When the holiday lights come down, our commitment to world peace must endure - William Lambers in The Patriot News

"It’s important that each of us be an advocate for peace and charity. You can do this by speaking out and letting your elected officials know your support of humanitarian aid." -William Lambers

Dec. 28, 2025

As we enter the New Year of 2026 each of us has the power to carry on the holiday spirit of peace and charity. As President Dwight Eisenhower once remarked during a Christmas/New Year event, “When the trees come down and the lights are put away--as they always are--then we have a true testing of the spirit.

“That testing will be answered, throughout the year ahead, by the success each of us experiences in keeping alive the inspiration and exaltation of this moment.”

We must keep the Christmas spirit alive year round to prevent war, end hunger and build peace.

As President Eisenhower said at the 1956 Pageant of Peace Ceremonies, “We must believe that the truth of Christmas is constant; that men can live together in peace as Lincoln said, “with charity for all, with firmness in the right.”

Eisenhower urged peaceful means to settle disputes, instead of resorting to war which often leads to harmful and lasting consequences.

As we enter a new year with new challenges, America must remember its roots as a peaceful and charitable nation.

As we try to end wars in Ukraine and Gaza, we must also prevent war from starting with Venezuela. Members of Congress have rightly expressed alarm over the U.S. military buildup... READ MORE 

https://www.pennlive.com/opinion/2025/12/when-the-holiday-lights-come-down-our-commitment-to-world-peace-must-endure-opinion.html?gift=49d3311d-37f0-4767-8254-3a47e1facc74 

AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies]

"Jews and Israel are not the same. Equating them is a propaganda technique. The claim is central to rationales for arming Israel even as leading human rights groups decry genocide in Gaza."

Central to rationales for arming Israel is the claim that it is the nation of “the Jewish people”.’ Photograph: Abdel Kareem Hana/AP

"During the 1980s, when activists in the United States and elsewhere targeted apartheid South Africa with non-violent campaigns for boycotts, divestment and sanctions, those actions did not provoke charges of being anti-white. In this century, the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has targeted Israel, a country condemned as an apartheid state by one human rights organization after another after another – and BDS supporters, even if Jewish, routinely face accusations of antisemitism. In Congress, the accusers include many liberal Democrats" 

by Norman Solomon

Tue 16 Sep 2025

The Guardian  

More than nine months after Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch issued reports that concluded Israel was committing genocide – and more than a month since key Israeli human rights groups asserted the same – the American political establishment remains in rigid denial while horrors continue nonstop in Gaza. Virtually all Republicans and most Democrats in Congress still support massive US arms shipments to Israel, so they certainly can’t admit that the weaponry is making genocide possible.America

Central to rationales for arming Israel is the claim that it is the nation of “the Jewish people”.

When the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, spoke via video to a conference in Jerusalem three months ago, he declared: “There can be no nuanced separation of hatred of Israel and hatred of the Jewish people.” Rubio added: “Those who call for the destruction of Israel are calling for the destruction of the Jewish people.” Last month, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, reinforced the same message while visiting Israel, where he reportedly said that the West Bank was “the rightful property of the Jewish people”.

Such rhetoric – equating Israel with all Jews and Israel’s future with theirs – is an effort to sanctify Israel and shield it from criticism by brandishing the charge of antisemitism.

Fusing Israel with “the Jewish people” is a key propaganda technique. The fact that it’s so ubiquitous makes it no less ridiculous, or dangerous. A comment attributed to Voltaire applies: “As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities.”

And atrocities continue with no end in sight. Israel has persisted with methodical – and clearly intentional – killing of Palestinian civilians not only with bombs, missiles and bullets but also with starvation as a weapon of war. Blockage or extreme constriction of humanitarian aid has been the norm. All summer, Israel has ignored the United Nations warning issued in June that food intake in Gaza had dropped far below “survival” level. By then, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross said conditions there had become worse than “hell on earth”.

