Who are the Nazis now?

Israeli Government Documents Show Deliberate Policy to Restrict Food to Gaza

It isn't anything else but murder.

A U.S. citizen who lived in Turkey is among the nine people killed when Israeli commandos stormed a Turkish aid ship heading for the Gaza Strip, officials said today. The victim was identified as Furkan Dogan, 19, a Turkish-American. A forensic report said he was shot at close range, with four bullets in his head and one in his chest, according to the Anatolian news agency.

Dogan was a high school student studying social sciences in the town of Kayseri in central Turkey. He was born in Troy, N.Y., and moved to Turkey at the age of 2. He will be buried in his hometown tomorrow.

Dogan's body was returned to Turkey today along with eight others, all Turkish nationals, who were on board the Mavi Marmara.

Taking statements out of context is a constant wound

And makes for sore tempers...

Matthew Yglesias:

Barack Obama, speaking to The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, offered a sensible reply to a sensible-but-sensitive question:

JG: Do you think that Israel is a drag on America’s reputation overseas?

BO: No, no, no. But what I think is that this constant wound, that this constant sore, does infect all of our foreign policy. The lack of a resolution to this problem provides an excuse for anti-American militant jihadists to engage in inexcusable actions, and so we have a national-security interest in solving this, and I also believe that Israel has a security interest in solving this because I believe that the status quo is unsustainable.

GOP Reps. John Boehner and Eric Cantor decided to prove they studied hard in the school of misreading and misrepresenting:

It is truly disappointing that Senator Obama called Israel a ‘constant wound,’ ‘constant sore,’ and that it ‘infect[s] all of our foreign policy.’ These sorts of words and characterizations are the words of a politician with a deep misunderstanding of the Middle East and an innate distrust of Israel.

Eliding here is the difference between calling Israel, the country, a sore and calling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a sore.

That boat has already sailed, that test has already been graded

That bird has already flown. What on earth have you guys been doing for the last seven years?

JERUSALEM (AP) -- In an effort to salvage a Middle East peace conference planned for next month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hoped to find some common ground during a meeting Monday with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

After her first round of talks with Israeli leaders on Sunday, State Department officials indicated the conference, called by President Bush, might have to be postponed.

[snip]

Heads of negotiating teams have been appointed only in recent days - former Palestinian premier Ahmed Qureia last week and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Sunday - and officials said they would meet for the first time later this week, six weeks before the tentative date of the Mideast gathering.

After Rice's first series of meetings Sunday, a senior State Department official hinted that the date could slide.

"This is going to take some time," the official told reporters on condition of anonymity to describe the private conversations. "This is going to require a lot of hands-on American diplomacy. These are really tough issues."

Rice cautioned against expecting breakthroughs during her four days of meetings, punctuated by a trip to Cairo and followed by talks in London with the king of Jordan.

Olmert also appeared to scale back hopes for broad agreement before the conference.

Hands-on diplomacy? Does the Bush administration have any diplomats left? And to help things along, there's this from John Dugard:

Earlier this year, in his role as special rapporteur to the UN Human Rights Council for the Palestinian Territories, the South African law professor wrote a report for the UN General Assembly in which he compared Israel's actions to those of apartheid South Africa.

Indeed, the word "apartheid" appears 24 times in the 24-page report.

But in his interview with the BBC, Mr Dugard goes further than before.

He has been trenchant in his belief in the past seven years that he has held the UN post that Israel is collectively punishing the Palestinians.

Now, though, he has the international community, and the UN itself, in his sights for complicity.

[snip]

Although some inside Israel agree that the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has distorted and damaged Israel's democratic values, there are plenty who will say Mr Dugard's view is one-sided.

They will argue that condemnation of the restrictions on Palestinians' freedom of movement fails to take into account the right of Israelis to live free from terrorist attack.

Mr Dugard's argument - again shared by some inside Israel - is that the military occupation fuels what he calls "resistance".

And, in an unusually harsh warning from a senior UN official, he worries aloud about how high the Palestinian leadership is raising expectations ahead of next month's scheduled peace conference with Israel.

If, as he fears, those expectations are not met, then, he says, a third intifada could be unleashed.

And he compares the actions of Palestinian militants to those of the French Resistance during World War II.

I put it to Mr Dugard that that comparison in particular would be very difficult for some to stomach. He was unabashed.

"History is replete with examples of populations that have resisted military occupation," he said.

"I can't see why one shouldn't draw these analogies."

It sounds like a lot of heavy duty homework for a C student....

