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Israel, bound by an international refugees treaty it ardently promoted, doesn’t seem to have that option, and the gap between rhetoric and reality threatens to send simmering social antagonisms boiling over into open conflict.

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It has raised questions, relevant all over the developed world, about how much is owed to the impoverished migrants who manage to sneak in.

Over the past seven years, as many as 60,000 African migrants, most from Sudan and Eritrea, have slipped across Israel’s border with Egypt, exploiting the lack of a physical barrier and widespread lawlessness in the Sinai Peninsula that has been one result of the fall last year of longtime Egyptian ruler Hosni Mubarak.

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Israel is erecting a barrier along the roughly 200 kilometers (125 miles) of border. While this work drags on, the migrants continue to arrive at a rate of about 1,000 a month, ragged and penniless, with some reporting being raped, tortured and extorted by the Bedouins who smuggle them through.

Some migrants are fleeing repressive regimes. Others are simply looking for a better life in a richer country. How many fit into each of those categories is a matter of deep disagreement between officials and migrant advocates.

Some Israelis worry that their national identity as a Jewish state is being threatened by unauthorized African migrants, who now make up less than 1 percent of Israel’s population.

“It’s the crumbling of the Zionist dream,” Interior Minister Eli Yishai warned on Thursday.

Officials claim the overwhelming majority of the migrants are not bona fide refugees escaping persecution and war, but economic migrants looking for jobs. Israeli leaders use terms like “infiltrators,” “cancer” and “national scourge” to describe them, setting an inflammatory tone.

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After the first rape was reported earlier this month, Yishai declared nearly all migrants to be criminals and said they should all be jailed pending deportation.

Days later, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned, “60,000 infiltrators are liable to become 600,000, and lead to the eradication of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.”

The issue of how to deal with them has also caused introspection about whether Israel, after a century of conflict with Arabs, has become a racist society.

“What disturbs me most is the racist atmosphere,” social commentator Tom Segev said. “For several years now, Israel society has been moving in that direction, with all the anti-Arab motions in the parliament. … I think that this society is very sick now.”

Others deny that the pushback is racist, finding it unreasonable that their country of about 8 million should be expected to throw open its doors to unlimited numbers of migrants.

Israel cannot simply kick out the Africans, as some politicians would seem to suggest. As an enthusiastic backer of a 1951 U.N. treaty drafted to address the plight of World War II refugees, it has pledged not to expel asylum-seekers to any country where they would be in danger.

“We’re not going to pull back on our obligations under the refugee convention,” said Daniel Solomon, legal adviser to Israel’s population and immigration authority. “At the same time, other solutions will have to be looked for,” like finding a third country to take them in.

Because most migrants come from Sudan, an enemy state, and Eritrea, a country with an abysmal human rights record, the line between refugee and economic migrants is blurred. So Israel has quietly allowed most migrants from those two countries to stay, without processing their asylum applications.

The U.S. State Department criticized this practice in a report on global human rights released Thursday, noting that of 4,603 new asylum applications in 2011, Israel rejected 3,692 and approved one. According to the report, asylum seekers without refugee status are not allowed to work and have no access to public health care, and that the government negatively terms the migrants “infiltrators”.

Spokesmen for Israel’s prime minister and Foreign Ministry had no comment on the report Friday.

Because of their precarious status, the migrants scrounge for whatever underpaid and insecure employment and volunteer health care they can find.

“Our objective is to have Israel host these people under proper conditions until the option arises for them to go home,” said William Tall, the envoy of the U.N. refugee agency office in Israel.

The Africans began trickling into Israel after neighboring Egypt violently quashed a demonstration by a group of Sudanese refugees there in 2005, killing at least 20. The numbers surged as word spread of safety and jobs in Israel, a prosperous and liberal country reachable from Africa overland.

The swelling numbers have spawned slums. Fear and intolerance is mounting among locals, who accuse the migrants of stoking crime, including three recent rapes – even though police records show crime among the migrants is lower than among Israelis.

Firebombs were thrown recently at two buildings where migrants live, and a protest against them Wednesday in a poor southern Tel Aviv neighborhood where many Africans live turned violent. The crowd shattered windows of shops and cars belonging to Africans, police said, and a witness reported that protesters spat on migrants and cursed them. No one was hurt.

Bashir Abekker, 32, came to Israel four years ago to escape the war in Sudan’s Darfur region. He thought he’d find safety, “but recently, I’m not safe here. I am afraid for my safety,” he said. “After what happened (Wednesday), I was afraid to go out on the street to buy food.”

On Thursday, Netanyahu condemned the violence. “I want to make it very clear that there is no room for the kinds of expressions and actions we saw last night,” he said. “I say this both to public officials and to the residents of south Tel Aviv, whose pain I understand.”

The Hotline for Migrant Workers advocacy group said the refugees are endangered by the “incitement” of politicians.

On the other side of the divide, neighborhood activist Dror Kahalani said the government is neglecting his already poor community to provide services for migrants, whose rising numbers terrify residents.

“I don’t let my daughters go out unless I go with them,” Kahalani said.

Prominent author and social commentator A.B. Yehoshua came to the defense of the migrants’ Israeli neighbors. “We have to distinguish between economic migrants whom we don’t have to accept, and the bona fide refugees who are suffering and face death if returned,” he said.

For some, the violence against the migrants and calls for their expulsion are difficult to accept given the legacy of the Holocaust, when 6 million Jews were killed by German Nazis and their collaborators. They find it abhorrent that the Jewish state would expel people to face persecution elsewhere.

Others counter that following the mass murder of its own people as the world looked on, Israel has no more of an obligation to help others than the rest of the world does.

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In his most expansive remarks on the issue thus far, Obama told The Atlantic magazine that Iran and Israel both understand that “a military component” is among a mix of many options for dealing with Iran, along with sanctions and diplomacy. That is the most direct threat he has issued during months of escalating tension with Iran over its disputed nuclear development program.

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His comments appeared aimed more at Israel and its supporters in the United States than at Iran. Obama addresses the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee on Sunday and meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday at the White House. Netanyahu will also address AIPAC.

“I think that the Israeli government recognizes that, as president of the United States, I don’t bluff,” he said in the interview. “I also don’t, as a matter of sound policy, go around advertising exactly what our intentions are. But (both) governments recognize that when the United States says it is unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, we mean what we say.”

Netanyahu, speaking Friday ahead of a meeting in Canada with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, called Iran’s nuclear ambitions a “grave threat to the peace and security of the world, and I think it’s important that the international community not allow this threat to materialize.”

“As for Israel, like any sovereign country, we reserve the right to defend ourselves against a country, against a country that calls and works for our destruction,” Netanyahu said.

Obama will try to convince Netanyahu to postpone any plans his government may have to unilaterally attack Iran’s nuclear facilities in coming months. An attack that soon would not carry U.S. backing, and the U.S. would probably not be involved in planning or executing it.

Nonetheless, it could force the United States into a new conflict and an arms race in the Middle East, as Obama made clear in the lengthy interview. It also could allow Iran to paint itself as the victim and draw new support that would undermine rather than enhance Israel’s security, Obama warned.

“At a time when there is not a lot of sympathy for Iran and its only real ally (Syria) is on the ropes, do we want a distraction in which suddenly Iran can portray itself as a victim?” Obama said.

At the same time, Obama has consistently refused to renounce a military option for the United States down the road. The dispute with Israel is over the timing and efficiency of such a strike, not whether one is ever appropriate. The difference of opinion has quickly come to dominate the U.S.-Israeli relationship and the U.S. strategy for dealing with a nuclear Iran is a major issue for American Jewish voters in this election year.

Israeli leaders have strongly hinted that they want to hear clearer terms from Obama for what the United States would do if Iran crosses the threshold from nuclear energy to nuclear weapons. Until now, Obama has said a nuclear Iran is unacceptable but has not spelled out just what the U.S. would do or when.

In the interview, Obama did go further than he has before. He explicitly referred to the possible use of military force, and he firmly rejected the notion that the United States might settle for a strategy of deterring Iran from using a nuclear weapon.

“You’re talking about the most volatile region in the world,” he said. “It will not be tolerable to a number of states in that region for Iran to have a nuclear weapon and them not to have a nuclear weapon. Iran is known to sponsor terrorist organizations, so the threat of proliferation becomes that much more severe. “

He also pointed to economic turmoil in Iran and reiterated that sanctions against the Iranian regime are starting to bite.

In a series of recent meetings with Israeli leaders, administration officials are believed to have sought to persuade the Jewish state to give sanctions more time to work and to hold off on any military strike. Speaking Thursday to reporters, White House press secretary Jay Carney said Obama believes there is still “time and space” for those measure to persuade the Iranian regime to take a different course.

Israeli officials acknowledge the pain in Iran but have publicly expressed doubt those measures will ever cause Iran’s clerical leaders to change course.

Obama wasn’t so sure. “They’re sensitive to the opinions of the people and they are troubled by the isolation that they’re experiencing,” he told the Atlantic. “They know, for example, that when these kinds of sanctions are applied, it puts a world of hurt on them.”

Though Obama emphatically portrays himself as one of Israel’s best friends, touting military and other ties, his relationship with Netanyahu has at times been frosty. The two have sparred publicly over Jewish settlements on the West Bank, with Netanyahu pushing back on Washington’s efforts to move forward on peace talks with the Palestinians.

The Iran issue has risen to the forefront of his foreign policy. At a fundraiser in New York on Thursday night, an audience member shouted out, urging the president to avoid a war with Iran.

“Nobody has announced a war,” Obama cautioned. “You’re jumping the gun a little bit.”

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Nearly three decades after Israel began airlifting Ethiopia’s ancient Jewish community out of the Horn of Africa, Israel’s rabbis are now working to phase out the community’s white-turbaned clergy, the kessoch, whose unusual religious practices are at odds with the rabbinate’s Orthodox Judaism.

The effort has added to the sense of discrimination felt by Israel’s 120,000 Ethiopian citizens. These sentiments boiled over this month after a group of landlords in the southern town of Kiryat Malachi refused to accept them as tenants, prompting a large rally planned for Wednesday across from Israel’s parliament.

“We are just like all the other Jews. We don’t have any other religion,” said Kess Semai Elias, 42.

