Greetings from the French Hill: What Are Friends For!

-It seems as if Olmert has a friend in Nasrallah, who supports keeping him in power. On top of that, UN Secretary General Anan said that 5,000 UNIFIL troops will be in place within the week, enabling Israeli's reamining troops to leave. Of course, Olmert said that Israeli troops will not be fully evacuated from southern Lebanon until all promised 15,000 UNIFIL troops were on the ground. Of couse, Olmert also promised that the air, sea, and land blockade would not be lifted until signs of life of the two kidnapped soldiers were given. Of course, those signs were never given, yet Olmert lifted the blockade last Thursday.

"If we have to choose between a foolish prime minister and another who is strong and capable, we prefer that the fool remain,” he told Lebanese Al-Safir newspaper Tuesday. Nasrallah made the comments when asked about the prime minister’s recent claims - themselves based on Nasrallah’s statements - that Israel had won the war.

"I don't mind that Olmert is benefiting from [my statements that we did not expect Israel’s response],” Nasrallah said. “Olmert says he achieved something because he put me in a bunker. All his objectives in the war amounted only to my being in a bunker.”
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-So, where is this the resurgence of anti-zionism coming from? READ THE REST...

The stench of anti-Zionism is haunting over the entire world. Articles, conferences, books and organizations announce that "Zionism is Racism," justify terror and proclaim the "inalienable right of the Palestinian people" to destroy Israel. News agencies fake photos of Israeli "atrocities." Anti-Semitic cartoons and T-shirts are distributed around the world. Demonstrators in London carry posters reading "We are all Hezbollah."

Where does the stench come from? Much of the stench is coming from an unlikely place: the United Nations. The United Nations should be the hope of humanity, promoting peace and friendly relations among nations, guaranteeing the equality of all nations under the charter, acting as a watchdog for the rights of the oppressed all over the world and advancing democracy and civil society everywhere. This is a huge undertaking and responsibility.

The UN is not meeting its responsibility. Millions were killed in the Congo, but the UN was powerless to stop the slaughter. A million people died in the Iran-Iraq war, but the UN did not intervene. Saddam Hussein committed genocide, killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Cyprus has been occupied and divided for over 30 years. In Darfur, over 400,000 people have died, but the UN is only beginning to deal with the problem. In Tibet, an entire people have been occupied and enslaved since 1949 by China, but the UN has been unable to help them. In many countries women are killed for adultery or even the suspicion of premarital relations, subjected to genital mutilation and sold into white slavery. In Burma and other countries, tyrannical governments stifle individual freedoms and basic rights. In Africa, millions die of AIDS, malnutrition, poor health care, starvation and genocidal wars. The UN has been unable to make much progress in any of those issues, and doesn't even devote much resources to them.

The UN has been subverted by a powerful Arab/Muslim lobby, to focus disproportionate energies on one issue: the Question of Palestine. The real Question of Palestine is why the UN devotes so much of its resources to the Question of Palestine. The UN devotes almost no resources to the "Question of Kurdistan" - twelve million people without a plot of land to call their own, persecuted in Iran, Turkey and Syria and formerly persecuted in Iraq. The UN devotes almost nothing to "The Question of Tibet," a country larger than Western Europe that has been helpless under Chinese rule. However, of the seven departments of the UN Secretariat, one is devoted to the Question of Palestine. The real Question of Palestine is why the UN devotes so much of its resources to the Question of Palestine. 16 people are employed full time on this question, almost as many as work in the entire Division for Asia and Oceania, covering billions of people. The so-called Question of Palestine is the single most visible issue promoted by the UN, overshadowing all the massacres, suffering, mistreatment of women everywhere else in the world.
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-Related to this, Christian Hartsock wants to know why the United Nations are never on the side of justice.

[...] Unfortunately, the United Nations, which has passed more resolutions against Israel than on any other state, clearly cares as much about the nation it once created as does the American Democratic Party. Picture for a moment a corruption-ridden international organization whose Relief and Works Program employs, funds and provides ambulances for transportation for terrorists from Hamas and other Muslim lowlife organizations (which the Israel Defense Force had to deal with on its own) securing peace for Israel. That makes about as much sense as the New York Times defending Donald Rumsfeld from Hillary Clinton’s attacks.

It was all going so well. Israel was standing up for itself but according to liberals and world leaders like Kofi Annan and Jimmy Carter, that’s a no-no. Kofi Annan has recently stated that Israel’s “excessive use of force is to be condemned,” and in a recent interview taken during the war, Jimmy Carter said, “I think they should declare an immediate cease-fire on both sides, Hezbollah said they would comply, I hope Israel will comply, and then do the long, slow, tedious negotiation that is necessary to stabilize the northern border of Israel completely.” And while we’re at it, let’s try to diplomatically work out a long, slow, tedious negotiation between a full bathtub and a plugged-in toaster.
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-Again, relating to the "Useless Nothings", Hillel C. Neuer writes that the restructured "Human Rights Council" has, so far, done everything but defend human rights.

Though it looked promising on paper, in practice the new UN Human Rights Council has, sadly, proved to be much the same as - and in some ways worse than - the discredited Commission on Human Rights that it replaced last June.

To be sure, one cannot discount the possibility of certain modest improvements to the council in the future. So far, however, the council's record has been a profound disappointment.

Despite one regular and two special sessions that purported to address substantive human rights issues, the council has managed to ignore the vast majority of the world's human-rights violations.

The situation in Darfur - perhaps today's greatest case of mass human rights abuse - merited only a brief passing debate in June, with Sudan easily escaping censure. Nor has there been any attempt by the council to convene an emergency session for the millions of victims in Darfur. Instead, the council - dominated by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, whose members control the African and Asian blocs that together wield 26 of the council's 47 seats - devoted 100 percent of its country-specific resolutions, two special sessions, one "fact-finding" mission and a "high-level commission of inquiry" to one-sided and politically motivated attacks on Israel.
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-Liberals and Democrats always declare that they are the biggest friends of the Jews. However, from reading the following article, every Jew that has traditionally voted Democrat because of ancient image of FDR or JFK should grossly rethink their voting philosophy in the next mid-term election.

29 Democratic senators, and none of the Republicans, have joined an anti-Israel campaign by voting for a resolution that restricts the use of cluster bombs. This follows the refusal of 11 Democratic Congressmen to endorse a resolution at the start of the recent Lebanon War "condemning the recent attacks against the State of Israel, holding terrorists and their state-sponsors accountable for such attacks, [and] supporting Israel's right to defend itself."

The aim of the anti-cluster bomb campaign is to tie Israel's hands in fighting an enemy whose main strategy is to place combatants among civilians. Of course, Democrats have plausible deniability in that Israel is not named by the resolution explicitly, but it is obvious to those who are aware of the bitter anti-Israel campaign that this is the message. For example, the Jerusalem Post reports this as a simple fact, in a good summary of the issue:
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The initiative to prohibit the use and sale of cluster bombs by the US was put forward by Democratic Senators Dianne Feinstein of California and Patrick Leahy from Vermont. They attempted to attach a provision to the Pentagon budget, which would require the US, and the countries that it sells arms to, including Israel, to avoid using cluster bombs "in or near" civilian areas.
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Democrats, of course, will claim that they are just interested in pursuing Joycelyn Elders' "safer guns/safer bullets" strategy.
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