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The Joint Arab List rallied Monday around MK Basel Ghattas, who announced Sunday he would be on board the Freedom Flotilla III, which will attempt to breach the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza in the last week of June. "Israel's blockade of Gaza is a great crime, as was the war and the killing of civilians," party chairman Ayman Odeh said at the beginning of the Joint Arab List's faction meeting. "We support the participation of MK Basel Ghattas on this humanitarian flotilla, which will raise the agenda of the terrible suffering of Gazans, who live in a large prison,"...

The Coast Guard is reporting an 117 percent spike in December in the number of Cubans fleeing the island nation by boat. On Monday alone, the Coast Guard returned 121 Cubans back to the custody of authorities in Havana. They were all intercepted at sea in seven separate incidents in just the past week.

Despite its status among progressives as a veritable model for health care reformers and proponents of egalitarianism, the joint announcement by President Barack Obama and Cuban dictator Raul Castro of the normalization of bilateral relations has resulted in a sharp uptick in the number of Cubans desperately fleeing the island in makeshift dinghies. Who could have possibly seen this coming?The Coast Guard is reporting an 117 percent spike in December in the number of Cubans fleeing the island nation by boat. On Monday alone, the Coast Guard returned 121 Cubans back to the custody of authorities in Havana. They...

A Turkish NGO said it would send ships to the Gaza Strip to provide emergency aid to Palestinians trapped in a month-long offensive by Israel. The decision comes four years after Israeli commandos stormed a Gaza-bound ship, killing 10. The Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) announced in an emailed statement that members of a "coalition" of activists from a dozen countries had met in Istanbul at the weekend and committed themselves to launching an aid flotilla "in the shadow of the latest Israeli aggression on Gaza," Reuters reported. "The Freedom Flotilla Coalition affirmed that, as most governments are complicit, the responsibility...

Customs officials at southern Israel’s Ashdod port discovered hundreds of ball-bearings and cement mixers in a Turkish shipment of “humanitarian aid” to Gaza on Wednesday, raising fears the cargo could have been used by Hamas to support its ongoing war against Israel, according to Channel Two. While both items have civilian uses, both have played a central role building Hamas’s rocket arsenal and its vast network of “terror tunnels” into Israel. Terrorists in Gaza regularly use ball-bearings to maximize the lethality of locally-made, short-range Qassam rockets. Unlike other, more powerful long-range rockets and military-grade mortar shells smuggled into Gaza from...

Obama and Kerry Pressure Israel to Leave Hamas AlonePosted By Joseph Klein On July 28, 2014 @ 12:50 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 12 Comments President Obama is seeking to pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into agreeing to an immediate unconditional ceasefire. In a phone call on Sunday, Obama reportedly told the Israeli prime minister that such a ceasefire was “a strategic imperative.” Obama specifically referred to the ceasefire proposed by Secretary of State John Kerry, which Israel’s security cabinet rejected unanimously last Friday.Israel has been willing to observe several humanitarian pauses, primarily on a unilateral basis. Hamas went along...

A Turkish newspaper has released details of a high-level meeting of the country’s military leaders, in which the Turkish government had considered sending warships into Israel as a military escort for the Mavi Marmara flotilla—and the possibility of triggering a war with the Jewish state as a result. On May 31 2010, nine Turkish Islamists were killed on the flotilla after violently attacking IDF soldiers, during an attempt to break Israel’s naval blockade on the terrorist group Hamas-enclave Gaza. The incident worsened a growing diplomatic crisis between Turkey and Israel, who had once been close allies. …

Last week, TheBlaze reported that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan invited the father of one of the radical Islamist activists killed on the 2010 Gaza flotilla to join the official entourage on his visit to the U.S. last week. And while sources familiar with lat weekÂ’s visit told TheBlaze that the father did not enter the White House or meet President Obama to deliver a personal letter about his son, according to the Turkish foreign ministerÂ’s Twitter account Secretary of State John Kerry did meet with the father and even posed for a photo with him. The Turkish news...

In a dramatic development that occurred just as US President Barack Obama was leaving the country, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu spoke with Turkey's Tayyip Erdogan for the first time since the Israeli prime minister took power in 2009. Netanyahu voiced regret for the loss of life in the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident, apologizing for any mistakes that led to the death of nine Turkish activists. Breaking a three-year deadlock, the two agreed to normalize relations. "Prime Minister Netanyahu expressed an apology to the Turkish people for any error that may have led to the loss of life, and agreed to...

Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein submitted on Monday a legal opinion to the Central Elections Committee, in which he stated that he believes that the request to disqualify Arab MK Hanin Zoabi from running in the next election should be rejected. While Weinstein said on the one hand that there is "an accumlation of substantial and disturbing evidence which borders on forbidden behavior" regarding Zoabi, he nevertheless stated that the requests to disqualify her "do not indicate a sufficiently critical mass of evidence in the case of Zoabi." Therefore, he said, MK Zoabi should not be disqualified from running for the...

According to the IDF, the claim that the Gaza-bound "Estelle" was carrying humanitarian aid is unwarranted as an examination of the ship did not uncover any equipment that can be used as humanitarian aid...