Descendants of the lost Israelite tribe of Dan, according to Jewish lore, Ethiopian Jews spent millennia isolated from the rest of the Jewish world. In most Jewish communities, the priesthood of the Bible was replaced by rabbis who emphasized text study and prayer. Ethiopia’s Jewish kessoch continued the traditions of Biblical-era priests, sacrificing animals and collecting the first fruits of the harvest.

The two traditions diverged so much that the first trickle of Ethiopian Jewish immigrants to Israel were asked to undergo a quickened conversion ceremony to appease rabbis who were dubious about their religious pedigree.

When Israeli clandestine operations rescued large groups of Ethiopian Jews from war and famine in the 1980s and early 1990s, a rabbinic consensus was reached and the newcomers did not have to convert – except for a group known as the Falash Mura, whose ancestors were forcibly converted to Christianity generations before.

The 58 kessoch who arrived in Israel in those early days maintained their leadership role in the Ethiopian Jewish community, and in 1992 successfully lobbied the Israeli government to grant them salaries and status similar to those of government rabbis. But as the aging clergy began ordaining a new generation of kessoch over the past decade, and those new leaders also wanted recognition, Israel’s rabbinate objected.

After public demonstrations and a brief hunger strike, the newly ordained kessoch struck a bittersweet deal last month with Israel’s ministry of religious services.

The ministry would finally implement a 2010 government resolution to recognize 13 of them and give them state salaries. But Israel’s state rabbis made it very clear to the new kessoch: They would be the last.

“It’s for the best,” said Rabbi Yosef Hadana, 63, of the Israeli rabbinate.

Himself the son of a respected kess, Hadana long ago traded the shash, the white turban of his father’s tradition, for the black suit and fedora of ultra-Orthodox Jews.

“After 2,500 years of isolation from the nation of Israel, we have returned. Now we need to find a way to be one people,” Rabbi Hadana said.

Hadana says he holds great respect for the kessoch. They were the ones who once spun tales of Jerusalem’s splendor at evening storytelling sessions, keeping alive the Ethiopian Jews’ religious tradition. But anyone in Israel who wants to continue that tradition, he said, must get rabbinic training. Streamlining their religious practice can help integrate Ethiopian immigrants into Israeli society, he said.

Ethiopian-Israelis have long struggled in Israel, with literacy rates relatively low, the culture gap wide and rates of poverty and domestic violence well above the national average.

Many of the older generation work menial jobs, men as security guards and women as cleaners. Their children, most of whom grew up in Israel’s Orthodox Jewish religious schools, speak fluent Hebrew, serve in the army alongside native Israelis and are increasingly studying engineering and sciences in Israel’s universities. Despite these gains, the younger generation is still struggling compared to other Israelis.

The immigrants have also long complained of discrimination. In the late 90s it was discovered that Israel’s health services were throwing out Ethiopian-Israelis’ blood donations over fears of diseases contracted in Africa.

This is not the first time in history that Ethiopian Jews have been asked to reform. Jacques Faitlovitch, one of the first Jewish outsiders to meet the community, told the kessoch in 1904 they would have to stop antiquated paschal sacrifices if they wanted acceptance in the wider Jewish world.

Polish-born Faitlovitch also pushed them to stop Judaism’s last existing monastic tradition. Ethiopia’s last Jewish monk spent his final days in Israel, secluded in a synagogue annex and preparing his own food for reasons of purity. He died about 10 years ago.

Other traditions, like priestly tithes and huts for menstruating women, were also given up upon moving to Israel.

Still, the kessoch, easily recognized by their ceremonial fly-swatting tassels and rainbow-colored sunbrellas, are not ready to be relegated to history. First-generation Ethiopian immigrants still call on them to adjudicate family conflicts, lead funeral prayers, and slaughter meat according to tradition.

Israel only recently allowed kessoch into butcheries to slaughter their own animals – even though it is not considered kosher by rabbinic standards.

But the rabbis still put their foot down when it comes to marriage. To be legal, weddings must be presided by state-recognized rabbis and include mainstream Jewish practices, like exchanging rings and stomping on a glass.

Despite the country’s secular majority, its Orthodox rabbis strictly govern Jewish weddings. Israel does not recognize civil marriages, intermarriages or marriages performed by rabbis from the more liberal Reform and Conservative branches of Judaism – unless they took place abroad.

Israeli rabbis have now agreed to train the 13 new kessoch to perform marriages the mainstream Jewish way. Nevertheless, for most of the kessoch, the prohibition on marrying is such a slap in the face that they cannot bear to show up at the weddings of their own community members.

Instead, they perform their own pirate wedding ceremonies for the newlyweds a few days later – a modest reenactment of the weeklong marriage celebrations they used to hold back in Africa.

At one nighttime ceremony in seaside Ashkelon, women in embroidered cotton robes bounced their shoulders to African beats. Family and friends greeted the couple with the toot of a golden horn. Honey beer flowed from a steel kettle, and an army of men scooped curried lamb – slaughtered by the presiding kess – onto flat injera bread.

Newly ordained Kess Abiyu Azariya, 44, pushed his way to the head of the dance floor. Wearing a white turban and shawl, he recited wedding blessings in the ancient Ethiopian tongue, Geez. “I am singing these prayers to remind the young people what a wedding was like in Ethiopia,” he told the crowd in spoken Amharic.

But the young people were nowhere in sight. Most of the 300 revelers in the room were of the older generation. The dozen young Ethiopian-Israelis who showed up that evening were outside drinking cheap Israeli beer and fiddling with their smartphones. When asked about the practice, they were ambivalent.

“I hope it continues, but it probably won’t,” said David Nadou, 24, shrugging.

The newly ordained kessoch are trying to work against that tide. Kess Semai says they’re close to ordaining yet another group of 30 kessoch – even though Israel vows not to recognize any more.

“We kept this tradition for more than 2,500 years,” Kess Semai said. “Our community won’t allow in the span of 30 years for this tradition to be erased completely.”

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The assassination of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan was the latest in a year that has already seen new U.S. economic sanctions, threats to bar American ships from the Persian Gulf, an Iranian death sentence to a jailed U.S. citizen and an escalation in Tehran’s uranium enrichment program.

Iranian reports said two assailants on a motorcycle attached a magnetic bomb to Roshan’s car, killing him and his driver. Roshan was a chemistry expert and director of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran, and the slaying suggested a widening covert effort to set back the Islamic republic’s atomic program.

But U.S. officials said they had nothing to do with it.

“I want to categorically deny any United States involvement in any kind of act of violence inside Iran,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters. “We believe there has to be an understanding between Iran, its neighbors and the international community that finds a way forward for it to end its provocative behavior, end its search for nuclear weapons and rejoin the international community and be a productive member of it.”

Earlier, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland wouldn’t answer a question about whether Washington was involved in the killing — or if the administration viewed Roshan as an innocent victim. “I’m not going to speak to who may or may not have done this,” she told reporters.

The attack also came one day after Israeli military chief Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz was quoted as telling a parliamentary committee that 2012 would be critical for Iran — in part because of “things that happen to it unnaturally.”

And other Israeli officials, hinted at covert campaigns against Iran without directly admitting involvement.

“Many bad things have been happening to Iran in the recent period,” said Mickey Segal, a former director of the Israeli military’s Iranian intelligence department. “Iran is in a situation where pressure on it is mounting, and the latest assassination joins the pressure that the Iranian regime is facing.”

Iranian authorities blamed Israel.

One former official said the magnetic-bomb attack does bear the hallmarks of an Israeli hit. Current and former U.S. officials say Washington prefers proxies like Israel to carry out operations inside Iran, and that up until two years ago, the U.S. and Israel coordinated actions against Iran closely. But the officials say the White House halted such cooperation after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took power.

The officials, past and present, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive strategic negotiations.

In the event that a military intervention might be needed to halt Iran’s progress toward nuclear weapons capability, they said counterterrorist officials had considered allowing Israel to use the U.S.-Afghan Shindand Airbase, in western Afghanistan, to launch an air strike against Iranian weapons facilities

The attack in Tehran bore a strong resemblance to earlier killings of scientists working on the Iranian nuclear program — which Iran has blamed on Israel’s Mossad, the CIA and Britain’s spy agency. They point to at least three slayings since early 2010 and the release of a malicious computer virus known at Stuxnet in 2010 that temporarily disrupted controls of some centrifuges — a key component in nuclear fuel production. But all three countries have denied the Iranian accusations.

The U.S. and its allies are pressuring Iran to halt uranium enrichment, fearful that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons. Iran insists the program is for peaceful purposes only and geared toward generating electricity and producing medical radioisotopes to treat cancer patients.

Natanz is Iran’s main enrichment site, but officials claimed earlier this week that they are expanding some operations to an underground site south of Tehran with more advanced equipment.

Clinton condemned Iran in a statement Tuesday for enriching uranium at the underground Fordo bunker to a level that can be upgraded more quickly for use in a nuclear weapon than the main stockpile. She said Tehran was demonstrating a “blatant disregard for its responsibilities” and that “”there is no plausible justification” for its decision to increase enrichment to 20 percent — higher than the 3.5 percent being made at Iran’s main plant.

Speaking beside Qatar’s visiting prime minister, Clinton expanded her criticism of Iran on Wednesday and expressed concern about a series of “provocative and dangerous” threats by Iranian officials to close off the Strait of Hormuz, which connects the world to the oil-rich waters of the Persian Gulf.

“This is an international waterway,” she told reporters in Washington. “The United States and others are committed to keeping it open. It’s part of the lifeline that keeps oil and gas moving around the world.”

She said the U.S. and its partners were making it clear to Tehran that such threats were unacceptable.

Washington and Tehran also are at odds over an Iranian court’s death sentence Monday for Amir Hekmati, a 28-year-old former U.S. military translator who was born in Arizona and raised in Michigan. Iran says he is a CIA spy; the Obama administration flatly rejects the accusations.

It is the first time Iran has handed down a death sentence to a U.S. citizen since the Islamic Revolution 33 years ago. Hekmati’s family says he was in Iran visiting his grandmothers.

Prime Minister Sheik Hamad Bin Jassem Bin Jabr Al Thani of Qatar, a country with deep economic ties to Iran and which exports its natural gas to the rest of the world through the Strait of Hormuz, urged more negotiations among Tehran, Washington and the rest of the international community.

