UN paying for Palestinian campaign

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@ DW:
"Actions speak louder than words, and in deed, the UN has earned damnation."

There was a little bit in an often read and even more often quoted book that ran along the lines of "let the blameless cast the stone." As a large organization, which has to get people all over the world together, the UN is slow-acting and often bureaucratic, but I think you are waay too skeptical. It's ok, we all have our biases - but I simply don't agree with yours.

The UN was created after a war that taught the world a very bitter lesson: wars of aggression should be avoided in any possible way, as they lead to mass suffering. Which, in 1945, made absolutely perfect sense. Take a country as totalitarian and repressive as 1941 USSR, barely come out of the hunger in the early 1930's and the purges of 1937-39, and a country suffering from forced industrialization at the cost of everything else. Yet when this country was invaded by troops of supposedly much more civilized country (I'm not talking about the leadership) the war led to destruction and famine on an almost unmatched degree.
The UN was created as the forum to direct international efforts against wars. While it might not have had a perfect record, at least it has never reneged on it. It never had nor has the opportunity to mess a lot in a country's internal affairs, if you would make the case for the opposite, give me some referenced facts.
Later came other responsibilities, but it makes sense that if you want to do something on an international level, and there is an existing organization tackling problems on that level, you use it. Today, intercountry interaction is at a very high level, so it makes sense that some of it goes through the UN. It's not a government, as it has neither the resources nor people for anything even remotely such. It is a forum and a framework for action, that's all there is to it.
It's kinda hard for the UN to go against any country, as it doesn't have any power itself. Peacekeeping, embargoes, and the like - practically all of its "arsenal" has to be approved by the Security Council. It's not the UN telling those countries what to do, it's the other way around. Small wonder it has had little success in quickly solving vital issues - hey, you get Russia, China, France, the UK and USA to agree on one controversial thing and to actually do something about it and you've got my admiration.
As for the UN supporting dictatorships - beside my remark that many democratic countries have done so and do so even now - it doesn't necessarily support them, but it can't act against them, simple as that. The Human rights council may and probably does decry capital punishment in Saudi Arabia, repression in Chechnya or Tibet or police brutality in French Guiana, but what can it do? Call in peacekeepers, or raise sanctions? Only the superpowers can do that, and don't tell me the UN tells Bush, Putin or Blaire what to do...
So basically you distrust the UN and want it to be less powerful (or non-existant) because it can't do things it simply doesn't have the power to do. Kinda like a vicious circle, isn't it? You don't have the influence or power to help in one situation, then it's used by your opponents to argue against giving you any power or having an influence.
Still, there are a few reasons the UN was created with such a slow-moving and cumbersome action mechanism as the security council: in 1945, people had the notion that sometimes hasty actions lead to very bad results, so better be safe than sorry. That, and then they thought that unilateral action in international affairs was a thing best avoided. Hey, I can't blame them for that.

OK, and before we give our nice little moderator Beren a stroke, back to Palestine. I don't think the UN is to blame for giving any kind of assistance to the Palestinians to get a form of normal political discourse going - god knows they need all the assistance they can get in that. An international organization would need to be omniscient and omnipotent to control where every penny goes, especially in that region, so it's little surprise some of it got diverted. Hey, hundreds of organizations and governments have given aid for the political processes in Palestine, why single out the UN just because you don't like them? Dollar bills don't have the name of the donor on them.
So let's sum it up: a UN agency is one of the tens (if not more) that gives aid to the Palestinians. Then you see a poster or whatever that claims the Palestinians want authority in the West Bank and Jerusalem, both areas (ok, part of the latter) that they used to hold under the same documents and treaties that have created the state of Israel, and you are appalled by the UN? Come on, that's ridiculous. If we were talking about bombs here I might be more sympathetic, but stickers? T-shirts? Then we get to the nail in the coffin, a UNDP transfer to "a Jenin-based organization with links to the militant group."
Omigod, thousands of dollars. An incredible sum, really. To an organization with "links" to a militant group, uh-hum. Leaving aside the neutrality and objectivity of the source, what might those links be? Get real, dude, the entire Palestinian authority was centered around Arafat, a militant and the icon of 80% of the militants in Palestine. The people in power not only have "links," many have probably fought alongside the Hamas once. My point here is that it's very likely that every NGO or organization will probably have "links" to some organization or another. After all, these people have families, relatives, friends - and I think the PLO and other similar organizations have enjoyed some popularity at times. It's like crying foul because the a member of a recipient organization in the US is a Baptist.

Frankly, you seem too picky. Heck, I'm not that sceptical about my own government