Will this increase or decrease the likelihood of terrorist actions in America, Europe and the rest of the world?

If you were a member of a family murdered in this conflict, would you be seeking revenge?

Should Tzipi Livni and Ehud Olmert, be tried for war crimes if or when this conflict comes to an end?

What will the price of oil be in 4 weeks time?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOGG_osOoVg

The news item did not say that Iran was sending a ship! It said an Iranian ship was being sent by the Society to Defend Palestinian People.

probably includes missiles, ammo, ak47s and a few dead and rotting pigs for good measure

the puppeteers really are having some of the best (pork)belly-laughs they've had in years

So Iran has a lousy humanitarian history just as Israel has.

Neither of the records justify what has or is happening.

Cynic,

I thought this thread was below your interest.

Made a mistake, probably above it.

what or even if you think is a mystery to many

The people of Iran are not the poblem. I am am sure that most are just as peace loving as most of those of Israel. It is the extremist minorities in Iran and Israel and their governments that make both countries rogue states gulty of crimes against humanity. There is nothing to choose between them for disgusting behaviour and the atrocities they both have committed.

hooray ... exactly so, but until the populace has the courage - far far more required in iran - to forcibly tell the puppeteers to sling their hook, the carnage and appalling "behaviour" will continue

Hay-I agree to a point.

My worry is that you have a hanging president in Iran who is looking for nulclear capability. Would you trust him?
I do not nor does the west. He is more of a threat to world peace than any other state.

If he were dealt with I would feel better.

Hays,

I am agreeing with you too much.

But not all the Iranian and Israeli extremists are within their own country's borders. Some of those outside their "countries" ferment and propagate the problems.

Financial support for both sides comes from outside their borders.

ahmadinejad and his regime do far worse things than just hang opponents ..... we don't often hear of the severe tortures that are administered on the slightest pretext, or "disappearances" and the like

It shouldnt be forgotten that Israel was on the point of using Nuclear weapons when facing , what they thought was , impending defeat in the 1973 war .

It has since been argued it was a warning to the US , who then intervened and `saved` Israel .

However i get the impression there are Religious fanatics on the Israeli side who also have `God` on their side and all the other mumbo jumbo to justify a catastrophe .

Sheikh Raed Salah, the head of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel said, "Three weeks form now, another Freedom flotilla would sail to the Gaza Strip, and there would be another ship carrying the Turkish Prime Minister Tayyeb Recep Erdogan and a number of state presidents accompanying him to break the siege on Gaza".

fred - try promulgate

This is an indication of which way the wind is blowing in the West Bank. The municipal elections, which were due to be held in July, have been postponed due to deep differences within Fatah. Because Hamas have decided to boycott the elections, Fatah are worried that the result will lack credibility and be a serious blow to Fatah's remaining poor popularity. Fatah is also split, in that they ordered that no independent Fatah candidates could stand, but quite a few well known Fatah figures decided to stand.

Israel's attack on the flotilla has also strengthened Hamas. Hamas now has a very strong following amongst the average man in the street in Gaza and now in the West Bank. It looks as though Hamas are biding their time and will only stand for election when they think they will get a landslide.

All of this looks very bleak for the PA. Increasingly, it looks as though they are speaking less and less for the Palestinians. Hamas are developing their political skills at quite a fast pace.

cynic: Fred should also try foment.

or even be stuck in a vat to ferment .... interestingly, foment has two very different and contradictory meanings

Shouldn't We All Be Israelis Now?
By Kyle-Anne Shiver

For the past three weeks, I've been on vacation, purposely avoiding news of any kind as I sought to refresh my soul. The very first thing I read upon resuming my vigil on the world's affairs was a report describing those despicable Israelis cold-bloodedly murdering a group of innocent peace activists bringing much-needed aid and comfort to the Israeli-victimized Gazans and a companion piece filled with the world's condemnation of Israel.

Having followed Middle East events rather conscientiously for a number of years, I immediately suspected that there was a great deal more to this story. Having watched a Western press grow more and more willfully blind and downright anti-Semitic over three decades greatly increased my skepticism. Seeing my American president blink, blink, and blink again while blathering more inanity about irrelevancies, unable to discern right from wrong, brought me to the brink of gut-wrenching nausea.