“We need to find a way to live together, a peaceful way,” he said. “For us, it’s very important that we don’t trigger any military tension in the region.”

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But Israel wants to change that perception. The Jewish nation wants to become the LGBT beacon of the Middle East, the Associated Press reports.

Israel’s Ministry of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs has established a cadre of LGBT volunteers to promote its image abroad.

Ministry spokesman Gal Ilan said Thursday that the goal was to highlight Israel’s diversity. He said when people think about Israel, the gay community is often overlooked.

There are no details yet on how many people have volunteered.

In general, homosexuals have a hard time worldwide. But the Middle East seems to be the most dangerous area to be rainbow friendly. Syria, Israel’s neighbor to the north, criminalizes homosexuality and offenders can be slapped with three-year prison sentences. Israel’s other neighbors Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan do not have laws banning homosexuality. But neither nation is particularly welcoming of openly gay people, either.

Do you think Israel’s recruitment of gays and lesbians to promote their homeland is a good idea? Let us know what you think.

Check out the full article on gays in Israel here.

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The coin-sized seal found near the Jewish holy site at the Western Wall bears two Aramaic words meaning “pure for God.”

Archaeologist Ronny Reich of Haifa University said it dates from between the 1st century B.C. to 70 A.D. – the year Roman forces put down a Jewish revolt and destroyed the second of the two biblical temples in Jerusalem.

The find marks the first discovery of a written seal from that period of Jerusalem’s history, and appeared to be a unique physical artifact from ritual practice in the Temple, said Reich, co-director of the excavation.

Very few artifacts linked to the Temples have been discovered so far. The site of the Temple itself – the enclosure known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary – remains off-limits to archaeologists because of its religious and political sensitivity.

Archaeologists say the seal was likely used by Temple officials approving an object for ritual use – oil, perhaps, or an animal intended for sacrifice. Materials used by Temple priests had to meet stringent purity guidelines stipulated in detail in the Jewish legal text known as the Mishna, which also mention the use of seals as tokens by pilgrims.

The find, Reich said, is “the first time an indication was brought by archaeology about activities in the Temple Mount – the religious activities of buying and offering and giving to the Temple itself.”

The site where the seal was found is on the route of a main street that ran through ancient Jerusalem just outside the Temple compound.

Aren Maeir of Bar-Ilan University, a biblical archaeologist not connected to the dig, said the seal was special because it “was found right next to the Temple and is similar to what we see described in the Mishna.”

“It’s nice when we can connect an activity recorded in ancient sources with archaeological finds,” he said.

The seal was found in an excavation run by archaeologists from the government’s Israel Antiquities Authority. The dig is under the auspices of a broader dig nearby known as the City of David, where archaeologists are investigating the oldest part of Jerusalem.

The City of David dig, located inside the nearby Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan and funded by a Jewish group affiliated with the settlement movement, is the Holy Land’s highest-profile and most politically controversial excavation.

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Ambassador Howard Gutman forewarned a gathering of European Jews last week that he would challenge their assumptions on anti-Semitism. He started by recounting his own personal history as the Jewish son of a Holocaust survivor, and then explained why he felt it was important to differentiate between older forms of anti-Jewish hatred and a newer, growing anti-Semitism in Europe stemming from the tensions of the Israeli-Arab conflict.

“Classic bigotry” is being held in check, he said. But, citing the recent resignation of a Belgian professor and a racially motivated attack by several students on a young Jewish girl in Belgium, Gutman spoke of the “problem within Europe of tension, hatred and sometimes even violence between some members of Muslim communities or Arab immigrant groups and Jews.”

“It is a tension and perhaps hatred largely born of and reflecting the tension between Israel, the Palestinian territories and neighboring Arab states in the Middle East over the continuing Israeli-Palestinian problem,” he said, according to a prepared text. A full transcript of Gutman’s remarks wasn’t made public and few journalists were in attendance.

The story gained momentum over the weekend, prompting the White House on Saturday to condemn anti-Semitism in all forms. Gutman issued a similar statement, but some Jewish groups expressed outrage. Republican presidential candidates including Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney demanded Gutman’s resignation.

Gutman’s critics have argued that by drawing a distinction between different types of anti-Semitic hatred, he implied the newer form was somehow less heinous or excusable. Others contested whether it was fair to point to Israel’s policies as a cause for the growth of anti-Semitism.

Still, Gutman described Muslim anti-Semitism as well as a “serious problem” that demands counterstrategies.

He said much of the responsibility lies with Israel and Arab governments to establish peace.

“The largest part of the solution remains in the hands of government leaders in Israel and the Palestinian territories and Arab countries in the Middle East,” Gutman said. “It is the area where every new settlement announced in Israel, every rocket shot over a border or suicide bomber on a bus and every retaliatory military strike exacerbates the problem and provides a setback here in Europe for those fighting hatred and bigotry here in Europe.”

Gutman said this situation was unfortunate in that it affects people in Europe a continent away from the problem. But he argued that was fortunate because, unlike with the older anti-Semitism, a remedy exists. “Peace in the Middle East would indeed equate with a huge reduction of this form of labeled `anti-Semitism’ here in Europe,” he said.

His comments, which weren’t cleared by the State Department, have put the Obama administration in a bind. Officials have refused to condemn or endorse Gutman’s argument, repeating only its condemnation of anti-Semitism in all its manifestations. After the resignation calls from Romney and Gingrich, the State Department said it had full confidence in Gutman.

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The conversation between Sarkozy and Obama was overheard by reporters last week at the Group of 20 summit in southern France, via headsets that were to be used for simultaneous translation of an upcoming news conference.

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Obama, whose remarks were heard via a French translation, was not heard objecting to Sarkozy’s characterization of Netanyahu. Through the interpreter, Obama was heard asking Sarkozy to help persuade the Palestinians to stop their efforts to gain U.N. recognition of a Palestinian state.

In Israel, the frank assessment elicited shock from some viewers — and chuckles and agreement from others.

Several French-speaking journalists, including one from The Associated Press, overheard the comments but did not initially report them because Sarkozy’s office had asked the journalists not to turn on the headsets until the press conference began, and the comments were deemed private under French media traditions.

A French website that analyzes media coverage of current affairs, Arret sur images, reported the fragments Tuesday.

Sarkozy’s office would not comment Tuesday on the remarks, or on France’s relations with Israel. The White House and Netanyahu’s spokesman also said they had no comment.

In the remarks Thursday in Cannes, Sarkozy said: “Netanyahu, I can’t stand him. He’s a liar.”

According to the French interpreter, Obama responded, “You are sick of him, but I have to work with him every day.”

The journalists heard only fragments of the leaders’ conversation.

Since becoming president in 2007, Sarkozy has strengthened French ties with Israel while also seeking to use France’s traditional good relations with Arab allies to encourage peace talks.

His latest comments reflect his increasing frustration with Netanyahu, and may complicate French efforts toward Mideast peace.

France’s government has not said so officially but appears to see Netanyahu as partially responsible for the deadlock in peace talks. France has repeatedly urged Netanyahu to stop building Jewish settlements in the West Bank and come to the negotiating table, to little avail.

“I think all this must not make us lose sight of the basics — which is to say there’s not a minute to lose to continue to work on the Israeli-Palestinian issue,” French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero told reporters Tuesday.

“In our relationship with Israel, as with our relationship with the Palestinians, what we want is to continue to work so that things move ahead — because they’re not moving ahead,” Valero said.

Obama, meanwhile, is thought to be cool to Netanyahu. At meetings, their lack of personal chemistry is clear.

Netanyahu has cultivated close ties to the Republican Party and is widely believed to consider Obama naive about the Middle East. After a meeting in the Oval Office five months ago, Netanyahu lectured the U.S. president on his view of Middle East realities even as cameras rolled, with Obama listening glumly by his side.

The overheard remarks by Sarkozy and Obama were prominently covered in Israel, where Sarkozy — whose maternal grandfather was Jewish — is widely perceived as a friend, in striking contrast to some of his predecessors.

Israel has had a fraught relationship with France. The country was an early supporter of the Jewish state, selling it arms and planes and helping it develop a nuclear reactor. But the relationship soured under Charles de Gaulle, perceived as having abandoned Israel before the 1967 war.

“There has been improvement of the relationship since Sarkozy took over,” Avi Pazner, who was Israel’s ambassador to France in the 1990s, said Tuesday.

In comments at the G-20 last week, Sarkozy said that if Israel’s existence is threatened, “France will not stand by with arms crossed.”

Netanyahu, meanwhile, is a controversial figure even at home. He is widely seen as divisive, and is regularly pilloried by the center-left opposition for preferring settlement construction in the West Bank to peace talks with a relatively moderate Palestinian leadership.

“Obama is wrong,” wrote one reader on the Israeli newspaper Haaretz’s web site. “We’re the ones that have to deal with him every day.”

In Jerusalem, retired driver Yair Peleg said Obama and Sarkozy made an accurate call about Netanyahu. Peleg, 66, said he voted for Netanyahu’s Likud party in the past but won’t anymore because of Netanyahu’s free-market economic policies, which many here believe has fueled a growing gap between rich and poor.

“Not only is he a liar, but a big liar,” Peleg said. “He speaks with his hands, it’s all about me, me me, and meanwhile he doesn’t do anything.”

Shabi Nissim chuckled as he heard the details of the slip. Nissim manages a yogurt and juice bar. “I am embarassed for Netanyahu,” he said. “It’s humiliating.”

The often blunt Sarkozy has shown little patience with Israeli hard-liners, and two years ago urged Netanyahu to fire his outspoken foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman. In a private meeting, Sarkozy told Netanyahu that “you must get rid of that man,” according to two officials.

This September, the French leader tried to head off the Palestinians’ request for membership in the United Nations with a last-minute effort to revive peace talks.

But France then surprised Washington and other observers by voting last week in favor of membership for Palestine in UNESCO, the U.N. cultural and educational agency.

Remarks overheard by journalists have embarrassed world leaders in the past. At a Group of Eight summit in 2006, an open microphone caught then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair appearing subservient to President George W. Bush, who greeted him by shouting, “Yo, Blair!”

The poll reveals that 60 percent of Jewish voters approve of the president’s job performance, while 85 percent of Jewish Democrats approved.

