Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon. Photo: World Likud.

JNS.org – Israel announced Friday that will suspend about $6 million in funding to the United Nations in an “act of protest,” following the recent Security Council vote that condemned Israeli settlements and called the country’s presence in eastern Jerusalem — where the Temple Mount, Western Wall and Jewish Quarter are located — illegal.

The Israeli government explained that the decrease in the country’s $40 million in total funding for the UN symbolically represented a cut to the portion of the international body’s budget that is allocated to anti-Israel bodies, including the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People; the Division for Palestinian Rights; the Work of the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices; and the Special Information Programme on the Question of Palestine of the UN Department of Public Information.

“It is unreasonable for Israel to fund bodies that operate against us,” Israel’s ambassador to the UN Danny Danon said in a statement. “We seek to stop the practice where the UN is used solely as a forum for unending attacks against Israel.”

Israel’s announcement comes a day after the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a resolution condemning the Security Council’s anti-settlement vote. Some American lawmakers have also called for cuts in US funding for the UN.