Gaza flotilla sponsor publishes tweet blaming Jews for Holocaust Tristin Hopper | Oct 4, 2012 2:35 AM ET | Last Updated: Oct 4, 2012 4:38 PM ET More from Tristin Hopper | @TristinHopper The Free Gaza Movement, a U.S.-based activist group known for provisioning ships to run the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza, was hit with charges of anti-Semitism on Wednesday after posting a tweet claiming that Jews were responsible for the Holocaust. “Zionists operated the concentration camps and helped murder millions of innocent Jews,” read a tweet posted Sunday to @freegazaorg, the official Twitter feed of the group, which includes...

May 30, 2010: Jihad "Flotilla" As Israel put a blockade on Islamic Hamas' controlled Gaza to stop attacks and flow of arms (after years of being hit with rockets & other terror attacks from that government directed at Israeli civilians, schools), the Islamic anti-Israel, anti-Jewish Jihadism machine added a new tool to its toolbox, a new phony face, posing as "humanitarians" and as "peace activists" as if they come to "help" the "poor" Arab Palestinians. [The terror militant Hamas group was elected by most Palestinian Arabs in Gaza]. [In April 2011: Red Cross declared: 'No humanitarian crisis in Gaza.'*] The...

This was the winning photo of the year in Turkey in 2010 – a battered and bloody Israeli soldier aboard the Mavi Marmara. Nine people were killed onboard the Gaza-bound Turkish ship after IDF troops who raided it encountered violent resistance by “peace activists” armed with an assortment of weapons. The “peace activists” threw stun grenades and beat the Israeli soldiers with pipes and chains. In August 2011 the Obama Administration warned Israel to apologize to Turkey over its bloody interception of a Gaza aid flotilla in 2010, or risk strained ties with Washington. There were also reports that Barack...

Dozens of anti-Israel activists attempted to barge into the Israeli consulate in Boston over the weekend in protest over Israel's seizure of the Canadian-Irish flotilla ships that attempted to sail to Gaza. Bearing PA flags, the activists attempted to storm the building but were turned back. They swore to return, shouting slogans about how the “apartheid regime in Israel must fall.” The activists were “spillovers” from the Occupy Boston protests, one of many being held in the U.S. demanding social justice. At least three people have been arrested on drug charges in the protests over the past several days, and...

A report I've just received on Twitter claims that there's another Turkish flotilla headed for Gaza (Hat Tip: Earl Peacock via Twitter). Flotilla heading for Gaza today consists of Irish boat MV Saoirse and Canadian vessel 'Tahrir'. 15 people on Irish boat, 12 on Canadian The source of that tweet is Mary Fitzgerald, a foreign correspondent for the Irish Times, who says that this has all been confirmed to her by the organizers.

An advanced copy of the UN Palmer Report - to be released Friday - concludes Israel's naval blockade of Gaza is legal and appropriate, but insists the tactics employed when IDF naval commandoes boarded the infamous Mavi Marmara flagship were "excessive and unreasonable." The 105-page report, obtained by the New York Times, was completed months ago, but its publication was delayed several times as Turkey and Israel sought to mend relations and avoid making the report public. Reactions from both governments contained in the report objected to its conclusions. “Israel faces a real threat to its security from militant groups...

Where's the so-called "angry Arab street?"When will the hypocritic Arab-Muslim world start giving a 'dime' about its own people. Arab-Muslim on Arab-Muslim crimes against humanity - routine. The "moderate" voice of Islamic-Arabs: "We can kill each other by the thousands!"(Syria, Hamah massacre - 1982, Daraa, Jisr al-Shughour and Hama massacres, mass torture of kids - 2011), Black September [Jordanians vs "Palestinians"] 1970 , Iraqis vs Iraqis since 2003, "Palestinians" VS each other (Hamas/Fatah 2007), "Palestinians" & Hezbollah using civilians (routine), Libyans (2011 massacres), Bahrainians [Shiite Apartheid VS Sunni], Algerians (100,000 dead in the 1970s') Yemen (2011), Tunisia (2011), Egypt (2011),...

At a radical left-wing coffee shop in Washington, D.C. last month, Code Pink founder and “Freedom Flotilla II” passenger Medea Benjamin​ woefully recounted the moment she realized her boat, the Audacity of Hope, wouldn’t be legally permitted to leave a port in Greece to sail to Gaza. “There was something called a ‘complaint’ that was put against our boat,” Benjamin explained to a crowd of anti-Israel activists stuffed into the back room of the restaurant.

Israel's largest daily newspaper, Yediot Ahronot, reported on Wednesday that the Obama Administration is threatening Israel to either apologize to Turkey over its bloody interception of a Gaza aid flotilla last year, or risk strained ties with Washington. Israeli diplomats in Washington told the newspaper that they had received a communique from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insisting that the rift between Israel and Turkey was harming American interests in the region, such as affecting regime change in neighboring Syria. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan demands that Israel publicly apologize for intercepting a May 2010 "humanitarian aid" flotilla...