Benjamin Netanyahu

Over the weekend, Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to Washington, rejected calls for an international investigation into his country's raid of the now-infamous flotilla headed for Gaza.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was less definitive on Sunday: "I told the United Nations secretary general that an investigation of the facts has to be carried out responsibly and objectively," he said.

In that case, I've got the perfect man for the job.

Arlen Specter.

In October 1985, four Palestinian gunmen from the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) stormed an Italian cruise ship on the Mediterranean, holding its approximately 700 vacationers hostage while demanding the release of their comrades-in-arms from Israeli prison.

The hijacking of the Achille Lauro, during which the hijackers killed an elderly, wheelchair-bound Jewish-American man--Leon Klinghoffer--and then threw his body into the sea, ranked as one of the most ignominious acts ever committed by Palestinians.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly considering inviting the United Nations to help enforce the embargo of Gaza.

(AP) JERUSALEM - Israel on Thursday rejected calls from the United Nations and others for an international investigation of its deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla but left the door open to foreign involvement.

Israel says the commandos used force, killing nine people, only after activists attacked them with knives, crowbars and clubs, as well as two pistols grabbed from raiders. Activists who had set sail for Gaza with tons of aid, hoping to break Israel's 3-year-old blockade of Gaza, say Israeli commandos fired first.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Amid the uproar over Israel's deadly raid on the flotilla bringing aid to the Gaza Strip, it's important to note what is not happening.

The White House does not expect the violent incident to sink already-minimal relations between Israel and the Arab world. Arab support would be essential to the long-sought Israeli-Palestinian peace accord.

Nor is the United States, unlike most of the world, chastising Israel for forcibly halting an aid flotilla bound for Gaza. Quite the opposite.

Israel is facing "international hypocrisy" over its interception of a Gaza-bound flotilla, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Israeli public.

"During his campaign for the 2008 election, Mr. Obama promised to brand the mass killings genocide." That's how the left-wing BBC described one of Barack Obama's promises in his most successful election campaign of two springs ago. It seemed so easy then to satisfy every group of voters. Everyone, it seemed, was getting in step behind the pied piper.

(photo credit: Office of the Prime Minister, Government of Japan)

Japan Prime Minister and Democratic Party of Japan leader Yukio Hatoyama, whose amazing electoral victory last year unseating the long dominant Liberal Democratic Party, has announced that he is stepping down from his position for failing to deliver on a key campaign promise to the Japanese people about moving the US Marine Futenma Air Station off of Okinawa.

I will be arriving in Tokyo tomorrow (on Thursday) and will be in Naha, Okinawa this next Monday.

As Israel fended off worldwide condemnation for the deaths of nine international activists aboard a Gaza-bound ship and blamed the rioting on the flotilla's organizers, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled a planned visit to the White House.

The fact that Israeli commandos were allowed to kill 10--and possibly as many as 20--pro-Palestinian activists aboard a small flotilla of boats, presumably bringing humanitarian supplies to Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip, is symptomatic of how clueless the right-wing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is. These supplies were said to include building materials, electric-powered wheelchairs, and water purifiers.