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UNESCO is the Acronym for the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization. UNESCO has 195 Member States and eight Associate Members. Most of the field offices are "cluster" offices covering three or more countries; there are also national and regional offices. UNESCO pursues its objectives through five major programs: education, natural sciences, social and human sciences, culture, and communication and information. Projects sponsored by UNESCO include literacy, technical, and teacher-training programmes; international science programmes; the promotion of independent media and freedom of the press; regional and cultural history projects; the promotion of cultural diversity; international cooperation agreements to secure the world cultural and natural heritage (World Heritage Sites) and to preserve human rights, and attempts to bridge the worldwide digital divide. It is also a member of the United Nations Development Group.
At his point in time, the USA provides 22% of UNESCO's budget. This is a big chunk, but The USA is not crucial to the survival of this agency. In fact, during the Reagan years, America quit UNESCO and was not a member again until the Bush Senior administration. Given the stated goals of UNESCO. it is a "soft target". It can be used as a convenient political football without much collateral damage. 
Perhaps that is why the vote of UNESCO to grant full membership to Palestine was so easy for the rest of the world and was so easy for the Americans to show their knee jerk reaction by cutting off American funding to UNESCO. 
Since this story first broke, very little mention has been made of the fact that it was an automatic legal action by America. It was not a part of the Obama Administration Policy. In fact they had been trying to find a way to circumvent the automatic cut off of funding that has been in place since the Bush Sr. Administration and then re affirmed in 1994 by the Clinton Administration.
Basically, the prohibition on U.S. funding of U.N. agencies that recognize a Palestinian state was included in two pieces of legislation that were signed into law by President George H.W. Bush in 1990 and President Bill Clinton in 1994.

The 1990 law prohibits the appropriation of funds “for the United Nations or any specialized agency thereof which accords the Palestine Liberation Organization the same standing as a member state.”

In 1994, Congress barred funding “any affiliated organization of the United Nations which grants full membership as a state to any organization or group that does not have the internationally recognized attributes of statehood.”

The latest Palestinian move comes as congressional appropriators are looking for cuts in foreign aid spending and the Republican-controlled House, especially the Foreign Affairs Committee led by Ros-Lehtinen, is keen to impose cuts on the United Nations for considering the Palestinian statehood drive.
When the vote was  counted, huge cheers went up in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization after delegates approved the membership in a vote of 107-14 with 52 abstentions. Eighty-one votes were needed for approval in a hall with 173 UNESCO member delegations present. In a surprise, France voted "yes" – and the room erupted in cheers and applause – while the "no" votes included the United States, Israel, Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany.

"Long live Palestine!" someone shouted in the hall, in French, at the unusually tense and dramatic meeting of UNESCO's General Conference.

Palestinian officials insist they are entitled to join Unesco as well as other UN organisations. Should the application be successful, Palestinian officials say they will call on Unesco to recognise key monuments in the occupied Palestinian territories as world heritage sites. Top of the list is the famous Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, which is built over the site where Jesus is believed to have been born.

“It is the right of the Palestinians to become members of Unesco. Palestine has its own heritage and its own culture that needs to be protected,” said Omar Awadallah, the Palestinian official who heads the foreign ministry’s section dealing with UN bodies. He added that the Palestinian leadership would also seek to gain membership of other international bodies, such as the World Health Organisation and the World Trade Organisation.

The automatic law dictating the defunding in effect is an Israeli dictated piece of American legislation which in the short run has made the USA look pretty pathetic  to the rest of the world. Defunding UNESCO won't have any real immediate effects to the American people. but the law is a very dangerous precedent that potentially could have far reaching effects if any other UN Agency decided to recognize the rights of the Palestinian People.

And of course neither the Israeli government nor the US Israel lobby will offer a word of thanks for the sacrifice the US makes on Israel's behalf. 

In effect a stick that was intended to control the Palestinians has become leverage that the Palestinians can use against the US. Abbas can force the US to leave any UN agency he chooses just by applying for Palestinian statehood. These include the ITU, the organization that establishes standards for the international telephone system and WIPO the organization behind international trademark, copyright and patent law.

First the positive news: US withdrawal from WIPO would probably be a good thing. Over the years the US has been the driving force behind a series of moves to appropriate Intellectual Property from the public domain and make it into private property. Republican and Democratic administrations have both been in the pockets of narrow vested interests against the public interest. 

But US withdrawal from the ITU would be very damaging for US interests and could end up threatening the core of the Internet infrastructure. The ITU did not create the Internet but there are many governments that would much prefer that the ITU took over running it. The type of government that uses the term 'information terrorism' for freedom of speech.

The possibility that the Internet might power something like the Arab Spring was understood by Russia and China for at least a decade. The US currently holds a uniquely privileged role in Internet governance. Russia, China, Iran and other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) have been maneuvering to replace bodies such as ICANN, IANA and the IETF with ITU committees where it would be easier to enact proposals to make the Internet more censorship friendly. Participation in the ITU is critical to US efforts to thwart such moves.

It gets worse. The International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) is at the center of US efforts to stop nuclear proliferation. Anyone feel safer if the US seat is empty there? As MJ Rosenberg points out, the US is putting real US national interests on the line in a futile attempt to block a purely symbolic move against Israel.

Participation in the UN agencies is the principal mechanism that allows the US to protect US interests. Giving that up for the sake of some trite point-scoring is ridiculous. There are many governments that would rather like to see less US influence at the UN for a while. For them, threatening to withdraw if Palestine is recognized is not so much a threat as a promise.