Such numbers refute many predictions that Jewish supporters would abandon Obama because of comments made at a May 19 speech instructing Palestinians and Israelis to use 1967 boundaries as the starting point for peace talks.

The NY Daily News Reports:

Former New York mayor Ed Koch and the Republican presidential candidates took turns accusing Obama of abandoning a trusted ally.

Obama insisted his support of Israel was unwavering and that what he was calling for was essentially the same thing that every President since the first President Bush have backed – just not publicly.

Read More At NYDailyNews.com

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Israelis Fume At Obama Suggestion Of Border

WASHINGTON — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a cheering U.S. Congress on Tuesday he was willing to make “painful compromises” for peace with the Palestinians, but he offered little concrete to entice Palestinians back to the bargaining table.

By giving such a high-profile speech before overwhelmingly supportive U.S. lawmakers, Netanyahu was able to demonstrate to Israelis that he retains strong backing in the United States despite his frosty relations with President Barack Obama.

He also moved the needle on territorial compromise, for the first time explicitly saying in his address that Israel would have to give up some West Bank settlements.

But Palestinians immediately rejected his overall peace package, which for the most part was a recycling of previously stated positions that the Palestinians had turned down. One senior Palestinian official even dubbed Netanyahu’s peace blueprint a “declaration of war.”

Speaking before a sympathetic Congress that showered him with more than two dozen sustained standing ovations, Netanyahu said Israel wants and needs peace and would make “generous” territorial concessions. Under any final peace accord, he added, “some settlements will be beyond Israel’s borders.”

But undercutting his overture was his insistence that Israel hold onto major settlement blocs and all of contested Jerusalem, that his country maintain a long-term military presence on the eastern edge of the West Bank and that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas scuttle his power-sharing agreement with the violently anti-Israel Hamas militants.

He also restated Israel’s refusal to repatriate millions of Palestinians who lost homes in Israel during the fighting over the Jewish state’s 1948 creation.

Unlike the Americans, Palestinians had no accolades for Netanyahu.

In the West Bank, Nabil Shaath, a senior Palestinian official, called the speech “a declaration of war against the Palestinians.”

“This is an escalation and unfortunately, it received a standing ovation,” he said, noting that Netanyahu had rejected Palestinian demands on central issues such as borders, competing claims to Jerusalem and the fate of refugees.

In Gaza, the Islamic militant Hamas fumed that “Netanyahu denied us all our rights.”

“We must work to adopt an Arab and Palestinian strategy based on the right of resistance,” said Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri, referring to armed attacks on Israeli targets.

In lieu of negotiations, Abbas is campaigning to obtain U.N. recognition of Palestinian statehood when the General Assembly meets in September. Both Israel and the U.S. oppose this strategy, calling instead for the negotiated solution that has been the cornerstone of two decades of peace efforts.

Abbas is to meet with leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization and his Fatah movement on Wednesday to discuss their next move. The Palestinians have developed an alternate strategy to moribund negotiations, largely on hold since 2008, and have said they will seek U.N. recognition of their state in September.

Netanyahu came to the U.S. in a fighting mood, sparring – even before he landed – with Obama, who hours before had expressed support for drawing future borders on the basis of the boundaries Israel had before capturing east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967.

Netanyahu repeatedly challenged the president’s position, ignoring Obama’s assertion that the territorial markers could be adjusted through mutually agreed land swaps. The Palestinians accept that principle, which would allow Israel to retain major West Bank settlement blocs and help to assure its security.

In his speech before Congress, Netanyahu backed off from this dispute, acknowledging that the president had not called for a return to Israel’s prewar borders. Israeli officials said that was because Obama sharpened his position on this matter, but it is possible Netanyahu felt he could ease the assault because of the tremendous outpouring of support he received in Congress and, the night before, at a meeting of the powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington.

That support in the U.S. has allowed Netanyahu in the past to fend off Obama’s demands that he do more to advance peacemaking by freezing settlement construction.

Obama has, in large part, staked his reputation in the Muslim world on finding a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

But he has not been able to draw Israelis and Palestinians back to the bargaining table for sustained talks. The Palestinians are refusing to return as long as Israeli settlement construction continues on lands they want for a future state.

Netanyahu, early in his speech, congratulated the United States for killing al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, wishing him “good riddance.” He dismissed shouts from an anti-Israel protester as evidence that freedom of speech is alive and well in the United States and is respected there and in Israel.

In a sign of the sympathy Netanyahu can hope to enjoy in Congress, Obama’s own political ally, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, challenged Obama on the border issue at the AIPAC dinner.

“No one should set premature parameters about borders, about building or about anything else,” Reid, D-Nev., said.

Benjamin Netanyahu made this pledge in an address Monday to thousands of pro-Israel American Jews and U.S. lawmakers. His speech drew roaring cheers and standing ovations, a sign of the powerful backing he enjoys in the U.S. as the White House pressures him to do more to renew stalled Mideast peacemaking.

The warm reception Netanyahu enjoyed at the gala dinner of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee contrasted sharply with the contentious quality of some of his recent exchanges with President Barack Obama precisely over border issues.

His planned address on Tuesday to a joint meeting of Congress, where Israel enjoys strong bipartisan backing, could similarly remind Obama, ahead of his re-election bid, of the political price he might pay if he tries to push Netanyahu too hard.

In that speech, Netanyahu said, he will “outline a vision for a secure Israeli-Palestinian peace.”

But in language that suggested he was not going to take a conciliatory pose, he promised to “speak the unvarnished truth.”

“This conflict has raged for 100 years because the Palestinians refuse to end it. They refuse to accept a Jewish state.”

A peace agreement, he said, must assure Israel’s security: “Israel cannot return to the indefensible 1967 borders,” he declared, rekindling the dispute with Obama in a possible effort to placate territorial hardliners in his government.

Borders became an issue last week when Obama, in a major Mideast policy speech, took the position that any negotiations on final borders of the Jewish and Palestinian states must be based on the boundaries Israel held in 1967 before capturing east Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip – lands the Palestinians claim for their hoped-for state.

In direct statements and through aides, Netanyahu suggested Obama did not understand Israel’s security needs or the realities of the conflict-riven Mideast.

Obama said clearly in his policy speech and in his own address before AIPAC on Sunday that the territorial markers could be adjusted through mutually agreed land swaps – a principle accepted by the Palestinians that would allow Israel to retain major settlement blocs and help assure its security.

But Netanyahu has repeatedly sidelined this part of the Obama message.

In a sign of the sympathy Netanyahu can hope to enjoy in Congress, Obama’s own political ally, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, challenged Obama on the border issue at the AIPAC dinner.

“No one should set premature parameters about borders, about building or about anything else,” Reid, D-Nev., said.

The reference to building alluded to earlier U.S. demands that Israel renew an expired moratorium on settlement construction.

Peacemaking with the Palestinians stalled in late 2008, shortly before Obama and Netanyahu each took office. Obama had hoped to bring the two sides back to the negotiating table and wrest a deal by September 2011. But those efforts foundered after Israel refused to extend a settlement construction slowdown and Palestinians abandoned negotiations after three short weeks, saying continued Israeli building on land they want for a future state did not show good faith.

Now, they are refocusing their strategy on trying to obtain a unilateral declaration of statehood at the U.N. when the General Assembly meets in September. Israel would like to derail that campaign, which, if successful as expected, could compound its diplomatic isolation.

The U.S. also opposes unilateral action, which would put Washington in the awkward position of having to vote against Palestinian statehood at a time when calls for greater democracy are ringing out across the Arab world.

Further complicating peace efforts is a unity deal between rival Palestinian factions that would bring violently anti-Israel Hamas militants into the Palestinian government.

Obama has said Israel should not be expected to negotiate with a government that does not recognize its right to exist.

Anti-Israel hecklers interrupted Netanyahu’s speech several times, but supporters drowned them out, leaping to their feet, giving him a standing ovation and at one point chanting his nickname, “Bibi, Bibi” and pumping their arms in the air.

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JERUSALEM  — Israel’s prime minister on Thursday gave a cool reception to President Barack Obama’s Mideast policy speech, warning a withdrawal from the West Bank would leave Israel vulnerable to attack and setting up what could be a tense meeting at the White House.

In his speech, Obama endorsed the Palestinian position on the borders of their future state, saying it should be based on Israel’s lines before the 1967 Mideast war. Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip in the fighting, and the Palestinians claim those areas for their state.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas planned to convene a meeting with senior officials as soon as possible to decide on the next steps, said Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat.

Abbas is determined “to give President Obama’s effort and that of the international community the chance they deserve,” Erekat said.

The U.S., the international community and even past Israeli governments have endorsed a settlement based on the 1967 lines, but Obama was far more explicit than in the past. His position appeared to put him at odds with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has not accepted the concept.

Reacting to Obama’s speech, Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a full withdrawal from the West Bank, saying the 1967 lines were “indefensible” and would leave major Jewish settlements outside Israel. Netanyahu rejects any pullout from east Jerusalem.

Netanyahu heads to the White House on Friday and said he would seek clarifications.

Behind the rhetoric, though, was the possibility of finding common ground. Obama said he would support agreed-upon territorial swaps between the Israel and the Palestinians, leaving the door open for Israel to retain major West Bank settlements, where the vast majority of its nearly 300,000 Jewish settlers live.

Netanyahu said he would urge Obama to endorse a 2004 American commitment, made by then President George W. Bush, to Israel. In a letter at the time, Bush said a full withdrawal to the 1967 lines was “unrealistic” and a future peace agreement would have to recognize “new realities on the ground.”

Israelis have interpreted Bush’s commitment as U.S. support for retaining the major settlement blocs. Earlier this week, Netanyahu said Israel would have to retain the blocs as part of any future peace agreement.

But Netanyahu also wants to keep other parts of the West Bank, including a strategic section of land along the Jordanian border that he believes is vital to Israel’s security. The Palestinians oppose any Israeli presence in their future state.

Netanyahu said he would reiterate his security demands at Friday’s meeting.

Netanyahu said he plans to raise other demands: Palestinian recognition of Israel as the Jewish homeland, guarantees that Palestinian refugees be resettled outside of Israel and condemnation of an emerging Palestinian government that is to include the anti-Israel Hamas militant group.

