Dear Friend of FLAME:

Before we launch into commentary about Kofi Annan and Israel, I want to apologize to you for FLAME’s “radio silence” over the last two weeks---during which some of the most momentous events in recent Middle East history have taken place.  My family and I were actually (and coincidentally) in Israel on a two-week vacation when the fighting with Hizbollah began, and we returned just a week ago Monday.  Above all, let me report that Israel is still the most beautiful and spirited country in the world.  Despite “the situation,” we came back even further impressed with the accomplishments and high moral values of this tiny, beleaguered nation.  I’ll also say that if you want to see the full and profound effects of the war on the people of Israel (and not just on the Lebanese), tune in to Fox News---the only network that seems to appreciate who the real perpetrators are and the full range of victims on both sides of the border.

Now that I’ve begun to dig out from the backlog at my “real” job (as you’ll read below, all of us at FLAME are volunteers), I want to share with you some of the most important articles I’ve encountered recently---and there have been a lot of them.  I hope you’ll forgive me for sending more than one dispatch a week for awhile, as long as the war in Israel and Lebanon continues.  I also hope you’ll continue to forward the best of these articles to your friends and colleagues.

The first article I want to share with you was written more than a week ago, but it still resonates today, because the problem persists.  The author, Joseph Farah, himself a Lebanese/Syrian American, excoriates U.N. chief Kofi Annan (and ultra-right-wing pundit Pat Buchanan) for blaming Israel for the current conflict and trying to shift the burden of responsibility away from Islamo-fascist terror groups like Hizbollah, al Qaeda and Hamas, where it belongs.

Time and time again in news reports (on CNN, on the BBC, on NPR) we sense a pronounced sympathy for the Lebanese people (which is certainly justified on humanitarian grounds) but a complete unwillingness to hold Hizbollah responsible for the disaster.  They, like Kofi Annan, seem to think that the problem would stop if Israel ceased firing.  Never do we hear Lebanese Prime Minister Siniora criticizing Hizbollah for its continuing unwarranted renegade attacks on Israel and never does he call on Hizbollah leader Hanan Nasrallah to cease fire.

Farah, founder and editor of World Net Daily, is also a nationally syndicated columnist whose latest book is "Taking America Back." In the article below, he gets it right: The enemy is radical Islam, and it must be defeated, absolutely.  Thank goodness for Israel!  I think you’ll find his words powerful and convincing.

Best regards,

Jim Sinkinson
Director, FLAME

P.S.

For the nearly 20 years, FLAME has sought to publish the truth about Israel and its enemies. Founded by Gerardo Joffe, FLAME has no paid staff and uses only a very small percent of its donations for administrative expenses. The overwhelming portion of our revenues goes into paid ad space in the media---to run messages exposing lies, misconceptions and suppressed facts about the Middle East. To date, we have run more than 100 such messages, each of which is published in media such as U.S. News and World Report, New Republic, National Review, Jerusalem Post (international edition), and scores of Jewish weeklies and local newspapers internationally and nationwide. (To see a list of these messages, just go to http://www.factsandlogic.org/ads_and_positions.html, where you can read, download or print out any of these messages. Most importantly, virtually all of FLAME's support for publishing these powerful messages comes from thousands of individual supporters like you---no large grants, no government subsidies. If you support Israel's (and the United States') right to protect itself, if you support FLAME's efforts to tell the truth about the Islamist threat---we ask for your support now. Whatever gift you can afford---tax deductible of course---will help us spread the word. Please go now to http://www.factsandlogic.org/make_a_donation.html. Thanks in advance for your help---you really do make a difference.

Buchanan and Kofi Annan
By Joseph Farah, World Net Daily, July 21, 2006

I hope Pat Buchanan and Kofi Annan are feeling good about themselves today.

They agree with each other on what needs to be done to resolve the Middle East conflict.

What do these two men have in common that brings them together in this unusual way?

For whatever reasons, they fail to grasp the root cause of the Arab-Israeli struggle – that Hezbollah, Hamas and much of the Arab and Muslim world want more than anything else in the world to destroy the Jewish state.

It's that simple. Just as there can be no compromise between the United States and Osama bin Laden because al-Qaida seeks the destruction of America, there can be no diplomatic resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict as long as the goal of one side remains the annihilation of the other.

But Buchanan and Annan, two guys who seldom agree, don't get it.

Buchanan calls Israel's measured, restrained act of self-defense a "rampage against a defenseless Lebanon." He claims Israel's action in Lebanon was a "pre-planned attack to make the Lebanese people suffer."

He asks: "Where are the Christians? Why is Pope Benedict virtually alone among Christian leaders to have spoken out against what is being done to Lebanese Christians and Muslims?"

Let me answer that question – as a Christian of both Lebanese and Syrian heritage: We are with Israel! We are in favor of destroying Hezbollah once and for all. If anything, we are wondering what took so long. We are hoping and praying that Israel does not abort this campaign against the evil terrorists allied with al-Qaida and sponsored by the mullahs of Iran.

We are sick and tired of seeing groups like Hezbollah hide behind the skirts of innocent Christians, occupying their towns and daring Israel to come after them. We are sick and tired of the wholesale persecution of Christian believers in Lebanon – a jihadist religious cleansing that has sent millions of Lebanese Christians into a worldwide diaspora.

Is Pat Buchanan kidding? Where are the Christians? Where has Pat Buchanan been as Christians have been slaughtered by the likes of Hezbollah and treated like dhimmi by his friends in Hamas and the Palestinian Authority?

And where has Buchanan's new buddy Kofi Annan been for the last 20 years? He, too, has been blaming Israel first for having the audacity to exercise self-preservation and self-defense against ruthless enemies sworn to one goal – the Jewish state's destruction.

Both Annan and Buchanan offer up a passing condemnation of Hezbollah's "provocative attack."

But from there they launch into their predictable tirades against Israel for doing what every nation-state has the right to do – defend itself from attack.

Annan threatens to pull out his United Nations peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon if Israel does not declare a unilateral and immediate cease-fire.

Can I ask an obvious question? What good have the U.N. peacekeepers done? Have they kept the peace? Have they prevented Hezbollah terrorists from raining thousands of rockets down on the civilian population of northern Israel? Have they prevented the transport of arms to the Lebanese-Israeli border?

If anything, the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel is proof-positive that the U.N. is completely ineffective, complete irrelevant – and so are the diplomatic "solutions" endlessly offered up by its busybody leaders.

Annan says Israel's response is "disproportionate."

I assume, by that, he means Israel should only give back what it has received. In other words, Israel should not utilize its strength – its modern military machine. Presumably it should use only the weapons employed against it – like katyusha and Qassam rockets.

It's insanity. By the same logic, should the U.S. use only box-cutters against al-Qaida?

The object of any military campaign should be to destroy the enemy, to prevail over them, to win victory.

That's the strategy I'm hoping Israel adopts in this war with Hezbollah and Hamas.