What has happened to us? The West, I mean, and more specifically, America?



The Israeli Defense Forces are not stupid, for one thing. They had clear video of individual soldiers legally enforcing a two-nation naval blockade for purely defensive purposes. The boat boarded by the IDF had multiple warnings and were peacefully informed that the ship would need to be boarded and inspected for weapons before it could pass to deliver the aid purportedly on board. All perfectly in accordance with international law. Instead of "peace activists," the soldiers -- not drones or missiles or mechanized artillery, mind you, but real men, sons, brothers, husbands, fathers -- were met by an army of savages wielding steel pipes, who overwhelmed the soldiers and beat them without mercy.



The savage gang was fired upon, and nine of them were killed. It was called an Israeli-perpetrated massacre.



And I daresay there is not a single American adult who would not defend the actions of the IDF if the men being beaten were among their own sons, brothers, husbands, or fathers.



A Chicago police officer attempting to inspect a car trunk for illegal drugs who is surrounded by a gang and beaten with steel pipes certainly has the right to use his gun and depend upon his partner to do so. An American soldier disarming people by law in the wake of Katrina, if met by a gang wielding clubs against him, would fire in self-defense. Would we have the same difficulty condemning the real law-breakers? I don't think so.



Figuring out who is right and who is wrong in this situation is not hard stuff. It's not the kind of moral dilemma which anyone over the age of twelve ought to have difficulty resolving. No, it isn't Auschwitz, at least not yet. It isn't the blueprints for massive "ovens," at least not yet, but the leaders of Israel's enemy states have publicly declared over and over again their intentions to perpetrate Holocaust II at the first opportunity.



No, understanding the Israeli position as the only morally defensible one in the region is not difficult. It's the kind of elementary morality that any good parent hopes to have instilled in his children before they reach middle school.



So again, I ask myself, what has happened to us as a civilization?



Why are the Israelis having to spend precious time and energy trying to convince the rest of the world of the justness of their cause? A cause that is simply about surviving in peace while surrounded by historical throwbacks to the 7th century?



When the Israelis finally bent to world pressure in 2005 and left Gaza -- forcefully uprooting their own people, and even being so thorough as to take the dead Jews from their cemeteries -- they were acting in good faith, attempting to trade land for peace. The Palestinians could have become good neighbors, could have asked for the helping hand of do-gooders around the world for rebuilding moneys and assistance. The world would have been generous. The Israelis themselves offered such assistance.



Instead, the Palestinians took to using Gaza exactly as they had before the Israeli occupation: to perpetrate war. Nearly ten thousand rockets have rained down on innocent Israelis since the land-for-peace deal was made. Those rockets have killed hundreds of Israelis, nearly all civilians. And, in fact, the Israelis do send food and medicine daily into the Gaza that assaults them without mercy.



Now, if peace is really the only objective, the Israelis could have peace by this time tomorrow, and the only thing they would need to do to achieve it is to march quietly into an Iranian-built "oven." The Arabs would all be happy. The Muslim world would rejoice immediately, and all would be well in the entire region. All American troops could come home from the Middle East. President Obama could bow as much as he pleased and play golf the rest of the time.



About a year ago, I shamelessly berated a dear Jewish friend for becoming paranoid about unfolding events -- not in Israel, but right here in America. She, naturally, sees things differently from how I do. She was noticing the telltales in American foreign policy under the new administration. She was calling my attention to signs I couldn't then read. Perhaps a part of me simply wanted to believe -- with all my heart and soul -- that nothing whatsoever similar to the Holocaust could ever happen again because we good Americans would never, ever, ever permit such a horror on our watch. I argued this point with my friend vehemently. For a while, we were so passionately at odds on the "Jewish question" that we stopped corresponding and talking on the phone. Now I shake with guilt and shame over my callous insensitivity, and I wonder where I found such faith in the American people and such nae blindness about human evil.



We have clearly elected an anti-Semitic president. I say this with due trepidation; I take the charge as seriously as any I know. Barack Obama's anti-Semitism is so transparent that I tremble to consider that it may not even be merely an intellectual Israel-vs.-Arab-nation prejudice, but may actually be racist, or even a soul-disordered hate for all things deigned by God.



