I think it was 6 out of 7 times these last two weeks that everything went smoothly. That being said, I think the blockade needs to end. Have Israel give the people of Gaza a chance to prove they are not the terrorists Israel claims them to be. If if the rockets start firing into Israel again, white phosphorus Gaza back into the stone age where their religion belongs. But at least give the Gazans a year to prove they can coexist.

what about judaism and christianity? do they belong in the stone age too?

Yes.

I agree, they all do, but I think at this point we just let the one with the biggest weapons win and be done with it.

yeah, their legal weapons are quite strong

Israel and the world
Israel's siege mentality
The government’s macho attitude is actually making Israel weaker
Jun 3rd 2010

THE lethal mishandling of Israel’s attack on a ship carrying humanitarian supplies that was trying to break the blockade of Gaza was bound to provoke outrage—and rightly so. The circumstances of the raid are murky and may well remain that way despite an inquiry (see article). But the impression received yet again by the watching world is that Israel resorts to violence too readily. More worryingly for Israel, the episode is accelerating a slide towards its own isolation. Once admired as a plucky David facing down an array of Arab Goliaths, Israel is now seen as the clumsy bully on the block.

Israel’s desire to stop the flotilla reaching Gaza was understandable, given its determination to maintain the blockade. Yet the Israelis also had a responsibility to conduct the operation safely. The campaigners knew that either way they would win. If they had got through, it would have been a triumphant breaching of the blockade. If forcibly stopped, with their cargo of medical equipment and humanitarian aid, they would be portrayed as victims—even if some, as the Israelis contend, brought clubs, knives and poles. As it was, disastrous planning by Israel’s soldiers led to a needless loss of life.

For anyone who cares about Israel, this tragedy should be the starting point for deeper questions—about the blockade, about the Jewish state’s increasing loneliness and the route to peace. A policy of trying to imprison the Palestinians has left their jailer strangely besieged

Losing friends, strengthening Hamas

The blockade of Gaza is cruel and has failed. The Gazans have suffered sorely but have not been starved into submission. Hamas has not been throttled and overthrown, as Israeli governments (and many others) have wished. Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier taken hostage, has not been freed. Weapons and missiles can still be smuggled in through tunnels from Egypt.

Just as bad, from Israel’s point of view, it helps feed antipathy towards Israel, not just in the Arab and Muslim worlds, but in Europe too. Israel once had warm relations with a ring of non-Arab countries in the vicinity, including Iran and Turkey. The deterioration of Israel’s relations with Turkey, whose citizens were among the nine dead, is depriving Israel of a rare Muslim ally and mediator. It is startling how, in its bungled effort to isolate Gaza, democratic Israel has come off worse than Hamas, which used to send suicide-bombers into restaurants.

Most telling of all are the stirrings of disquiet in America, Israel’s most steadfast ally. Americans are still vastly more sympathetic to the Israelis than to the Palestinians. But a growing number, especially Democrats, including many liberal Jews, are getting queasier about what they see as America’s too robotic support for Israel, especially when its government is as hawkish as Binyamin Netanyahu’s. A gap in sympathy for Israel has widened between Democrats and Republicans. Conservatives still tend to back Israel through hell and the high seas. Barack Obama is more conscious that the Palestinians’ failure to get a state is helping to spread anti-American poison across the Muslim world, making it harder for him to deal with Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. His generals have strenuously made that point. None other than the head of Israel’s Mossad, its foreign intelligence service, declared this week that America has begun to see Israel more as a burden than an asset.

That has led to the charge by hawkish American Republicans, as well as many Israelis, that Mr Obama is bent on betraying Israel. In fact, he is motivated by a harder-nosed appreciation of the pros and cons of America’s cosiness with Israel, and is thus all the keener to prod the Jewish state towards giving the Palestinians a fair deal. He has condemned the building of Jewish settlements on Palestinian territory more bluntly than his predecessors did, because he rightly thinks they make it harder to negotiate a peace deal. Mr Obama’s greater sternness towards Israel is for the general good—including Israel’s.


Harmony is not just a dream

Israel is caught in a vicious circle. The more its hawks think the outside world will always hate it, the more it tends to shoot opponents first and ask questions later, and the more it finds that the world is indeed full of enemies. Though Mr Netanyahu has reluctantly agreed to freeze settlement-building and is negotiating indirectly with Palestinians, he does not give the impression of being willing to give ground in the interests of peace.

Yet the prospect of a deal between Palestinians and Israelis still beckons. The contours of a two-state solution remain crystal-clear: an adjusted border, with Israel keeping some of the biggest settlements while Palestine gets equal swaps of land; Jerusalem shared as a capital, with special provisions for the holy places; and an admission by Palestinians that they cannot return to their old homes in what became Israel in 1948, with some theoretical right of return acknowledged by Israel and a small number of refugees let back without threatening the demographic preponderance of Jewish Israelis.

