leaders

Much more important than the back-and-forth about Israel's (lethally bungled) raid on a boatload of (deliberately provocative) protesters trying to bring humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip is the bigger question it raises: what to do about the blockade? Without a doubt, its critics are right to say it inflicts terrible human suffering on civilian Palestinians.

Readers of my commentaries know that I usually send one a week. Last week, however, I sent two because the Helen Thomas incident occurred after I had finished my regular weekly article, and I thought the Thomas affair required a response from me. I called for her to step down, which she did.

Several days ago, in a critique of the Obama response to the Israeli attack on a Turkish ship, former national security advisor Richard Allen brought up the response of Ronald Reagan to the 1981 Israeli destruction of the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq. Based on what Mr. Allen describes as Mr. Reagan's "extensive preparation" and "deeply held principles on foreign policy," Mr. Reagan's response was: "Boys will be boys." Mr.

I am posting this piece here, admittedly much more a religious tone than I usually post on my blog, because I tried all week to get it published in several Jewish papers around the country unsuccessfully. Because I thought its message was too important to stay on my hard drive alone, or for the few friends and colleagues I shared it with, I am giving this wider audience a chance to read it. It is based on the weekly reading in synagogue this coming Sabbath, the story of Korach, beginning Chapter 16 in the Book of Numbers. Check it out, a wildly intense story.

Originally published on The Hill

When several years ago I first met Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and had the pleasure to have two private conversations with him, he immediately struck me as the ultimate "purple" leader. As the Washington Post wrote recently, "Erdogan's Justice and Development Party has religious roots, but it also draws conservative entrepreneurs and liberals with its free-market policies."

Media coverage of two events -- both related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- demonstrated why Israel's image has suffered so grievously in recent years.

The latest in flotillas: Wanted terrorist is now organizing a “Muslim religious leaders” flotilla to Gaza.

Cross posted with the Center on Public Diplomacy

Israel's 2009 war on Gaza has been exhaustively documented: some 1,400 Palestinian deaths (compared to 13 for Israel), a vast, rubble-strewn landscape, international condemnation culminating in the hard-hitting and controversial "Goldstone Report" from the UN, and a blockade, tacitly approved by the U.S. and EU, that led to a humanitarian crisis, and ultimately to the high-seas catastrophe this week on the Free Gaza flotilla.

Certain perspectives on the flotilla, Gaza and Israel have taken on mythological proportions but have little logical force, and they are an obstacle to moving forward. Here are some myths, dismantled.

Helen Thomas is the dean of the White House Press corp. She has a fifty-year history of tough-minded journalism and is one of the very, very few journalists in the mainstream press who has had the guts to question US policy towards Israel.