Ironically, the country that we’re told is the ultimate target of antisemitism is now, in reality, the world’s most powerful cause of antisemitism. By insisting that it is the embodiment of Jews all over the world, the state of Israel seeks to associate Jews everywhere with its systematic war crimes and genocide in Gaza along with deadly ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the West Bank.... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/16/jews-israel-not-the-same-propaganda-technique

AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies] 

Human Rights Watch joins with nearly 90 other organizations in a letter opposing US sanctions against the International Criminal Court. It would be a terrible irony if a tool designed to penalize violators of human rights could instead contribute to their impunity.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is seen in The Hague, Netherlands, November 7, 2019.  © 2019 AP Photo/Peter Dejong, File

NGO Letter to Congress and the Incoming Presidential Administration Regarding US Sanctions on the ICC

January 6, 2025

Human Rights Watch

@hrw

To Members of the 119th Congress and the incoming Presidential Administration of Donald J. Trump:

The undersigned organizations write to express grave concerns and to unequivocally oppose the use of the sanctions authority of the United States to attack the International Criminal Court (ICC), an independent judicial institution dedicated to combating impunity for the gravest crimes known to humanity.

The ICC performs a vital role in international affairs by investigating the worst international crimes that shock the collective conscience of humanity and investigating those accused of committing those crimes. It does so in a manner that protects the due process rights of the accused, the sovereignty of states, including the United States, and the rights of victims. As has been widely observed, supporting the work of the Court is in the interest of the United States, and sanctioning it, conversely, undermines important US interests. The positive role of the ICC has been recognized through previous bipartisan support for investigations into war crimes  ... READ MORE https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/01/06/ngo-letter-congress-and-incoming-presidential-administration-regarding-us-sanctions

 

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE] 

From Panama to Palestine, Jimmy Carter refused to let his moral voice be silenced: Carter signed treaties to hand over the Panama Canal and criticized Israel, drawing respect and fury past his one term - Chris McGreal 30 Dec 2024 in The Guardian

Jimmy Carter writes in a guest book at the end of his visit to the Cuban Jewish community centre in Havana, Cuba, on 28 March 2011. Photograph: Adalberto Roque/AFP/Getty Images

From Panama to Palestine, Jimmy Carter refused to let his moral voice be silenced

Carter "....warned that big money was now so pervasive in American politics that the US was “no longer a functioning democracy” because of “unlimited political bribery”"

But nothing ran Carter into so much trouble as his willingness to call it as he saw it on Israel.   In 2006, he drew a torrent of criticism and abuse with a book critical of Israel’s failure to make peace and end the occupation. The title – Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid – lit the fuse by suggesting Israel pursues a racist policy against the Palestinians...."   

".... Carter infuriated his critics further by standing his ground and ramping up the criticism. He said that balanced debate about US policy on Israel is “practically non-existent” in Congress or in presidential races, and accused America’s political leadership of being “in the pocket” of the Jewish state.

“We cannot be peacemakers if American government leaders are seen as knee-jerk supporters of every action or policy of whatever Israeli government happens to be in power at the moment. That is the essential fact that must be faced,” he wrote."

...READ IN FULL IN CONTEXT  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/30/jimmy-carter-foreign-policy-

 [AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes or watch videos) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

 

Following his #1 New York Times bestseller, Our Endangered Values, the former president, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, offers an assessment of what must be done to bring permanent peace to Israel with dignity and justice to Palestine.  Palestine Peace Not Apartheid was published in 2007 

 

US surveillance of pro-Palestinian speech has a direct line to McCarthyism - Chip Gibbons in The Guardian

‘Members of Congress in both parties have called for the surveillance of pro-Palestinian activists.’ Photograph: Adam Davis/EPA

The pretext of counter-terrorism as a reason to investigate Americans started with ‘red squads’, Huac and J Edgar Hoover

On Monday, 13 May, the Israeli historian and professor Ilan Pappé landed in Detroit, Michigan. Upon his arrival, agents from the US Department of Homeland Security detained and interrogated him for two hours. According to Pappé, DHS asked him whether he was a Hamas supporter, whether he believed Israel was committing genocide and what his “solution” to the Middle East conflict was. Agents also reportedly asked him to identify “his Arab and Muslim friends in America”.