And what about Hamas, if Israel is to lift the siege of Gaza? How should Israel handle an authoritarian movement that refuses to recognise it and has in the past readily used terror? One answer is to ask the UN to oversee the flow of goods and people going in and out of Gaza. That is hardly a cure-all, but Hamas would become the world’s problem neighbour, not just Israel’s. The Arab world must do more, pressing Hamas to disavow violence, publicly pledge not to resume the firing of rockets at Israeli civilians and revoke its anti-Semitic charter. The West, led by Mr Obama, should call for Hamas to be drawn into negotiations, both with its rival Palestinians on the West Bank as well as with Israel, even if it does not immediately recognise the Jewish state. It is still the party the Palestinians elected in 2006 to represent all of them. None of this will be easy. But the present stalemate is bloodily leading nowhere.

Israel is a regional hub of science, business and culture. Despite its harsh treatment of Palestinians in the land it occupies, it remains a vibrant democracy. But its loneliness, partly self-inflicted, is making it a worse place, not just for the Palestinians but also for its own people. If only it can replenish its stock of idealism and common sense before it is too late.

Iran offers escort for Gaza ships
By ASSOCIATED PRESS AND JPOST.COM STAFF
06/06/2010 18:02


Supreme leader Khamenei offers military protection for activists.

Iran would be willing to send its Revolutionary Guard members to accompany further aid ships to Gaza, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Sunday in an interview cited by Reuters.

"The naval wing of the Revolutionary Guard is ready to assist the peace flotilla to Gaza with all its effort and capabilities," Khamenei's Revolutionary Guard spokesman Ali Shirazi stated.

"If the Supreme Leader issues an order for this then the Revolutionary Guard naval forces will do their best to secure the ships," Shirazi said. "It is Iran's duty to defend the innocent people of Gaza."

Last week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad termed the IDF raid on the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara as "barbaric" and called for dismantling of “the Zionist regime.”

Ahmadinejad was speaking to a crowd of tens of thousands, many of them chanting anti-Israeli slogans, gathered at the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini for a ceremony marking the 21st anniversary of his death.

AP contributed to this article.

I agree, they all do, but I think at this point we just let the one with the biggest weapons win and be done with it.

uh oh

http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=177635

This certainly ups the stakes a bit.

So this is why you hate Israel more than America?
This is more important to you than the massive civilian carnage in Iraq?

But thanks for your concern, she's back home safely now after being threatened and beaten by Israeli's soldiers for no apparent reason.

I am sorry she had to go through that, but I would put forth that the reason is pretty apparent.

(Reuters) - Iran is sending aid ships to blockaded Gaza, state radio said on Monday -- a move likely to be considered provocative by Israel which accuses Tehran of arming the Palestinian enclave's Islamist rulers, Hamas.

One ship left port on Sunday and another will depart by Friday, loaded with food, construction material and toys, the report said. "Until the end of (Israel's) Gaza blockade, Iran will continue to ship aid," said an official at Iran's Society for the Defense of the Palestinian Nation.

Iran has sent aid to the coastal territory in the past via Egypt. It was not immediately clear if the latest shipments would do the same, or try to dock in Gaza itself.

In January 2009, an Israeli warship approached an Iranian aid boat heading for the Mediterranean territory and told it to leave the area, 70 km (45 miles) from Gaza. The ship went on to Egypt, which borders Gaza, but was refused permission to unload.

Iran lodged a protest over the issue with Egypt, which has a peace agreement with the Jewish state.

Israel has long suspected Iran of supplying weapons to Hamas. Tehran says it only provides moral support to the group.

The deputy head of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards played down reports that the Guards would provide a military escort to aid ships heading to Gaza -- something which would be sure to escalate tensions in the region.

"Such a thing is not on our agenda," Hossein Salami was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.

ENEMIES

The Islamic state has refused to recognize Israel since its 1979 revolution that toppled the U.S.-backed Shah, and some Iranian leaders have called for the demise of the Jewish state.

In another sign of reluctance to risk high-level confrontation with Israel, a delegation of parliamentarians who plan to travel to Gaza will do so via Egypt, rather than on any aid ships headed directly to the enclave.

Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of parliament's Foreign Policy and National Security committee, said Egyptian authorities were "positive" about the lawmaker's proposed visit, but had yet to issue formal consent.

Up to a quarter of Iran's 291 lawmakers have expressed their wish to go to Gaza, Iranian media reported.

The actions are in response to Israel's boarding of a flotilla of Turkish aid ships heading to Gaza on May 31 in which troops killed nine pro-Palestinian activists after they were set upon by some passengers with metal rods and knives.

An official of the Iranian Red Crescent Society's youth organization said some 100,000 Iranians had volunteered as potential crew for aid ships, daily newspaper Iran reported.

In the past, similar numbers have registered as potential fighters for any conflict with Israel.

Israel is the most vocal opponent of Iran's nuclear enrichment programme, which it fears is aimed at developing atomic bombs -- something it sees as a threat to its survival.

Iran says its nuclear programme is meant solely to yield electricity or isotopes for medicine and agriculture. It accuses the West of hypocrisy for taking little action against the nuclear arsenal which many believe Israel to have.

The Turks would never accept their help. This is just the Iranians puffing.