West Bank. The barrier has saved lives; from 2007 to 2022, Palestinians launched only 141 attacks from the West Bank.

Notably, UNRoD’s stated goal is redundant: Israel has actively maintained a system to address potential harm, including decreased access to worksites and mobility challenges, caused by the security barrier. Israel’s system operates under its High Court of Justice, which has evaluated and addressed hundreds of damage claims. The United Nations does not maintain a system to support Israeli claims of injury at the hands of Palestinian terrorists.

David May is a research manager and senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). Jake Schlanger is an intern in FDD’s International Organizations Program. For more analysis from the authors and FDD, please subscribe HERE. Follow David on X @DavidSamuelMay. Follow FDD on X @FDD. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on foreign policy and national security.