Eileen Fleming, The Palestinian Telegraph, 21 May 2009

Four days before the forty-second anniversary of that other day in infamy, the release of “The Untold Story of Israel’s Deadly 1967 Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship” will reopen many wounds caused by the Israeli attack on the unarmed spy ship that navigated in international waters during the Six-Day War.

Acclaimed journalist and son of a survivor, author James Scott dedicated his extensively footnoted, compelling and dramatic account to his father, who lived to tell about it and the thirty-four sailors who did not.

On June 6, 1967, out of a crew of 294, thirty four were killed, 171 wounded and all scarred for life because the USA Government failed to support the troops who continue to request an open Congressional hearing to address the Israeli claim of mistaken identity.

Scott blows apart the only American investigation that was ever conducted; the U.S. Naval Court of Inquiry’s white wash rush job that confirmed the Israeli claim which is clearly contradicted by the facts.

[Read the review]

By Ofri Ilani, Ha’aretz, 19 May 2009

The rooms at Beit Nativ, the Jerusalem building that houses the Shalem Center, have been gradually emptying in recent months, with fellows at the neoconservative research institute taking their leave one by one. But rather than signaling a slump, the depletion is actually a sign of the think tank’s unprecedented success, because instead of writing scholarly books and articles, the Shalem fellows are now sitting in government offices, helping turn abstract research into concrete policy.

The picture looked quite different a year ago.

[Read the article]

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Mustafa Barghouthi, The Los Angeles Times, 18 May 2009

This article was originally published by The Los Angeles Times and is republished with the author’s permission.

I cannot recall a more important meeting between an American president and an Israeli prime minister than today’s meeting between President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Will the Obama administration have the courage to challenge Netanyahu, or will all the talk of change dissolve in the face of a concerted one-two punch from Netanyahu and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee?

I am increasingly convinced that if Obama fails to speak out now, it will doom the two-state solution forever. Further fiddling in Washington – after eight years of it – will consign Jerusalem, the West Bank and the two-state solution to an Israeli expansionism that will overwhelm the ability of cartographers to concoct a viable Palestinian state.

It’s now or almost certainly never. If Obama lacks the political will to stand up to Netanyahu now, he will lack the capacity later. And by the time Obama leaves office, it will be too late to salvage anything more than an archipelago of Palestinian Bantustans. We Palestinians seek freedom, not apartheid, and not the sort of Potemkin villages on the West Bank that Netanyahu is trying to package to the West as visionary economic boomtowns for desperate Palestinians. Yes, we want economic improvement, but the best way to achieve that is through control over our own lives, borders and resources.

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First edition of Free Gaza video : FG Wednesday News
by Greta Berlin – Media Team