Free Republic

(AINA) -- The Kurdish Democratic Party (PYD), a branch of Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan (PKK), recently declared that they want to form a Kurdish autonomy in northern Syria. The area in Syria called al-Jazeera is now called Rojava in Kurdish media. At first I thought it was the name of a Kurdish village outside Qamishle, but a friend explained that Rojava means the "West" in Kurdish and the Kurds see it as the western part of "Kurdistan." If such autonomy becomes a reality, is there any place for Assyrians? Is there room in a future ruled by Kurds, considering what happened...

June 18, 2010 Turkish Raid May Have Killed 100 Kurdish Rebels ANKARA, Turkey (AP) -- Turkey's military said Friday it killed as many as 120 Kurdish rebels in an air raid on rebel hideouts in northern Iraq last month and a daylong incursion by elite commandos into Iraq this week. Kurdish rebels have dramatically stepped up attacks in Turkey in recent months in an escalation that poses a dire threat to a remarkable attempt at ending one of the world's longest guerrilla wars. The Turkish military responded to the rebels by sending its warplanes across the Iraqi border to bomb...

SNIPPET: "The Turkish group IHH announced Wednesday that it will send another flotilla to Gaza comprised of six ships during the second half of July. On the same day, Israel added IHH to its terrorist watch list." SNIPPET: "An IHH press conference was held at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, organized by Richard Howitt, a British member of the Parliament. During the conference, Howitt encouraged the EU to back the new flotilla initiative, stating: "If this terrible (May 31) tragedy tips the balance so that the international community finally insists on full and unhindered humanitarian access to Gaza, then some...

WASHINGTON—Turkey moved closer to severing its relations with Israel, demanding that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly apologize for his government's high-seas military action against a pro-Palestinian flotilla this week in order to avert a formal diplomatic rupture. Senior Israeli officials responded Friday that their government would never apologize for an act of "self defense" and acknowledged that Israel could be on the verge of losing its closest military and economic ally in the Middle East. Such a development, these officials said, would raise new strategic and diplomatic challenges for Israel if Ankara reorients itself away from its historically pro-Israel and...

Video taken by IDF naval boat shows the passengers of the Mavi Marmara, one of the ships in the 'Free Gaza' Flotilla, violently attacking IDF soldiers who were trying to board the ship after having sent repeated requests for the boat to change course. Large groups of passengers surrounded soldiers and beat them with metal poles and chairs, and threw one soldier over the side of the ship. Some passengers grabbed pistols from the IDF soldiers and opened fire. As a result of the attacks, seven IDF soldiers were injured, and nine of the passengers were killed. The 'Free Gaza'...

Via the IDF’s blog. Ed already posted video taken from above the ship as Israeli troops rappeled down but this one’s shot from alongside so there’s more detail. Have a look as the Forces of Peace shift into full-on mob mode, dragging the soldiers to the ground before they’re even on the deck and swinging for the fences with huge metal poles. Some of the IDF personnel involved later described it as a “lynching,” which sounded dubious to me at first but not anymore. That’s what it looks like. “They beat us with metal sticks and knives,” he said. “There...

UN Urges Inquiry Into Israel Convoy Raid 1 June 2010 Israeli army footage claiming to show the violence on board the flotilla - the captions and circled points on this video were inserted by the Israeli army The UN Security Council has issued a statement calling for an impartial inquiry into Israel's raid on a flotilla of Gaza-bound aid ships. The statement said the inquiry should be "prompt, impartial, credible and transparent". The statement was reached after hours of discussion as the council deliberated through the night. At least nine activists were killed when Israeli commandos stormed the ships in...