With peacemaking stalled for months, the Palestinians have said they will ask the United Nations to recognize their independence in September, with or without a peace deal.

In his speech, Obama rejected the U.N. push. “Symbolic actions to isolate Israel at the United Nations in September won’t create an independent state,” Obama said.

It was not immediately clear whether Obama’s statement on the 1967 borders as the basis for negotiations – something the Palestinians have long sought – would be sufficient to persuade the Palestinians to drop their quest for U.N. recognition.

Former U.S. Democratic Congressman Robert Wexler, president of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace in Washington, said the speech had created a “moment of truth” for the Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

“No longer in earnest can President Abbas seek a United Nations resolution and say he’s serious about the creation of a Palestinian state. And likewise, Prime Minister Netanyahu must determine whether he is willing to negotiate based on the 1967 lines with agreed-upon territorial swaps,” he said.

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Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman said Obama, whom he served as U.S. ambassador to China until last month, undercut an opportunity for Israelis and Palestinians to build trust. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said Obama “threw Israel under the bus” and handed the Palestinians a victory even before negotiations between the parties could resume. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called it “the most dangerous speech ever made by an American president for the survival of Israel.”

Foreign policy has hardly been the center of the debate among the still-forming GOP presidential field. Instead, the candidates and potential candidates have kept their focus — like the country’s — on domestic issues that are weighing on voters and their pocketbooks. Obama’s speech Thursday provided one of the first opportunities for Republicans to assert their foreign policy differences with Obama and his Democratic administration.

Obama endorsed Palestinians’ demands for the borders of its future state based on 1967 borders — before the Six Day War in which Israel occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. That was a significant shift in U.S. foreign policy.

Campaigning here in the state that hosts the first presidential nominating primary, Huntsman also said the United States should respect Israel and work to foster trust between Israelis and Palestinians.

“If we respect and recognize Israel as the ally that it is, we probably ought to listen to what they think is best,” said Huntsman, who served in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush before surprising his party and serving Obama, a Democrat.

He acknowledged he didn’t watch Obama’s speech and was reacting to news coverage — or, as he called it, “the aftermath.”

“It is disrespectful of Israel for America to dictate negotiating terms to our ally,” Romney said in an interview with The Associated Press. “It is not appropriate for the president to dictate the terms.”

Instead, the United States should work with Israel to push for peace without acceding to the Palestinians, he said.

Gingrich said Israel simply cannot go back to the 1967 borders and expect to remain secure, given technological advancements that would allow its enemies to fire rockets deeper into the state.

“Get a map of the region and look at what Hamas does in firing missiles into Israel,” Gingrich told The Associated Press. “The president should have said that Hamas has to abandon its determination to destroy Israel.”

Obama urged Israel to accept that it can never have a truly peaceful nation based on “permanent occupation.” That follows what other Republicans have painted as hostility from this administration toward a stalwart ally in the Middle East.

“The current administration needs to come to terms with its confused and dangerous foreign policy soon, as clarity and security are the necessary conditions of any serious and coherent American set of policies,” Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania said in a statement.

Obama’s speech at the State Department addressed the uprisings sweeping the Arab world. Speaking to audiences abroad and at home, he sought to leave no doubt that the U.S. stands behind the protesters who have swelled from nation to nation across the Middle East and North Africa.

“We know that our own future is bound to this region by the forces of economics and security; history and faith,” the president said.

But the remarks only muddied things, especially on the dicey issue of Jerusalem, said former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

“The city of Jerusalem must never be re-divided,” Pawlenty said. “At this time of upheaval in the Middle East, it’s never been more important for America to stand strong for Israel and for a united Jerusalem.”

Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, a tea party favorite who is leaning toward a run, called the border suggestions “a shocking display of betrayal” to Israel.

“Today President Barack Obama has again indicated that his policy towards Israel is to blame Israel first,” she said in a statement.

On Twitter, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin didn’t directly address the speech but urged Obama to publicly welcome Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instead of ushering him into private meetings away from reporters, as has occurred on Netanyahu’s previous visits. The two leaders will talk Friday at the White House.

“Dear Mr. President, please allow our ally, PM Netanyahu, to respectfully arrive through the front door this time. Thanks, Concerned Americans,” she tweeted.

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The blast could be heard throughout Jerusalem and blew out the windows of two crowded buses.

Rescuers were seen removing bloodied people from the area on stretchers.

Israel’s national rescue service said 25 people were wounded, including 15 seriously. No deaths were reported.

Meir Hagid, one of the bus drivers, said he heard a loud explosion as he drove by the site, located near the main entrance to Jerusalem and its central bus station.

“I heard the explosion in the bus stop,” he said. He halted his vehicle and people got off. He said nobody in his bus was hurt.

Jerusalem suffered dozens of suicide bombings that targeted buses and restaurants during the second Palestinian uprising last decade. But the attacks have halted in recent years. Jerusalem last experienced a suicide bombing in 2004.

The bombing came amid rising tensions between Israel and the Hamas militant group, which has killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings and other attacks in recent years.

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VIDEO: Israeli Commandos Kill 9 On Aid Boat To Gaza

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President Barack Obama leads Israel and the Palestinian Authority into direct talks starting tomorrow aiming for a big prize: a peace deal that will help stabilize the region and thwart Iran’s bid to expand its influence.

Obama is bringing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu together in Washington to seek agreement on security and territorial issues that lie at the heart of their dispute and have defied solution over two decades of negotiation.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has provided openings for regimes seeking to exploit Arab anger for their own purposes, and a resolution could put an end to such maneuvers, said State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley.

Read more at Bloomberg

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Obama-Netanyahu Deny US-Israel Problems Exist

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to announce Friday that Israel and the Palestinians will return to direct negotiations for the first time in 20 months, delivering the Obama administration a small victory in its protracted effort to revive the Middle East peace process, two officials briefed on the situation said Thursday evening.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, have agreed to place a one-year time limit on the talks, these officials said.

Read more at NYTimes

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Pics Of The Week: 08.02.10

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Obama, Netanyahu Deny US-Israel Problems Exist

Amare Stoudemire Embracing Jewish Roots

President Obama suggested Thursday that his Muslim middle name – Hussein – makes a lot of Israelis nervous about his commitment to the Jewish state.

When asked by an Israeli interviewer why many Israelis are “anxious about you,” and “feel like you don’t have a special connection to Israel,” Obama said, “Some of it may just be the fact that my middle name is ‘Hussein,’ and that creates suspicion.”

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President Barack Obama

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OPINION: Do Black People Side With Israelis Or Palestinians?

If you were a Jew, you’d probably feel like you had to be God’s chosen people because other human beings have always treated you so horribly.

Enslaved in Africa, your top guy Moses, through war and attrition, secures you a homeland called “Israel”.

You more or less keep Israel right up until around 70 A.D. when the same Romans who cosigned on the necessity of the death of that heretic among your people, would eventually decide to name that same heretic the “Son of God”, place the entire blame for his death on you and wipe you out.

So what do you do?

Well, first you scatter then you blend of course, wherever you go, but you keep your same traditions and religion, settling throughout the world but being most visible now in Europe.

Then Hitler comes along.

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It speaks volumes that a decision was made basically for the Jews that they should have their own homeland. It was almost as if the West understood that another European Hitler could always arise—and probably would—in which case the Jews would need to be protected by, if nothing else, isolation.

And it’s not like the murder of 6 million Jews really seemed to bother anybody but Jews.

I’m not exactly saying that Hitler punked Europe, but if he hadn’t gotten cocky enough to pull a blitz on London, who knows if and when the Allies would have deaded his run towards world domination.

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One might almost imagine that so long as Hitler’s agenda was only the killing of the Jews, everybody would have continued to pretend that they didn’t see anything.

But imagine that you had nothing to do with the killing of the Jews and you were just home chilling when suddenly you get the news that your home won’t be your home anymore.

You see, it wasn’t your home 2000 years ago and the original inhabitants all of a sudden need it back.

“God” had given them that land and it always had and always would be theirs.

At the very least, you might stop and wanna ask somebody “Whose God?”

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to warm rocky relations on Tuesday, declaring after a White House meeting that any talk of a rift is unfounded. Obama said the U.S.-Israeli bond is unbreakable.

“The United States is committed to Israel’s security,” Obama said as the two leaders addressed reporters in the Oval Office. “We are committed to that special bond. And we are going to do what’s required to back that up, not just with words, but with actions.”

For the Israeli leader’s part, Netanyahu said of solving years of strife with Palestinians: “We’re committed to that peace. I’m committed to that peace.” And he said that reports of the demise of the U.S.-Israeli relationship are “flat wrong.”

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Behind The Scenes At The White House

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Netanyahu said without elaborating that he and Obama discussed specific steps that could be taken in the coming weeks to move the peace process forward. “When I say the next few weeks, that’s what I mean,” he said. “The president means that too.”

Netanyahu and Obama talked in the Oval Office as protesters gathered across the street in Lafayette Park and chanted “No More Aid, End the Blockade,” referring to Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.

The meeting between Obama and Netanyahu was their first since a troubled White House get-together on March 23. That session was frosty, coming three weeks after Israel embarrassed Vice President Joe Biden by announcing plans for new construction in east Jerusalem during his visit. The Palestinians expect east Jerusalem to be the capital of their eventual independent state.

Tuesday’s session was much friendlier than the one in March, when the White House kept Netanyahu out of sight of media coverage. This time, the leaders appeared together before reporters in the Oval Office and then went into a lengthy working lunch.

A critical topic was resuming the U.S.-mediated indirect peace talks. Netanyahu has repeatedly said he is ready to meet face to face with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, but has given few indications of concessions he might be willing to make.

Specifically, he has rejected demands from Obama and the Palestinians for a full settlement freeze in the West Bank and east Jerusalem and a promise to resume negotiations from where they broke off under his more dovish predecessor, Ehud Olmert.

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Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Netanyahu must choose between settlements and peace. “We want to resume direct negotiations, but the problem is that the land that is supposed to be a Palestinian state is being eaten up by settlements,” he told The Associated Press. He said the Palestinian demand that Israel halt all construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem and resume talks where they broke off in 2008 “are not conditions; these are obligations.”