During his interrogation, DHS agents held a long phone conversation, which Pappé speculated may have been with Israeli officials. Pappé was eventually admitted to the US, but only after DHS copied the entire contents of his cellphone. (Initially, Pappé reported he had been interrogated by the FBI; he has since clarified that it was agents of the DHS.)

Pappé is a respected academic known for his scholarship arguing that the expulsion of Palestinians during the Nakba was a deliberate act of ethnic cleansing central to Israel’s creation. Pappé is also known for his anti-Zionist politics. There is nothing to suggest any connection between Pappé and Hamas.

In the US, however, counter-terrorism authorities are often deployed to surveil political speech. Opponents of Palestinian rights both within and outside government frequently conflate political views they dislike with terrorism. This demonizes supporters of Palestinian rights in the public sphere and paves the way for the type of government harassment to which the DHS subjected Pappé. Such actions are part of both the McCarthyite atmosphere those with pro-Palestinian politics face and the broader history of political policing in the US.

During the first half of the 20th century, a political policing apparatus... READ MORE   https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/22/surveillance-pro-palestine-protest

  [AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes or watch videos) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

Israel-Gaza war Biden wants progressives to believe he’s reining in Israel. He isn’t. Biden will be remembered as a president who could have restrained Israel but instead made the US complicit in this war- Mohamad Bazzi

"The US is, by far, the biggest supplier of arms to Israel, providing $3.8bn in military aid per year – and it’s all paid for by American taxpayers. (Israel is also the largest aggregate recipient of US foreign aid in the world, having received about $300bn since the Jewish state was founded in 1948.) Last month, after intense lobbying by Biden, Congress approved $26bn in additional support to Israel, which includes $14bn in unconditional military aid. 

Biden and his top aides passed up another opportunity this month to restrict most arms shipments and end US complicity in Israel’s war. On 10 May, the state department sent a long-awaited report to Congress in which the administration must certify that recipients of US weapons are abiding by international law and allowing the transport of humanitarian aid during active conflicts. The administration said it found written assurances from Israeli officials that they would use US arms in accordance with international humanitarian law to be “credible and reliable”. 

The 46-page report was an exercise in bureaucratic double-speak, and it showed how far the Biden administration is willing to contort itself to avoid concluding that Israel violated any international laws, or had intentionally obstructed humanitarian aid into Gaza. Either of those findings would have shown that Israel had violated a new national security memo that Biden issued in February, and required the administration to suspend or restrict most arms shipments to Israel under existing US laws. 

The state department report, which contradicted itself in numerous places, argued that the US could not find hard proof that Israel had used US weapons in specific incidents that might have involved human rights violations. But for months, numerous rights groups and independent monitors have documented Israel’s violations of international law, including its use of starvation as a weapon of war and methodical campaign to obstruct the delivery of food and other aid into Gaza." READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/20/biden-weapons-israel-gaza-war

CSM: Israel arms shipment on hold as US weighs new accountability

• By Erika Page Staff writer
• Jacob Turcotte Graphics editor

May 8, 2024

Seven months into the war in Gaza, on the cusp of a possible cease-fire, the United States is taking a more cautionary stance toward the military aid it provides Israel. 

Last week, President Joe Biden paused a shipment of 3,500 bombs to Israel out of concern that they would be used in a planned invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza, according to administration officials. This is the first time since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas that the U.S. has put military aid on hold in order to send a message about Israel’s military response.

And President Biden said today in a CNN interview that, while the U.S. is committed to Israel's defense, if Israel goes into Rafah “we’re not going to supply the weapons and artillery shells used,” due to concerns for civilian lives at risk.

The U.S. has long been Israel’s strongest diplomatic and military ally, and overall political support remains strong. At the end of April, President Biden signed an unprecedented $26 billion aid bill destined for Israel.

