United States

The story of Peter Erlinder, an American law professor and leading figure of the International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda, reads like a macabre thriller with an unresolved ending. He arrived to Rwanda on May 28th to help defend a jailed opposition presidential candidate, and then was promptly arrested and detained on specious charges of genocide ideology by the government of President Paul Kagame.

I have been a Jewish Leader for the last 26 years. This is indisputably true because I have the plaques to prove it. I remember when I first met Thomas Friedman in Israel back then he told me that he never met a Jew in Israel who wasn't a "leader." He said he had yet to meet a Jewish Follower.

Jewish professors in the United States and Israel have called on the Jewish State to formally recognize the Armenian genocide.

Assume the following hypothetical situation for the purposes of this discussion: One of the violent drug cartels based in Mexico takes over the City of Tijuana. The Mexican government has no apparent ability to change this fact by force or otherwise. Our American government, in an effort to continue its battle to keep drugs out of the United States, takes on this cartel. In return, the cartel begins plotting a series of attacks across the border that land in San Diego. The cartel periodically fires rockets across the border at San Diego.

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.

By Avner Gidron, Senior Policy Adviser at Amnesty International

"[Neoconservatives] always continue to sort of lurk in the framework and look for opportunities to animate their crowd and bring in their fellow travelers.." - Steve Clemons, head of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation in The Nation, March 18, 2010

One of the most repeated questions that was asked by many following the attack on the Gaza bound humanitarian flotilla was why did Israel do that? Why did a very powerful army and navy who can easily have controlled the situation in the high seas need to carry out a commando raid that ended up with the death of nine internationals one of whom was an American citizen?

After my initial anger and dismay of the ditching of Helen Thomas, who for me and others stands not only for freedom of speech but for responsible journalism, I tried to take a few steps back and ask out loud what might be some of the deeper issues at work.

The organizers of the Palestinian aid flotilla have achieved a stunning victory over Israel in the international court of public opinion. It is a victory that Gandhi would well have understood. By pitting unarmed protestors (okay, so a few wielded kitchen knives when their ship was attacked) on a humanitarian mission against a government steeped in the logic that the best defense is a strong offense, the flotilla achieved the inevitable outcome: the martyrs won, Israel lost.