Netanyahu endorsed on Sunday the U.S. idea to return to direct talks between the Israelis and Palestinians, just days after White House officials said Obama would push during the Oval Office session for those negotiations to get under way sooner rather than later.

Addressing his cabinet on Sunday, Netanyahu said the “time has come” for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to get ready to meet with the Israelis “because there is no other way to advance peace. I hope this will be one of the results of the visit to Washington.”

Aides to Obama sounded a hopeful tone late last week, telling reporters that weeks of shuttle diplomacy between the two sides by George Mitchell, Obama’s special envoy to the Middle East, had paid off and “the gaps have narrowed.”

“We believe there are opportunities to further narrow those gaps, to allow the sides to take that next step to direct talks,” added Daniel Shapiro, the senior Middle East director at the National Security Council.

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Obama and Netanyahu also are expected to discuss Israel’s decision Monday to significantly ease its blockade of the Gaza Strip to let in most consumer goods. Israel’s ban on exports from Gaza and limits on shipments of construction material remain.

Israel came under heavy international pressure, including from Obama and other top U.S. officials, to loosen its 3-year-old land and naval blockade of the seaside territory after Israel’s deadly May 31 military raid on a flotilla trying to break the embargo.

At the time, Obama said the situation was “unsustainable.” He called for a narrow blockade to bar weapons that Gaza’s Hamas rulers could use against Israel while admitting items the territory’s 1.5 million Palestinians need for daily living and economic development.

Obama and Netanyahu also are likely to discuss efforts to end Iran’s nuclear weapons pursuit, including sanctions Obama signed into law last week. That legislation followed a fourth round of U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran.

Tuesday’s meeting was the fifth between Obama and Netanyahu and would make up for a scheduled June 1 session at the White House that Netanyahu canceled to deal with fallout from the flotilla raid.

The session follows meetings Obama held at the White House in recent weeks with major Mideast players, including Abbas and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

Getting both sides to resume direct talks, which broke off in December 2008, is a huge challenge. One big sticking point is Israel’s continued construction of Jewish housing in east Jerusalem, an area the Palestinians claim as part of a hoped-for future state.

The Palestinians have refused to sit down with Netanyahu until he agrees to freeze construction in areas they want for an independent state. Israel recently said it has no intention of doing that.

Abbas said last week that the borders of a future Palestinian state and security relations with Israel are the two issues on the table. He said direct talks can resume if an agreement is reached on them.

Obama has called on Jerusalem to halt settlement construction and on the Palestinians to show progress on security and inciting violence against Israel.

The hypocrisy of America is unreal: Helen Thomas is being crucified by the media for her recent statement in which she said Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and “go home” to Poland and Germany. Now, don’t get me wrong I am not defending her comments but a lot worse has happened since President Obama has took office.

If we as Americans are going to call her out why not Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and others? Mr. Beck recently said “This president I think has exposed himself over and over again as a guy who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture….I’m not saying he doesn’t like white people, I’m saying he has a problem. This guy is, I believe, a racist.” Yet he is still on the FOX news station and on the radio. Mr. Limbaugh said on his radio show that he wanted the President to fail. That statement only made his listenership grow. He also stated about Haiti, the disaster enables Mr. Obama to highlight his “compassionate” and “humanitarian” credentials and to “boost his credibility with the black community,” Limbaugh said.

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He also decried the White House’s promotion of charitable organizations through which people can contribute to the disaster relief. “We’ve already donated to Haiti,” he said. “It’s called the U.S. income tax.” Why is the world coming down so hard on Mrs. Thomas when there’s much worse being said about the President?

I will tell you why: because the world views the Holocaust different then slavery although they really are the same. In the Holocaust the Jews were locked up and separated from their families. They were killed and treated as in-human. Well America the same thing happened on the shores of this country and it was called slavery.

Our country has come so far to the point we elected a black man as the President. Yet we still cannot talk about race when it comes to black and white in this country. We see and hear everyday how blacks are still treated as less than in this country. We see it in the media not one station on cable or regular TV has one show hosted by a Black person that’s opinionated? We see it in the movies were Black actors have to play thugs or sex starved people to get an Oscar.

We have come a long way, no one can deny that, however until this country realizes that another Holocaust took place on its shores we will always be a hypocritical country and that’s why when an 89-year-old woman speaks against the Jewish community all hell breaks loose.

Again Mrs. Thomas was wrong but, if we are willing to give Beck, Limbaugh and many other Americans a pass why not her?

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JERUSALEM – Israeli commandos rappelled down to an aid flotilla sailing to thwart a Gaza blockade on Monday, clashing with pro-Palestinian activists on the lead ship in a botched raid that left at least nine passengers dead.

Bloodied passengers sprawled on the deck and troops dived into the sea to save themselves during several hours of hand-to-hand fighting that injured dozens of activists and six soldiers. Hundreds of activists were towed from the international waters to Israeli detention centers and hospitals.

International condemnation was swift and harsh as Israel scrambled to explain how what was meant to be a simple takeover of a civilian vessel went so badly awry.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu abruptly canceled a planned meeting with President Barack Obama in Washington to rush home. The global reaction appeared likely to increase pressure to end the embargo that has plunged Gaza’s 1.5 million residents deeper into poverty.

Most of the information about what happened on the single ship where violence broke out came from Israel, which cut off all communication to and from the activists and provided testimony and video evidence that its soldiers came under attack by activists armed with metal rods, knives, slingshots and two pistols snatched from the troops.

Passengers reached at an Israeli hospital and journalists aboard the ship accused the soldiers of using excessive force. One passenger, who identified himself as American, spoke briefly with reporters.

“I’m not violent. What I can tell you is that there are bruises all over my body. They won’t let me show them to you,” he said before he was pushed away by a security escort.

A soldier identified only as a sergeant told reporters at a military briefing that the activists on board “were armed with knives, scissors, pepper spray and guns.” He said he was armed only with a paintball rifle. “It was a civilian paintball gun that any 12-year-old can play with,” he said. “I saw my friends on the deck spitting blood.”

The high-seas confrontation was a nightmare scenario for Israel, which insisted its soldiers were simply unprepared for what awaited them on the Mavi Marmara, the ship carrying 600 of the 700 activists headed for Gaza. Instead of carrying their regular automatic rifles, the Israelis said they went in with non-lethal paintball guns and pistols they never expected to use.

Israel intercepted the six ships carrying some 10,000 tons of aid for the isolated seaside territory, which has been blockaded by Israel for three years, with Egypt’s cooperation. The Israeli government had urged the flotilla not to try to breach the blockade before the ships set sail from waters off Cyprus on Sunday and offered to take some aid in for them.

Israel has allowed ships through five times, but has blocked them from entering Gaza waters since a three-week military offensive against Gaza’s Hamas rulers in January 2009.

Key regional ally Turkey withdrew its ambassador on Monday, the U.N. Security Council held an emergency session, the British foreign secretary demanded an end to the blockade of Gaza, and Jordan called Israel’s raid a “heinous crime.”

An al-Jazeera journalist delivering a report before Israel cut communications said Israel fired at the vessel before boarding it. In one web posting, a Turkish television reporter on the boat cried out, “These savages are killing people here, please help” — a broadcast that ended with a voice shouting in Hebrew, “Everybody shut up!”

The military said naval commandos descending from a helicopter onto the deck of a Turkish-flagged ship were assaulted by armed activists. Military footage showed activists swarming around the commandos as they rappelled from a helicopter one by one, hitting them with sticks until they fell to the deck, throwing one off the ship and hurling what the military said was a firebomb.

Speaking alongside the Canadian prime minister, Netanyahu expressed “regret” for the loss of life but said the soldiers “had to defend themselves, defend their lives, or they would have been killed.”

Activists said Israeli naval commandos stormed the ships after ordering them to stop in international waters, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) from Gaza’s coast.

A spokeswoman for the Free Gaza movement, which organized the flotilla, said the group’s goal — beyond just bringing supplies to the impoverished territory — was to shatter the blockade.

“What we’re trying to do is open a sea lane between Gaza and the rest of the world,” Greta Berlin said in Cyprus. “We’re not trying to be a humanitarian mission. We’re trying to say to the world, ‘You have no right to imprison a million and a half Palestinians.’”

Israel’s international image had already taken a beating from allegations that it committed war crimes during its 2008-2009 winter war in Gaza, and from widespread global opposition to the blockade. Hamas was also accused of rights violations in that conflict.

Relations with Turkey, a key supporter of the aid flotilla but also until recently Israel’s staunchest ally in the Muslim world, were badly damaged by Monday’s events, possibly irreparably. Ankara announced it would recall its ambassador and call off all military exercises with Israel. Around 10,000 Turks marched in protest.

At the U.N., Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu called the raid “murder conducted by a state” and demanded an immediate Israeli apology, international legal action and an end to the blockade.

The bloody showdown came at a sensitive time for Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking. Netanyahu had hoped to receive a high-profile expression of support from Obama after months of strained relations over Israeli settlement construction.

Obama voiced “deep regret,” over the raids, and the White House said he and Netanyahu agreed by phone to reschedule White House talks. The U.S. recently began mediating indirect peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians following a 17-month breakdown in contacts.

Israel’s immediate concern on Monday was what to do about the boats and their passengers. It ferried the wounded to hospitals by helicopter and towed the six ships to port, giving each of the activists a choice of deportation or detention.

By late Monday, about 150 of the activists — most from Turkey — had been taken off the boats, Israeli Interior Ministry spokeswoman Sabine Haddad said, adding the process would continue into Tuesday. She said about 30 had agreed to be deported, and the rest would be detained.

A commando who spoke to reporters on a naval vessel off the coast, identified only as “A,” said he and his comrades were taken off guard by a group of Arabic-speaking men when they rappelled onto the deck. He said some of the soldiers were stripped of their helmets and their pistols and some had jumped overboard to escape the violence.

A high-ranking naval official displayed a box confiscated from the boat containing switchblades, slingshots, metal balls and metal bats.

Turkey’s NTV network showed activists beating one commando with sticks as he landed on deck. Dr. Arnon Afek, deputy director of Chaim Sheba Medical Center outside Tel Aviv, said two commandos were brought in with gunshot wounds. Another had serious head wounds, Afek added.