Yet Israel’s conduct in Gaza, where health authorities are reporting a death toll of over 34,000, has prompted growing concern about the way U.S. funding and arms are being used. Public opposition to Israel’s actions has intensified, especially on university campuses in the U.S. and abroad as students call for divestment from Israel.    

READ MORE...    https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2024/0508/american-military-aid-accountability-israel-gaza

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes or watch videos) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

SOURCE: ForeignAssistance.gov, Congressional Research Service, Nasdaq Global Select Market Composite |   Jacob Turcotte/Staff

The role of the United States as a major backer of the Israeli military is coming under rare and rising scrutiny due to the war in Gaza. Our charts put the debate in context.

Which is worse, Israel’s lies about Gaza or its western backers who repeat those lies? ... Useful idiots keep parroting provably false Israeli talking points. Mehdi Hasan in The Guardian

After a relentless anti-Unrwa campaign which culminated in the unproven accusations … 16 donor countries suspended … funding to the agency.

Since the horrific 7 October attack, the far-right Israeli government and its army of propagandists have deceived and fooled Western politicians and journalists not once or twice, but multiple times.

There are almost too many lies, distortions and falsehoods to keep track of. Forty babies beheaded by Hamas? Never happened. Babies baked in ovens or hung on clothes lines? False. A Bond-villain-style lair hidden under al-Shifa hospital? Nope. Palestinians in Gaza caught on camera faking their injuries? A complete fabrication. The list of Hamas hostage-takers found on a wall in the al-Rantisi children’s hospital? Sorry, no, it was just the days of the week on a calendar in Arabic.

How about the atrocities that Israeli forces have been credibly accused of, that they then loudly denied, and then later … were found to be responsible for? The flour massacre in February? The bombing of the refugee convoy last October? The white phosphorus attack in southern Lebanon, also in October?

As my friend the Palestinian-American analyst Omar Baddar laid out in a now-viral tweet:

Timeline on repeat:

• Israel commits massacre

• Israel denies massacre

• Media says we don’t know who committed massacre

• investigation reveals Israel committed massacre

• News cycle moves on

• average person doesn’t know Israel systematically committing massacres.

Yet the Israelis keep telling lies and our political and media elites in the west keep getting fooled. Shame on them.

Perhaps no Israeli lie, however, has been more damaging, more destructive, more deadly, than the claim that Unrwa – the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, the main organization responsible for providing aid in Gaza... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/02/israel-gaza-lies-western-backers

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes or watch videos) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

Hate is evil and leads to evil things. Please no more wars and weaponry for Israel.

A rural Palestinian family in Ramallah around the year in 1914

Dear President Biden,

Has Israeli brutality gone far enough yet, for you to realize how wrong Israel has been from the start, wrong in denying full and equal rights to the indigenous non-Jewish people of historic Palestine.

1948 saw the world unite to stop injustice & bigotry, as from the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust a universal promise to humankind was created, carefully crafted to highlight the vital importance of respecting basic Human Rights. 

BUT tragically for all, Zionist propaganda dominates in our mainstream media here in the West, as a very foreign country called Israel seeks to procure as much money and weaponry it can obtain in order to persecute, silence, and destroy Palestinians.

But Palestinians are not stupid, they have not and will not be silenced or destroyed. Yes- Palestinian homes, villages, gardens, orchards, & institutions have been bombed & bulldozed; countless generations of Palestinian prisoners have been tortured; many innocent lives have been lost. Palestinian families have been fragmented & devastated on a personal level. But Palestine lives on gathering strength in the hearts, minds, photos, documents, stories, poems, art & nonviolent activism of a world wide diaspora. The truth will set us free. 

Apartheid Israel does not want peace- it wants all of the "Holy Land" minus indigenous Arabs, except those willing to work as wage slaves for 'The Jewish State'. 

Israel wants war and it wants Americans to hate Arabs and Muslims.  Hate is evil and leads to evil things. Please no more wars and weaponry for Israel.

