Spin doctors cannot hide Israel’s actions
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
June 2, 2010 - 12:00am

The Israeli prime minister’s spokesman Mark Regev once explained to an Australian reporter how he could chew and talk at the same time. This week Mr Regev tested his ability to speak with a foot planted firmly in his mouth.

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Israel: remember 1947 and the Exodus ship
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Richard Irvine - June 2, 2010 - 12:00am

No one can accuse history of not having a sense of irony. Sixty-three years ago, in July 1947, a passenger ship destined for Palestine and named the Exodus was stopped and boarded by the British navy. The ship was crowded with Holocaust survivors determined to make a new life for themselves in British-controlled Palestine. The British, facing Zionist terrorism and trying to keep promises made to the Palestinian Arabs to limit Jewish immigration, were determined to stop it. Accordingly, when the Royal Navy boarded the ship 20 miles out from Haifa, a full-scale battle ensued.

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Patrick Cockburn: PR dangerously distorts the Israeli sense of reality
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Independent
(Opinion) June 2, 2010 - 12:00am

An old Israeli saying describing various less-than-esteemed military leaders says: "He was so stupid that even the other generals noticed." The same derisive remark could be applied almost without exception to the present generation of Israeli politicians.

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US response to Israel’s flotilla raid will shape the Middle East
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by Suat Kiniklioglu - June 2, 2010 - 12:00am

I am the only Turkish politician who has visited Israel since Israel unleashed the Gaza war in 2008, and the Davos incident in 2009 between Israeli President Shimon Peres and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan highlighted the differences between our countries. I have many friends in Israel, and I did not hesitate to visit Israel when an invitation was extended to me by an Israeli think tank. Despite the many challenges, I maintained my optimism that Turkey and Israel would be able to mend their differences despite their disagreements over the humanitarian situation in Gaza.

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Flotilla attack: 'First the shots, then the ship was turned into a lake of blood'
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Independent
by Ben Lynfield - June 2, 2010 - 12:00am

The first accounts of activists involved in Israel's devastating raid on a flotilla of aid for Gaza sharply contradicted Israel's official version of events, with one passenger insisting that commandos opened fire before they boarded. Nilufer Cetin, a Turkish woman who had been on the Mavi Marmara, which bore the brunt of the Israeli raid, said that the ship had "turned into a lake of blood" and she and her one-year-old child had to hide in a bathroom.

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After Raid, Videos Carry On the Fight
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Brian Stelter - June 2, 2010 - 12:00am

When Israeli commandos attacked the so-called Freedom Flotilla, both sides were well armed — with video cameras — and both sides have released a blizzard of video clips as evidence that the other side was the aggressor in the conflict on Monday, which left nine activists dead. Once again, the political power of the moving picture is on display, as it was last year when a video showing the death of a young protester in Iran, Neda Agha-Soltan, became a symbol of resistance in that country.

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Abbas urges world to protect Palestinians
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ynetnews
by Ali Waked - June 2, 2010 - 12:00am

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday praised activists who took part in an aid sail to the Gaza Strip, which left nine people dead following an Israel Defense Forces raid of the ships. Abbas lauded the passengers killed in the raid and said that the act of solidarity with Gaza was "very respectable". Speaking at the Palestine Investment Conference in Bethlehem, the Palestinian president said that just like the sail, which was aimed at breaking the blockade imposed on the Strip, the conference was a sail aimed at breaking the economic siege on Palestine.

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Mossad chief: Israel gradually becoming burden on U.S.
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Jonathan Lis - June 1, 2010 - 12:00am

Mossad Chief Meir Dagan said on Tuesday that Israel is progressively becoming a burden on the United States. "Israel is gradually turning from an asset to the United States to a burden," said Dagan, speaking before the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. Dagan said that the U.S. government has recently examined the possibility of coercing a settlement on Israel and the Palestinians, but retreated from the idea after realizing it would not lead to a peace agreement.

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Gaza flotilla: Why the blockade makes sense for Israel
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Christian Science Monitor
by David Makovsky - (Opinion) June 1, 2010 - 12:00am

The activists aboard the Gaza flotilla that was raided by Israeli security forces Monday may have believed that breaking the Gaza blockade was at its core forcing Israel to address an issue the activists see as moral blindness. Yet the situation is far more complex than they would like people to believe. The story of the flotilla crisis begins from the time Israel withdrew from Gaza in August 2005. Israelis were told that if they stopped occupying foreign land, they would be more secure.

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That's No Way To Enforce a Blockade
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Slate
by Fred Kaplan - June 1, 2010 - 12:00am

Israel's storming of the Mavi Marmara, killing at least nine Free Gaza activists and wounding several more, was an act of jaw-gaping stupidity—strategically and tactically, even leaving aside morally. You needn't be a partisan of Hamas to think so. Look at today's headlines on the editorial page of Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz: "The price of flawed policy," "Fiasco on the high seas," "Seven idiots in the cabinet," "A failure any way you slice it."

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