European Union

The Palestinian Authority used the European Union logo on a TV program that promotes Haifa as being a “Palestinian coastal city.”

In light of Turkey's reaction to the Israeli attack on the Gaza-bound flotilla last week, media pundits and policy wonks are already underlining the demise of the US-Turkish special relationship. The growing chorus of critics miss one vital point. Turkey was criticizing Tel Aviv's military overkill off the Gaza coastline, not Washington's.

The international crisis over the Israeli raid on the on the Gaza "Peace Flotilla" was not yet over, but the usual suspects were already sending me emails with horrific pictures of the Armenian Genocide - and it was a Genocide - by the Turkish army in 1915 as well as other Turkey-bashing stuff providing details about the Turkish illegal occupation and colonization (150,000 settlers) of (northern) Cyprus and the government's brut

Why would Israel, in a deliberate and methodical operation planned over a week in advance -- according to statements by senior Israeli military commanders made in Hebrew-language media days before the attack -- target an unarmed ship on a humanitarian mission flying the flag of Comoros? (Unlike Turkey, Comoros is a party of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which has jurisdiction over war crimes committed on vessels of member states.)

In the aftermath of Israel's violent seizure of the Free Gaza flotilla early this week, it's important to emphasize that leading elements of the international community set the circumstances which resulted in this massacre. Monday's raid -- like the 2008-9 military assault on Gaza ("Operation Cast Lead"), and like the further atrocities that almost certainly lie ahead -- are the predictable outcome of established international policy towards the Gaza Strip.

Israel has decided that it is better to be perceived as savage than as weak. In its initial attack on the boats carrying human rights activists and humanitarian aid to the besieged Gaza Strip, Israel's commandos killed at least nine human rights activists and injured perhaps as many as eighty or more. All those aboard the ships, which were attacked and seized pirate-style in international seas far beyond the legal limits of Israel's own territorial waters, were arrested and/or deported.

JERUSALEM (AP) - Israeli naval commandos stormed a flotilla of ships carrying aid and hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists to the blockaded Gaza Strip on Monday, killing at least 10 passengers in a predawn raid that set off worldwide condemnation and a diplomatic crisis.

Israel said its commandos were attacked by knives, clubs and live fire from two pistols wrested from soldiers after they rappelled from a helicopter to board one of the vessels.

JERUSALEM (AP) - Israeli naval commandos stormed a flotilla of ships carrying aid and hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists to the blockaded Gaza Strip on Monday, killing at least 10 passengers in a predawn raid that set off worldwide condemnation and a diplomatic crisis.

Israel said its commandos were attacked by knives, clubs and live fire from two pistols wrested from soldiers after they rappelled from a helicopter to board one of the vessels.

Amnesty International complained in its annual report released Thursday that the U.S. and members of the European Union had obstructed international justice by using their positions on the UN Security Council to shield Israel from accountability for war crimes allegedly committed during last year's Gaza war.

Of George W. Bush's infamous axis of evil, Iraq simmers, North Korea waxes and wanes, only Iran remains firmly in Obama's crosshairs. Two of his closest allies, Israel and India, are now on the outs with Obama. In 1907, erstwhile adversaries England, France, and Russia formed the Triple Entente, generating enduring peace between them and claiming the twentieth century for the West. At the dawn of the twenty-first, India, Iran, and Israel have the opportunity to come together and transform it to an Asian one.