Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand lies

Israel and the United States have been routinely criticized in the Muslim world - and the greater global press for the deaths attributed to the wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. Much of the criticism is a product of a robust Muslim led PR strategy that depends on misused slogans like "dis-proportional force, apartheid, occupation, holocaust"etc., that have been repeated so often that the terms have become an accepted part of the narrative of this complicated long-term conflict. On a separate track, the Muslim PR campaign also heavily depends on the press to repeatedly display pictures of the dead and wounded in order to gain sympathy. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a picture taken out of context – or even diabolically staged - is worth a thousand lies.

The absurdity of this highly successful Muslim PR campaign is that Muslims commit atrocities against fellow Muslims and the press doesn't seem to even want to connect the dots to add context. According to the United Nations Population Fund, the worldwide total of just Muslim honor killing victims may be as high as 5, 000 women a year. Try putting that into context against a war where Israel is defending its civilian population – and many of the 1670 Lebanese dead were Hezbollah fighters or civilians that Hezbollah put in the line of fire.

In Iraq alone, tens of thousands are being killed in a frenzy of Muslim on Muslim sectarian violence, and those who criticize Israel (especially the far left) for defending itself find themselves deaf, dumb and blind. Evidently It's OK for Muslims to slaughter other Muslims for the smallest of perceived grievances (honor killings, religion), but g-d forbid if a Jew kills a Muslim in self-defense.

Death during war is bad, but it's even worse when the war stops and the violence that is defining Muslim societies continues to grow unabated. The global press should be ashamed at the abusive way in which it contributes to the mis-information campaign of the Muslim extremists, and in turn helps to re-inforce anti-Semitism in certain parts of the world that has reached levels reminiscent of the Nazi era.

Lessons from the Israeli/Hezbollah war (Summer 2006).

There are a number of lessons that one should note regarding the Israeli/Hezbollah war. First of all, the notion among many that the American pro-Israel lobby has too much influence over US foreign policy should be put to bed permanently. While Israel didn't need much prodding by the US to go after Hezbollah, it is without a doubt that the US was the calling the shots. Israel had been prodded by US pressure over the last 6 years to not attack Hezbollah for its egregious violations of UN resolution 1559. Only when the US saw unleashing Israel on Hezbollah as a way to bloody the nose of Hezbollah (and in turn their Iranian benefactor), did the US government give Israel the green light. Even more disturbing was the pressure that US diplomats put on Israel to accept a ceasefire at the very moment that they were on the verge of a clear victory (same thing happened in 1967 and 1973).

The other lesson? That Iran and Syria have nothing to fear from their overt state sponsorship of terrorism. The "plausible deniability" defense that they depend on when using proxy terrorist forces is their "winning strategy" that they will surely use again and again (and that the West is only too willing to ignore).

Now that the USA has knelt down at the foot of Iran and Syria, they will surely teach us other "lessons" in the not-too-distant future.

The UN: Irredeemably Irrelevant and insignificant?

The current conflict between the Lebanon based Hezbollah terrorist group and the State of Israel is a by-product of a corrupt United Nations. The UN has failed over the past 6 years to demand that the Lebanese government fulfill it's obligations under UN resolution 1559, which called for the Lebanese army to deploy its forces in Southern Lebanon. The UN Unifil forces in Southern Lebanon- numbering 6,000 at its height and only 2,000 today - have clearly observed Hezbollah's illegal buildup of arms and construction of hardened border defenses, some within yards of the UN compounds. The Unifil forces in Lebanon also watched helplessly while Hezbollah terrorists crossed into Israel in order to instigate cross border skirmishes that ended up culminating in the current conflict.

On Wednesday, August 26th, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad openly called for Israel to be wiped off the map, which is in direct violation of the Charter of the United Nations, specifically (but not limited to) article 4/1: " Membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations." The UN's response to Iran's open threats of a fellow member of the UN, as well as Iran's complicity in the Hezbollah/Israel conflict is to ignore Iran and focus on Israel's use of force to defend itself. It's one thing to have a border dispute or even a military altercation with a fellow UN member. It's altogether another story when a member of the UN calls for the annihilation of another member state.

Those who espouse extremist Islamic fascism make no bones about their jihadist goal of creating a global Islamic Caliphate to rule the world, much like Hitler's dreams of a purely Aryan world with Germany at the helm. These Islamic threats, however, are falling on deaf ears, despite the mountains of evidence literally strewn across New York, Bali, Madrid, Moscow, Beirut, Tel Aviv, London - and dozens of other places where Islamic fascists have committed terrorist atrocities. The only explanation being that it is human nature to ignore threats as long as one isn't directly affected, then to appease when affected - but unwilling to defend one's rights, and eventually capitulate when one finds that appeasement is not sufficient.

The UN has a constructive role to play on the world stage, but in its present form, it is not only worthless, it is dangerous and/or deadly to those who hold stock in its ability to protect those who view UN resolutions as vehicles to promote stability and change in areas of conflict. What can the UN do to put it on the road to legitimacy? First of all, the Security Council (and possibly the General Assembly) should give Iran a short deadline to rescind its death threat against Israel, or be expelled as a member of the UN. Secondly, it should demand, under the threat of UN force, that Iran not only stop supplying weapons to Hezbollah, but should also immediately suspend Iranian nuclear activities with verifiable audits of compliance. If the UN refuses to take a stand at such a critical time in its short life, then one can only presume that the UN will continue to be an institution drowning in it's own irrelevance and insignificance.