At Barzilai hospital in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, a few activists trickled in under military escort, claiming they had been beaten during the assault.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the Israeli “massacre” and declared three days of mourning across the West Bank.

Ismail Haniyeh, leader of the rival Hamas government in Gaza, condemned the “brutal” Israeli attack and called on U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to intervene.

After nightfall, Hamas-linked militants fired a rocket that exploded in Israel, the militants and the Israeli military said. Nobody was hurt. The militants said the rocket attack was in response to Israel’s raid on the flotilla.

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As we enter this holiday season, Jews around the world will celebrate Hanukah. And the global Jewish community is a diverse one, a multicultural and multiracial assemblage, by no means monolithic, representing millions of people throughout the world. Jews in China look like other Chinese, while Jews in India resemble other Indians, as is the case with the Igbo Jews of Nigeria and the Lemba of Southern Africa, and so on. They differ in their religious and cultural expression. For example, some may not know about glatt kosher, but still observe traditional dietary laws. And in some places only women can become a mohel (the person who performs circumcisions on baby boys).

But like a faulty census that leaves out people and portrays an inaccurate picture of what is happening, the Jewish Diaspora is not counting all of its members. Part of the reason is that Jews of color are often held in suspicion, not viewed as real or authentic. The reality is that black and brown Jews always existed, and for thousands of years. Given the places where the stories in the ancient scriptures took place, what else could you expect? Yet, media images – including Charlton Heston’s portrayal of a blond-haired, blue-eyed Moses in The Ten Commandments – only serve to create confusion concerning race and Judaism.

“Jews of color have been like Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird, a bird trying to reintegrate itself into its flock, but looks so different that the flock would turn itself on the painted bird, pecking on the painted bird until it falls to the ground,” said Rabbi Capers Funnye, head rabbi of the predominantly African-American Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation in Chicago. The congregation was founded in 1918 by a rabbi from Bombay, India.

Rabbi Funnye converted to Judaism, but his introduction to Judaism was through the lens of Africa. His congregation combines the usual Jewish prayers with gospel music and the beat of the drum. But that is ok, because that is what culture is all about. “Jewish practices are based on cultural adaptations, where people found themselves,” the rabbi notes. Although he is a rabbi with extensive knowledge and undeniable passion, Rabbi Funnye is asked if he is really a Jew. “For a Jew who don’t look like you, that question is offensive,” he responds.

Rabbi Funnye – who is also a member of the Chicago Board of Rabbis, and the cousin of First Lady Michelle Obama – recently gave the keynote speech at a symposium on race and Judaism at Temple University. The symposium was convened by Professor Lewis Gordon of Temple’s Center for Afro-Jewish Studies, and had participation from the Institute for Jewish and Community Research and Be’chol Lashon, a San Francisco-based group which encourages ethnic, racial and cultural inclusion in the Jewish community.

The conference was refreshing in that it invited a discussion on subjects usually not covered in academia or the mainstream Jewish community. For example, there was a discussion on Rabbi Alysa Stanton, the first African-American woman ordained as a rabbi, and the first black rabbi to lead a majority white congregation. Stanton, whose congregation is in Greenville, NC, received death threats and required a police escort the day she was installed as rabbi.

Another topic of discussion was Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, that mythic symbol of black-Jewish cooperation who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King. Rabbi Heschel is a great source of pride for the Jewish community, yet he was marginalized during his life, and regarded as an oddball. Other rabbis advised him to stay away from the rabble-rouser King. And today, Heschel’s anti-racist, social justice message is defanged.

Further, there was an examination of black-Jewish relations and the civil rights coalition, and the manner in which Jews benefited from civil rights in ways blacks could not; the focus by organizations such as the ADL on issues of Jewish authenticity and Minister Louis Farrakhan, when there are genocides taking place around the world; concepts of whiteness and blackness, and the ways in which the Jewish communities have negotiated race. Participants also tackled such weighty issues as black power, and the attempts to equate it with anti-Semitism; the disproportionate representation of neoconservative Jewish voices in American political discourse, and the use of white Ashkenazi Jewish voices as the authoritative voice against affirmative action.

Included in the symposium was the inevitable discussion of Israel, and the ways in which some immigrants become “white” when they arrive in Israel, although they were not considered as such in their home countries. And of course, there is Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Rabbi Funnye, who works with the Palestinian-American community in Chicago, believes that Israel must do a better job of showing its own diversity. He also shed some light on African-American perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Black people don’t say anything because they see the Palestinians as David, and Israel as Goliath,” Funnye concluded. “They don’t want to be called anti-Semites.”

These are tough issues, to be sure, and the conversations must continue at Temple University and throughout the country and the world. A culture benefits when its diverse voices are allowed to express themselves. This is how a culture sustains itself and grows. Jews of color have much to contribute, and much to say. And they must be heard.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member David A. Love, JD is a journalist and human rights advocate based in Philadelphia, and a contributor to the Huffington Post, theGrio, the Progressive Media Project and McClatchy-Tribune News Service, among others. He contributed to the book, States of Confinement: Policing, Detention, and Prisons (St. Martin’s Press, 2000). Love is a former Amnesty International UK spokesperson. His blog is davidalove.com.

BOSTON — President Obama will deliver his first address to a Jewish organization since taking office when he speaks to UJC/The Jewish Federations of North America on Nov. 9 in Washington.

Mr. Obama’s approval ratings in Israel dropped into the single digits this summer as he increased pressure on the Israeli government to freeze settlements in the West Bank. Since then, amid immovable resistance from Israel, Mr. Obama has largely set aside that issue as a first step toward restarting Middle East peace talks, and is now instead pressing Palestinians and Israelis to negotiate all the difficult issues between them toward a final deal.

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No one in the White House, the Israeli government or among Palestinian officials is publicly predicting a breakthrough out of the three-way Mideast meeting that President Barack Obama is hosting here. And yet the session Tuesday is seen as a crucial step for Obama.

After seeing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu andPalestinian President Mahmoud Abbas separately, Obama is bringing the two together for the first Israeli-Palestinian meeting since Netanyahu took office in March. Taking place on the sidelines of this week’s annual U.N. General Assembly here, just the fact that the meeting is scheduled is big news.

Even if little more than a photo opportunity, it will probably be the most-watched portion of a marathon day of international diplomacy for Obama, a 12-hour sprint through many high-profile global problems and disputes.

In addition to the three-way Mideast talks, Obama meets the Chinese president at a fraught time in the Washington-Beijing relationship; plays luncheon host, as America’s first black president, to sub-Saharan African leaders for talks on boosting opportunities for young people in their poverty-stricken nations; delivers key speeches toformer President Bill Clinton‘s Global Initiative and to a U.N. heads-of-state session on the stalled issue ofclimate change; and ends the day with a U.N.-sponsored leaders dinner.

The Israeli-Palestinian sit-down wasn’t announced until Saturday and comes with the two sides still far apart on what it would take to resume peace talks that broke off in 2008.

U.S. envoy George Mitchell failed last week to bridge the gap between the two sides on the issue of Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory, putting the long hoped-for three-way meeting in doubt. Obama has askedIsrael to freeze all settlement construction, a condition for Abbas to resume negotiations. But Israel has only committed to a partial halt.

Still, the sides decided to go ahead, even though Obama is considered unlikely to resolve the settlement showdown and announce a relaunching of peace talks.

“We have no grand expectations out of one meeting,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

One reason to have the meeting is the need to get momentum going.

“The U.S. wants to and the U.S. needs to negotiate in public,” said Jon Alterman, a senior fellow in Middle East policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former State Department official inPresident George W. Bush‘s first term. “There’s a perceived need for the U.S. to visibly be involved in making progress on Arab-Israeli issues.”

Obama opens his day with brief remarks to a climate summit convened by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. As an opener for Wednesday’s main General Assembly meetings, Ban invited all leaders to the climate summit, hoping to generate political momentum for crucial talks in Copenhagen in December on a new global treaty to curb global warming.

Over 100 leaders plan to attend, the largest number ever to discuss climate change.

Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Obama will “reaffirm the U.S. commitment to addressing the challenge” — something he hasn’t done previously before what she called “the entire global audience.”

Yet Obama appears before fellow leaders with little to show in his own country on the issue so important to him. A source of great disappointment about Obama in Europe, a House bill to limit greenhouse gas emissions was passed in June but has languished in the Senate and probably won’t go anywhere until next year, if at all.

“Clearly, the road is rough ahead,” Rice said. “But I think it is significant that you will have many heads of state … all together and seriously addressing this problem.”

With Chinese President Hu Jintao, Obama has a full plate.

A little more than a week ago, the president penalized China, citing thousands of lost U.S. jobs when slapping punitive tariffs on all Chinese-made tire imports. Though the move appears unlikely to spark a trade war, it infuriated China at a time when Obama wants Beijing‘s help on climate change and nuclear standoffs with Iranand North Korea.

As a veto-holding member of the U.N. Security Council, China’s support is crucial for getting new sanctions against Iran‘s suspected nuclear weapons program. That topic is especially timely given the upcoming Oct. 1 talks between Iran and an international group that includes the U.S. and China.

China also is the world’s third-largest economy, and is participating in the Group of 20 meetings Obama is hosting later this week in Pittsburgh on the economic crisis.

From PressTV

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual leader of Israel’s Shas Party, has called US President Barack Obama “a slave” who seeks to rule the world and control Tel Aviv’s affairs.

“American insidiousness tells us to build here and not to build there as though we were slaves working for them,” he said. “We live in a time when slaves are governing us and are trying to control us.”

The racist remarks were made during Yosef’s weekly sermon on Saturday during which he protested the Obama administration’s policy to exert pressure on Tel Aviv over its settlement expansion.

“We are not employees of the Americans… and Israel does not work for the United States,” he shouted.

Barack Obama, the first African-American US president, has come under increasingly pressure from Israel over his strategy for peace in the Middle East.

In Israel, President Obama is accused of pressuring Tel Aviv to please the Arab states and is criticized for personal dislike for hawkish Netanyahu.

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From The Atlanta Journal Constituition

Cynthia McKinney’s mom said she’s learned that her daughter is on the way home.

Leola McKinney said a friend who contacted the U.S. Embassy in Israel reported that the former congresswoman was released from Israeli custody and taken to Ben Gurion International Airport.