Consider Obama's presidential record on judging events. When lawyer Obama heard only scant details of Professor Gates' arrest, he didn't bat an eyelash before publicly declaring that the police "acted stupidly." When President Obama learned of Chez-wannabe Zelaya being exiled from Honduras, he took the side of Zelaya without even the slightest hesitation, and he even threw the weight of the entire U.S. government against the tiny, struggling Honduran democracy. When Eric Holder announced that he intended to grant the 9/11 terrorists civilian trials in the heart of NYC, President Obama needed no time to study the issue, gather all the facts, or hold any public investigations on the matter. President Obama seems to have no difficulty whatsoever taking sides.



Yet whenever the president is confronted with events in which Jews or Muslims are concerned, we encounter an altogether different Obama persona. We see the dodger. We see the presumed thinker. We see the lawyer calling for all the facts, all the wider ramifications, all the possible contingencies. In every instance of terrorist killing or foiled killing since taking office, President Obama has dodged the one word that fits: "Muslim." He has removed every mention of Islam from all intelligence material on terrorism. Since day one of his presidency, we have seen a man seemingly going out of his way to soothe the hurt feelings of Muslims, all the while publicly insulting and humiliating the Jewish Prime Minister of Israel. Now, with clear film showing soldiers mercilessly beaten by a savage gang and firing in self-defense, the president dithers, joins an immoral U.N. condemnation of the Israelis, and continues to "gather facts."



Remembering the fears of my Jewish friend, I must now ask whether Barack Obama is signaling to the entire Muslim world that Israel is theirs for the taking, that America will stand aside and twiddle our collective thumbs while Iran and her Muslim neighbors finally get to carry out Holocaust II.



And for the very first time in my life, I am ashamed of my country.



The only thing I can add is that I now declare myself, a devout Catholic, Jewish too. And it would seem the only moral thing any of us can do is to proclaim this as loudly and as furiously as we can. When Helen Thomas says the Jews need to go back to Poland and Germany, and those on a "peace flotilla" tell an Israeli soldier to "go back to Auschwitz," and a president looks the other way while evil parades as good right under his nose, then the time for silence has passed. There is a quirky verse in the book of Genesis which any God-fearing person ought now heed, in my opinion. Speaking of the Jews, His chosen people, God told Abraham: "I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse."



I say again, shouldn't we all be Israelis now? Yes, we should.

What a load of nonsense. The Israelis were stopping a ship trying to break an illegal blockade. Of course the people on the ship would attack the Israelis and good luck to them. It is the same with firing rockets into Israel. They do it beacuse Israel has taken their land and also good luck to them. If I had any spare money I might give them some to buy some more rockets.

lord preserve us from this unending stream of diarrhea

Hamas has a number of strategies for the next year or so. They want to further isolate Israel and the freedom flotillas have been a beginning in this, they also want to unite more of the Arab countries behind them and once again the flotillas have been a trigger. They are trying to show Fatah and the PA up as been ineffective.

Fatah have been making conciliatory approaches to Hamas, but Hamas have said that they are not interested unless Fatah reiterate the calls for the removal of Israel, which they wont as the PA (Palestinian Authority) have dropped that stance. Hamas are fairly successfully turning world opinion against the US for not being tough enough on Israel over the flotilla. They will create new situations that will cause problems for Israel and the US.

I thought that last week was interesting regarding how Hamas behaves now. The previous head of the PA, Mahmoud Abbas, told U.S. Jewish leaders earlier in the week that he "would never deny Jews their right to the land of Israel". As the ex head of the PA, he could say that. The PA would not go quite as far as that, but expressed general support for his comments. Hamas could have immediately come out and condemned this betrayal of Palestine. However, they waited a few days. This gave the Palestinians themselves some time to take in what had been said. When the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza complained about this comment then Hamas joined in and denounced it. This helped create a division between the PA and the actual Palestinians and sidelined Fatah, who avoided any comment at all. Hamas now have substantial political ambitions in the West Bank and will try and disrupt the current stability there. The US is desperately pouring money into the West Bank to create a possible prosperous model for a Palestinians state.