Saudis behind the scenes

Outmaneuvering Elliot Abrams and the neocons. Fascinating article on the chess game going on in world politics. The article offers this interesting insight:

The same confusion was apparent at the White House, where National Security Council (NSC) official Elliott Abrams - the architect of US policy in the Middle East - was growing increasingly irritated with Rice's attempt to restart Israeli-Palestinian talks. Abrams, supported by officials in the Office of the Vice President, had consistently argued that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was a morass better left in the hands of the Israelis. That viewpoint was clear from the first days of the administration of President George W Bush, when Vice President Dick Cheney knocked down any attempt to re-engage with Israelis and Palestinians.

A Republican Party stalwart describes Cheney's views in blunt terms: "People would come to Bush and say we have to get focus on the peace process, and Cheney would sit there and say, 'Mr President, don't do it. These people have been fighting for 50 years. To hell with them. And look at what happened to [former president Bill] Clinton when he tried. It just got worse.' And Bush would nod his head and that would be the end of the discussion."

The NSC's concerns over Rice had deepened with reports that she had gone directly to Bush on a number of foreign-policy issues, circumventing both Abrams and Cheney. While it is traditional for a US secretary of state to confer directly with a president, Abrams, Rice and State Department official David Welch (the assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs) had formed a seemingly unbreakable triumvirate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Angela Merkel wants to help solve the Israeli-Palestinian conundrum

""We want to take on responsibility in the Middle East process even if we're aware that it is an extremely difficult political area," the chancellor told the Guardian in an interview at the chancellery in Berlin. "We know that the issue of the two-states solution is of the greatest importance for many other conflicts in the region."

My god, how strange. A politician who actually wants to stop wars.

King Abdullah

speaks to the Japanese newspaper reporters Michiro Okamoto and Yuki Hasegawa / Yomiuri Shimbun Correspondents.
"The Israeli-Hizbollah conflict emphasized the spreading influence of Iran in the region. You warned once of a "Shiite Crescent" from Iran through Iraq to Syria and Lebanon. How do you see the Iranian threat?

There is no doubt that Iran is a regional player and I think we have to engage them on that level. But again, the cards that are being played or the areas of contention can be found in Palestine, can be found in Lebanon and can be found in Iraq, and this is why I believe by moving one process, it could easily lead to another.

I do believe that if the Palestinian process were to move forward, it would be easier to tackle the Lebanese and Syrian processes. Once we get the peace camp strengthened, then future issues with Iran in the region are less tense and may not be thought of as an issue of conflict but an issue of dialogue. This is why I keep going back to the Palestinian issue, saying that if we get one process moving, it deflates the emotions of the people in this region and allows people to think clearly.

Today, the Arab streets are more enamored with radicals and radical rhetoric than of the listening to moderates talking about peace and coexistence. I think the peace camp and the moderate camp in the Middle East are in a very weak position. If we don't make a major shift in policy in the Middle East, then people will only hear radical arguments, and I think that would be a cost to all of us, including Israel.

I think today Israel has to decide: does it want to continue to be fortress Israel or does it want Israel included in the neighborhood?"

The era of American unilateralism is over.

"And an era -- that of American unilateralism -- is over. If the commission has its way - and it undoubtedly will - then there will be an international conference on the situation in the Middle East. That includes talks between America and two countries that have so far remained taboo: Syria and Iran. Syria has at least two faces: that of Bashar al-Assad, the eye doctor with former residence in London who knows how the West thinks and maybe even thinks like the West himself; and that of the old regime, which thinks the loss of its sphere of influence in Lebanon would be an egregious mistake and diligently grants its full praise to al-Qaida, Hezbollah and Hamas. It wouldn't be bad if it finally came to light, which of Syria's faces is the real face.

The era of allowing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to drag on is also over. Israel quickly made up for America's mistakes in Iraq with its invasion of Lebanon. The little king of Jordan recently remarked that without some special efforts to contain the conflicts in the region, then the world could soon be dealing with three wars there: Iraq, Lebanon and Israel.

And it is the end of the era of "we-are-not-leaving-Iraq-as-long-as-the-Iraqis-don't-want-us-to" rhetoric. There will be a phased retreat and a phased reduction of troops. The commission's package deal is almost as ingenious as it is treacherous: If the Iraqi government manages, slowly but surely, to put an end to the insurgency and the bloodletting on its own, then US troops will gradually pull out. If, on the other hand, there is no end to the murders and assassinations -- if the government proves helpless in the face of the growing civil war -- then the US will pull out sooner. There is no room for sentimentality anymore."