“We finally got word that she was released,” Leola McKinney said late Sunday afternoon. “We don’t know what time she is supposed to fly out. All we know is that they took her to the airport.

“I would be more relieved when I know she’s on the flight,” Leola McKinney added. “But I am relieved that she’s away from there.”

McKinney had been in custody since Tuesday, when she and 20 others were swept up by the Israeli Navy while allegedly trying to sail through a navy blockade. The group says it was attempting to deliver humanitarian supplies to Gaza.

McKinney and the rest of her group could have been released soon after they were taken into custody but they refused to sign a document admitting they violated Israel’s blockade, according to McKinney’s parents. The group was due to appear in an Israeli court Sunday.

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Listen To McKinney’s Phone Call To WBAI

The Israeli navy intercepted a ship carrying foreign peace activists trying to break a blockade of Gaza on Tuesday and forced it to sail to an Israeli port, the military said.

A statement said the Greek-registered freighter Arion ignored a radio message from the Israeli military saying it would not be allowed to enter Gaza waters and ordering it to turn back.

The statement said naval personnel boarded the small vessel without any shots being fired.

The military said those on board would be handed over to immigration authorities on arrival in the southern port of Ashdod, and humanitarian cargo would be trucked into the Gaza Strip after a security check. The ship arrived at Ashdod port after nightfall.

An earlier statement by the voyage’s organizers, the Free Gaza Movement, said the vessel, renamed the Spirit of Humanity, left the Cypriot port of Larnaca on Monday bound for Gaza with three tons of medical supplies.

The 20 passengers include former U.S. Representative Cynthia McKinney, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire and other activists from Britain, Ireland, Bahrain and Jamaica.

The ship was flying a Greek flag, but no Greek citizens were aboard. The Greek government issued a statement saying it sent a message to Israel demanding that it release the ship, crew and passengers.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said Israel was planning to free the crew and passengers. “Nobody wants to keep them here,” he said. “They will be released as soon as they are checked.”

The Free Gaza Movement has organized five boat trips to Gaza since August 2008, defying a blockade imposed by Israel when the militant group Hamas seized control of the territory from its Palestinian rivals in June 2007.

Two other attempts were stopped by Israeli warships during Israel’s three-week war in the territory in December and January. Nobody on board was harmed.

With his speech at Cairo University, President Obama has laid the groundwork, potentially, for a new era of peace in the Mideast. Israeli officials are now realizing that they will have to accept a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians. Meanwhile, there is an indication that the President’s speech is paving the way for waning animosity towards America in the Muslim world, which would undercut the activities of extremist groups that benefit from continued violence, hostility and death in that region of the world.

Well, it is about time. The past administration, whose name I dare not utter for fear it will reappear, paid nothing but lip service to the Mideast. The former president gave a rubber stamp to the status quo, and endorsed Israeli incursions and military strong-arming in the name of the war on terror. That rightwing faux fundamentalist Christian occupant of the White House from 2001 until this past January-and his constituency for that matter-really cared very little about Jewish people. Little that is, except under the fundamentalist concept of the so-called rapture, or end times, in which Jesus returns and Jews who don’t convert to Christianity will supposedly perish, or so the mythology goes. And that is the nonsense that governed Mideast policy for a decade. But I digress…

The Obama speech was a game changer because he accomplished a number of things: he presented a humbler and more contrite America, one which comes to the Muslim world with respect. With that respect, however, came a stern message. Obama discussed the long history of persecution of the Jewish people. Centuries of anti-Semitism culminated in the Holocaust, including the network of death camps-including Buchenwald, which Obama recently visited-that murdered 6 million Jews. “Threatening Israel with destruction — or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews — is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve,” the President emphasized.

Addressing Israel, Obama declared that the growth of the settlements in the West Bank must end. To the Palestinians, he acknowledged their “intolerable” suffering, but suggested that violence will not work. Borrowing from the African American and South African experience, he noted that things changed for Black people not through violence, but fighting for and demanding their rights:

Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It’s a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.

Now, Obama is what some folks would call a real mensch, which is Yiddish for a man of integrity and honor. He laid it out on the table, seemingly without attachments to the way things were done in the past. Surely, he realizes that U.S. policy towards the Mideast must change, and the country must exert some positive leadership. (Whether Obama decides to resist the urge for a Bush-lite policy with empire building in Afghanistan and Pakistan remains to be seen.)

Palestinians cannot sustain any more of an occupation that crushes the spirit and any sense of civil society, and Israelis can no longer pretend that they will ever feel safe, secure and free as long as they subjugate another people with Bantustans, checkpoints and identity cards. The hardliners, the base of Netanyahu’s coalition government, want nothing less than to keep building the settlements. Will the parties come to their senses and come to the table? Time will tell. “Too many tears have flowed. Too much blood has been shed,” as Obama said. “All of us have a responsibility to work for the day when the mothers of Israelis and Palestinians can see their children grow up without fear.”

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BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member David A. Love, JD is a journalist and human rights advocate based in Philadelphia, and a contributor to the Progressive Media Project and McClatchy-Tribune News Service, among others. He contributed to the book, States of Confinement: Policing, Detention, and Prisons (St. Martin’s Press, 2000). Love is a former Amnesty International UK spokesperson. His blog is davidalove.com.

From Daily Press

“Of course I voted for him; he’s my son. I’m proud of him,” Wright said. “I’ve got five biological kids. They all make mistakes and bad choices. I haven’t stopped loving any of them.

“He made mistakes. He made bad choices. I’ve got kids who listen to their friends. He listened to those around him. I did not disown him.”

Asked if he had spoken to the President, Wright said: “Them Jews aren’t going to let him talk to me. I told my baby daughter, that he’ll talk to me in five years when he’s a lame duck, or in eight years when he’s out of office. …

“Ethic cleansing is going on in Gaza. Ethnic cleansing of the Zionist is a sin and a crime against humanity, and they don’t want Barack talking like that because that’s anti-Israel,” Wright said.

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Prodding the international community,President Barack Obama called Friday “for all of us to redouble our efforts” toward separate Israeli and Palestinian states. “The moment is now for us to act,” he declared.

Alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel following his Mideast trip, Obama said: “The United States can’t force peace upon the parties.” But he said America has “at least created the space, the atmosphere, in which talks can restart.”

The president announced he was dispatching special envoy George J. Mitchell back to the region next week to follow up on his speech inCairo a day earlier in which he called for both Israelis and Palestinians to give ground in the standoff.

Obama says Israel must live up to commitments it made under the so-called “Road Map” peace outline to stop constructing settlements and the Palestinians must control violence-inciting acts and statements.

Fresh from visits to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Obama said that while regional powers and the entire international community must help achieve peace, responsibility ultimately falls to Israelis and Palestinians to reach an accord.

Merkel, for her part, promised to cooperate on this long-sought goal. She said the two leaders discussed a time frame for a peace process but did not elaborate.

“I think that, with the new American government and the president, there is a truly unique opportunity to revive this peace process or, let us put this very cautiously, this process of negotiations,” Merkel said.

Added Obama: “I think the moment is now for us to act on what we all know to be the truth, which is each side is going to have to make some difficult compromises.”

He renewed his call for Israel to halt West Bank settlement activity and follow through on such previously made commitments, adding: “I recognize the very difficult politics in Israel of getting that done and I’m very sympathetic to how hard that will be.” He also pressed Palestinians anew to dial back anti-Israel rhetoric, saying thatPalestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ”has made progress on this issue, but not enough.”

While Obama did not address peace-process benchmarks, he told international reporters Thursday in Egypt: “I don’t want to impose an artificial timeline.” He added: “When things stall, everybody knows it … I want to have a sense of movement and progress.”

Touching Friday on an issue that has strained the American-German relationship, Obama also said he didn’t seek any commitments from Germany to take a dozen prisoners when the United States closes its prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. German officials have said most should be resettled in America.

Merkel said her country is prepared to “constructively contribute” to U.S. closure efforts and said she was confident of eventually reaching a “common solution” on the prisoners’ fate.

On other matters, Obama said he’s seen “some progress” in bringing economic stability to the world, and said he and Merkel agreed that they must continue to “work very closely together” on the issue. Addressingclimate change, Obama also said “we’re going to have to make some tough decisions and take concrete actions.”

The two leaders spoke to reporters after meeting privately at a castle in this east Germany city that has bitter wartime memories. Starting on the night of Feb. 13, 1945, first British, then American bombers pounded the defenseless and largely non-strategic architectural gem, igniting a firestorm in which 25,000 people died — and in so doing, creating an enduring controversy.

Obama did not address the firebombing, and was in Dresden at the invitation of Merkel, who hails from her country’s East.

Later, Obama was to tour the Buchenwald concentration camp, where an estimated 56,000 people perished. Thousands were Jews — worked to death, shot or hanged by Nazi guards.

In Thursday’s speech in Egypt, Obama issued a scathing indictment of those who question the Holocaust, saying that to do so “is baseless, it is ignorant, and it is hateful.”

“Threatening Israel with destruction or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews is deeply wrong and only serves to evoke in the minds of the Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve,” Obama added.

It was a pointed message to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has expressed doubts that 6 million Jews died at the hands of the Nazis and who has urged that Israel be wiped from the map.

“He should make his own visit” to Buchenwald, Obama told NBC in an interview Friday. He added: “I have no patience for people who would deny history.”

Earlier, the president told reporters: “The international community has an obligation, even when it’s inconvenient, to act when genocide is occurring.”

Obama is the first U.S. president to visit Buchenwald, and the stop was personal. A great-uncle helped liberate a nearby satellite camp, Ohrdruf, in early April 1945 just days before other U.S. Army units overran Buchenwald.

Ohrdruf no longer stands. But Buchenwald’s main gate, crematorium, hospital and two guard towers have been kept as a memorial.

Accompanying Obama to the site was Elie Wiesel, a 1986 Nobel Peace Prize winner, author and Holocaust survivor.

Following the tour, Obama was flying to Landstuhl medical hospital for private visits with U.S. troops recovering from wounds sustained in Iraq and Afghanistan. And he was ending the day in Paris — reuniting with his wife, Michelle, and daughters Malia and Sasha, who planned a brief holiday in the City of Light after commemorating the 65th anniversary of the Allies’ D-Day invasion in France.