A just and lasting peace starts with full respect for International Law & The Universal Declaration of Human Rights including but not limited to the Palestinian refugees' inalienable right to return to original homes and lands. 

As our great modern American hero MLK Jr declared in 1963 in his I Have A Dream Speech "Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children."

Sincerely,

Anne Selden Annab

NOTES

1963 Martin Luther King Jr's I Have A Dream speech about equity for all still rings true: "Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children"      https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/i-have-a-dream-speech

Pro-Palestine Activists Protest at the Met, Unfurling a Large Quilt Across Museum’s Stairs

The Catholic community in Gaza continues to show the world an incredible testimony of faith... May their courage be an example to everyone.

Israel Blocks UNWRA Aid as CHILDREN in Gaza STARVE and die, PLUS insult to injury also Blocks Indigenous Palestinian Christians from Jerusalem on Palm Sunday 2024

My published letters from 20 years ago (from my old webpage) ... I am only one- so many have tried, and many many more will continue to try to free Palestine: PEACE & JUSTICE WILL PREVAIL !

Rep. AOC Delivers Major Speech on Looming Famine in Gaza and America's Response to the Crisis

J Street Strongly Opposes Republican Efforts to Gut Palestinian Aid

Gaza is one of the world's most dangerous places to be a woman. Women are subjected to abuse and torture whilst detained by Israel or killed while fleeing.

If you are not careful...

This week Israel seized 800 hectares of Palesitnian land in the [illegally] occupied West Bank, Palestine

"The unbearable cannot become the new normal" Philippe Lazzarini UNWRA Commissioner -General

Why have people taken to video games to express solidarity with Palestine?

NPR: Israeli settlers step up attacks on Palestinian farms, expanding West Bank outposts: "Think if you got into a fight with your neighbor, and your neighbor was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and then all of a sudden, you discover that he's been made chief of police."

“Before the war, Gaza was the greatest open air prison. Today it is the greatest open air graveyard”. EU’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell

Mosab Abu Toha awarded Overseas Press Club of America's Flora Lewis Award for his essays on Gaza in The New Yorker "with his poet's gift of sparse, measured words, notably absent of vitriol ....

Art for Palestine Challenge #artforpalestinechallenge PLEASE HELP amplify PALESTINE & Palestinian Voices !

The New Yorker: The Children Who Lost Limbs in Gaza More than a thousand children who were injured in the war are now amputees. What do their futures hold?

Arabs remember Mother's Day on Spring Equinox amid Gaza heartbreak: Most countries in the Middle East and North Africa mark 21 March as Mother’s Day, but the day has been overshadowed by the war on Gaza.

CSM story by Taylor Luck Special correspondent: Ramadan peace prevails in Jerusalem as all sides keep extremists at bay.

Bishara Awad, a Palestinian Christian, was just a child when his father was killed by a sniper during the Israeli-Arab war of 1948. Awad's beautiful 2021 book about hope and resilience is a must read

Please don't be an idiot for Israel

What Was Palestine Before the Nakba?

In 1948 Israel could have chosen to include all indigenous Arabs- Christian and Muslim- as part of the process to make a real democracy for all human beings, but Zionists did the opposite by creating a huge refugee crisis.

Where, after all, do universal human rights begin?

The UN Mediator for Palestine, Count Folke Bernadotte, believed that the Palestinians displaced had a right to return to their homes and wrote several UN reports to that effect.

"It would be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine, and, indeed, at least offer the threat of permanent replacement of the Arab refugees who have been rooted in the land for centuries."

Bernadotte was assassinated on Friday 17 September 1948 by members of the group Lehi, a Zionist terrorist organization, commonly known in the West as the Stern Gang

 

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world

Please stopping funding Israel and fueling terrorism and war all over the Middle East

 

Our hard earned tax money going to CEOs

Dear President Biden (etc)

We the people should not be wage slaves for a foreign country that violates international law and basic human rights. Yes Zionists give American politicians who praise Israel preferential treatment and tons of money and perks- but that is called bribery and should be illegal.

