UNsurprising behavior.

Okay, I couldn’t resist the pun. But for those who didn’t get it, guess which notorious and wildly corrupt international organization largely funded by US dollars has been using said dollars to make and distribute swag in Gaza saying “Today Gaza, Tomorrow the West Bank and Jerusalem”! (Hint: despite what is no doubt your initial assumption, it is not the cast of “The Real World Khan Younis”).

Give up? It’s the United Nations!

That’s right, you heard right, thanks to the generous outlay of the United Nations Development Program, interested parties can get their hands on the wildly popular bumper stickers, T-shirts, mugs and banners. The slogan and campaign are the brainchild of the Palestinian Authority (apparently they had never heard of CafePress), who after a brief and unconvincing period of restraint decided to claim responsibility for Israeli disengagement with all the subtlety, diplomacy and skill of a 14 year old losing his virginity.

The U.N. support of the Palestinian Authority’s propaganda operation in the midst of the Israeli evacuation of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip has provoked outrage from Israeli and Jewish leaders, who are blaming Turtle Bay for propagating an inflammatory message that they say encourages Palestinian Arab violence.

“The intifada worked. That’s contextually what this message is saying,” the director of U.N. affairs for the Washington-based Jewish organization B’nai Brith, Amy Goldstein, said.

The Arabic slogan, which refers to disputed territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, has become ubiquitous in Gaza, where Israeli soldiers this week are evacuating 21 settlements. It’s served as the central message of a Palestinian Arab effort to spin the withdrawal as a victory.

A special representative of the United Nations Development Program in the Gaza Strip, Timothy Rothermel, told Fox News that his office provided financial support for the production of materials that make up the Palestinian Authority’s propaganda campaign, timed to coincide with the Gaza pullout. The Palestinian Authority’s withdrawal committee developed and produced the posters and other items using U.N. money, Mr. Rothermel said.

In addition to the slogan “Today Gaza and Tomorrow the West Bank and Jerusalem,” many of the materials displayed the logo of the United Nations Development Program, which operates in 166 countries and spends about half a billion dollars a year.

Rothermel, his words muffled as his tongue repeatedly caressed the bottoms of Mahmoud Abbas’s cheap wingtips, added:

“[The message is] consistent with the relevant U.N. resolutions and Security Council resolutions about the status of Palestine.”

Of course, Timothy Rothermel is only a “Special Representative,” which makes him a relative underling in the UN hierarchy and slightly below krill in the hierarchy of general worth. The big guns at the UN have (here’s a surprise) denied responsibility:

UNDP officials at the United Nations headquarters in New York City, however, denied that money from the program went directly to the propaganda campaign.

A UNDP spokesman, William Orme, said his office gave money to the Palestinian Withdrawal Committee to “help the Palestinian Authority communicate to the populace about the withdrawal and its economic and social impact.”

The money was funneled to the committee through a subagency called Program of Assistance to the Palestinian People. U.N. officials were not told about the propaganda campaign or about the slogan, he said.

Mr. Orme, who said his office was investigating the details of the letter, refused to say whether the United Nations stands behind the slogan printed on the propaganda materials.

He said: “We are emphatically neutral …We do not lend ourselves to political messaging in favor of any particular faction or ideology.”

Orme continued: “I mean, we’re the fuckin’ UN! We have billions of dollars coursing through our mighty accounts! How do you expect we, who are so occupied with being emphatically neutral, to keep track of who we give our money to and what they use it for? Our job is not to regulate the flow of money to worthy programs and organizations that perform beneficial work, it is to prop up dictatorships and terrorist banana republics so they can serve on our Human Rights Council!”

Fortunately for Mr. Orme, I am certain his goal of “communicating to the populace about the withdrawal and its social and economic impact” has been achieved. Whereas before it was only a sneaking suspicion, the Palestinians are now utterly convinced that the world will basically throw money at them indefinitely for anything they want. The UNDP is currently in the process of approving several Palestinian requests for aid, ranging from a Hamas request for “international funds for the pursuit of peaceful research in the Palestinian national science of the propulsion, stabilization and range increase of celebratory fireworks, especially the heat-seeking kind” and a request from PA Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei for “beer and hookers.”

Aren’t you glad that we are all under the watchful eye of such a transparent, benevolent and effective global organization? I know I am.

(hat tip: Randy)