A disturbing thought experiment: Imagine your children have been kidnapped and are being tortured in a dungeon.

Your phone rings: "Hi, I just wanted to let you know about the leaders of the gang that abducted your kids. Well, it happens that I've hosted them in my guest house for years. Perhaps I can work out a deal for you?"

Would you think: "How nice! What a good friend!" I doubt it.

What I've described parallels what's been going on between Israel and Qatar since Oct. 7, 2023, when Israel was invaded by Hamas terrorists who massacred roughly 1,200 men, women, and children and dragged about 250 more back to Gaza where maybe 20 still survive in agonizing captivity.

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Last week, we remembered the almost 3,000 victims of the al Qaeda terrorists who, on Sept. 11, 2001, hijacked passenger aircraft and flew them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. A fourth jet crashed into a field in rural Pennsylvania after a revolt by courageous passengers.

This week let's consider what came after.

On Sept. 20, in an address to a joint session of Congress, President George W. Bush declared what became known as the Global War on Terror or GWOT.

Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda's founder and first general emir, must have found that curious.

Was Mr. Bush objecting only to terrorism – the targeting of non-combatants for political purposes?

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In the first quarter of the last century, a soon-to-be-influential communications strategist wrote that "the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which all expert liars in this world and all who conspire together in the art of lying know only too well, and for this reason they stop at nothing to achieve this end."

For centuries, Jews have been the targets of such lies. I'll mention just three.

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"A clean energy revolution is helping to save this planet." Thus spoke President Barack Obama in 2015.

"The age of fossil fuel is coming to an end. The rise of renewable energy is irreversible." Thus spoke Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, in July of this year.

I could give you dozens of similar quotes from editorial boards, opinion writers, and academics all prophesizing an "inevitable transition" from oil and gas to energy sources that are renewable, "green" and "clean."

It turns out that these anti-hydrocarbon Pollyannas are all bananas (as Ira Gershwin might say).

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As a foreign correspondent roving around Africa years ago, I often met United Nations personnel. Most were pleasant dinner companions.

What they were achieving was usually a mystery.

To understand what I mean, check out the website of the United Nations Development Programme. Look at the sections marked "Our Impact" and "Results." Let me know if you find any useful missions accomplished.

I came to regard the U.N. as ineffectual but harmless, with one notable exception: The U.N. has long been hostile toward the nation-state that became its 59^th member in 1949.

As far back as 1975, the U.N. General Assembly, steered by the Soviet Union, adopted a resolution calling Zionism "a form of racism."

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