American taxpayers should not be forced to fund religious preferences and Apartheid in the Holy Land. 

Since 1948 Israel has been cruel to the native non-Jewish people of historic Palestine, and every day bad goes to worse as Jews-preferred Israel builds a regime shaped on bigotry and injustice rather than the rule of fair and just laws.

Please stopping funding Israel and fueling terrorism and war all over the Middle East. 

Sincerely,

Anne Selden Annab

NOTES

Religion should be a personal choice, not a state funded project.

October 7 should have been stopped before it happened - an Irish perspective by by Don Mullan

We are witnessing the first televised genocide in Gaza

 

How war destroyed Gaza’s neighbourhoods – visual investigation The Guardian’s interactive scrolls through three such damaged areas of Gaza: Beit Hanoun, al-Zahra and Khan Younis.

The Guardian: ‘Everything beautiful has been destroyed’: Palestinians mourn a city in tatters

127 Palestinians killed in Gaza in last 24 hours, death toll climbs to 27,365

Sorrow and fury: a letter from American rabbis to President Biden... also puplished (as a paid ad) in the New York Times late January 2024

Dear President Biden (etc) What Others See

CSM: Settler extremists widen campaign against Palestinians

HISTORIC UNRWA FILM AND PHOTO ARCHIVE

Please DARE SPEAK OUT to advocate a just and lasting peace for all people, not just your chosen favorites.

Revealed: review of internal state department documents shows special mechanisms have been used to shield Israel from US human rights laws

THE NATION: A rank-and-file campaign inside the National Education Association is demanding the president stop “sending military funding, equipment, and intelligence to Israel.”

I have hope

Violence is the feel good answer in movies & on TV- not in real life.

The human cost and the environmental cost of war in the Middle East is horrifying, and yet America's mainstream newspapers, TV news, and politicians itch to have more & more war, investing in Israeli violence at every turn. 

Emissions from Israel’s war in Gaza have ‘immense’ effect on climate catastrophe

"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin?

AIPAC Threatens to Sue CODEPINK Over Controversial Video Clip "AIPAC Policy Conference 2014"

http://www.codepink4peace.org/article.php?id=6636

On February 25th, an AIPAC member called a CODEPINK staffer
threatening legal action in response to a controversial video clip that
he alleges was made by the peace group CODEPINK. The video is a
satirical version of an AIPAC policy conference promotional video

U.S. 'working tirelessly' to restore UNESCO funding... UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova: "This is not only about financing. This is about values. This is the 'smart power' that is in such need today, to lay the foundations for lasting peace and sustainable development,"

http://news.yahoo.com/u-working-tirelessly-restore-unesco-funding-ambassador-113916830--business.html

PARIS (Reuters) - The U.S. government is working hard to get Congress to restore its UNESCO funding, Washington's ambassador to the U.N. cultural arm said on Saturday, after its voting rights were suspended over failure to pay up.

UNESCO's granting the Palestinians membership two years ago led to the United States stopping its dues and, on Friday, the organization suspended U.S. voting rights as well as Israel's.

Both Israelis and Palestinians have made grim assessments of the lack of progress in peace talks, which the United States helped revive last July after a three-year gap, and the UNESCO funding furor has not helped.

U.S. Ambassador to UNESCO David Killion told delegates at UNESCO's biennial general conference in Paris, after the suspension was announced officially, that Washington was "working tirelessly" to restore funding.

Also addressing the conference, UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova voiced regret at the loss of the U.S. voting rights, insisting that Washington had a vital role to play in the organization.

"This is not only about financing. This is about values. This is the 'smart power' that is in such need today, to lay the foundations for lasting peace and sustainable development," she said.

UNESCO, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, is responsible for designating World Heritage sites, promoting global education and supporting press freedom, among other tasks.

The withdrawal of U.S. funding - which totaled about $240 million, or some 22 percent of UNESCO's budget - has plunged it into a funding crisis and forced it to cut programs.
(Reporting by Leigh Thomas; Editing by Louise Ireland)