The Obama administration appears to be rebuffing calls from some Jewish groups for the United States to be more assertive and public in defending Israel regarding the flotilla incident.\n
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said the activists aboard a Gaza-bound flotilla were the victims of Israeli \”state terrorism.\”\n\n\”The Freedom Flotilla is not the first serious attempt to support the Palestinian people and break the siege, and it will not be the last,\” Abbas told participants Wednesday at the opening session of the second Palestine Investment Conference in Bethlehem.
A pro-Gaza organization says it has received funding for three new ships that will attempt to break Israel\’s maritime blockade of the coastal strip.\n
A dozen U.S. lawmakers called for a hearing that would allow litigants to make Holocaust-era insurance claims in federal courts.\n
The United Nations Human Rights Council passed a resolution calling for an independent fact-finding mission into Israel\’s interception of a Gaza-bound flotilla.
A few years ago Mason Kroll went with his family to see a touring production of “A Chorus Line.” On the way home, Kroll recalled, “My dad turns to me and says, ‘Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote a musical when he was in college. What are you doing?’ I didn’t take him seriously at all.”
A Likud Party lawmaker called for the removal of an Israeli-Arab Knesset member who sailed with the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.
In response to the tragic events off the coast of Gaza this past weekend, I would like to suggest that the usual responses, which we are seeing in the form of mass protests, are actually not very helpful and in fact, will probably be more detrimental than anything else. We don\’t need any more rallies, any more protests, any more one-sided, emotional, biased and vitriolic expressions of pain and raw feelings. Why am I saying this? Am I against the first amendment of free speech and rightful demonstration? Absolutely not. However, I know that as long we continue to be so divided, with Arabs/Muslims, along with hyperbolic extreme left-wing Jews on one side, at their demonstrations against Israel, and the pro-Israel, mainstream Jewish community on the other side, at their demonstrations completely supporting Israel without question, we will never get anywhere. I believe that these protests are actually harmful to the cause of peace, and the goal of a two-state solution, which is and must remain the central focus of our efforts.\n
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