'20 people threw me from deck'

YNET News   " "We knew they were peace activists," he said. "Though they wanted to break the Gaza blockade, we thought we'd encounter passive resistance, perhaps verbal resistance – we didn't expect this. Everyone wanted to kill us. We encountered terrorists who wanted to kill us and we did everything we could to prevent unnecessary injury." R said that some 75% of the people in the vessel resisted violently, "each one with a knife in his hand." "  "In the first interview since he was wounded in Monday's raid on the flotilla, Captain R, who commanded the troops who boarded the Marmara via helicopter, spoke of the battle that took place on vessel."

Time to Change Course in the Middle East "...But when the United States distances itself from Israel, as the Obama administration has done, it makes confrontation and conflict in the region more likely, not less. When enemies see Israel as alone and isolated, they become more, not less, aggressive. When Israel feels alone and isolated, it feels compelled to be more aggressive - to act in its own defense."

ABC Bashes Bush on Memorial Day

Rick Richman in American Thinker  "But ABC provided a ready excuse [for Obama], subtitling its report "Obama Not First to Skip Arlington on Memorial Day" and asserting that George W. Bush "did not attend in 2001 or 2002."  ABC was flat-out wrong about 2001, and highly misleading about 2002."....

"In neither year was Bush on vacation for Memorial Day. And it is nice that we are able to recall Bush's eloquence, given the unfortunate circumstances that prevented us from hearing from President Obama this year."

'Owning' the oil spill, White House tries to run away

Rick Moran  "This is pathetic. Seeking to deflect attention from their own inadequacy, the Obama administration wants a dog and pony show of a potential prosecution of BP Oil to distract the press and voting public and distance themselves from responsibility for anything relating to the disaster."


Cartoon by Gary Varvel

24 HOURS ON: WHERE IS THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES?

Rightwing Nuthouse "It’s too bad America’s best ally in the Middle East has to deal with this empty suit in the White House. With the entire rest of the world in full throated outrage over the terrorist ambush - and it has been for more than 24 hours - we have yet to hear from the man who is ostensibly the Commander in Chief and has been constitutionally delegated to make our foreign policy."

Israel in eye of storm over deadly Gaza ship raid

Breitbart.com "Israel's allies froze military ties and summoned its ambassadors Monday over the storming of an aid flotilla bound for Gaza, as Muslim leaders slammed the deadly raid as "criminal" and "inhuman"."
Yup, Looks Like a “Peaceful” Convoy/Flotilla To Me, Too "Watch this video of how the pro-HAMAS “peace activists” beat Israeli soldiers to a pulp with iron pipes."  Debbie Schlussel
Useful Idiots at Sea  "It will be up to the U.S. and Europe whether the waters off the Gaza coast, short miles from the Suez Canal, become a source of maritime instability due to incitement by Hamas. The EU leadership, tacitly accepting the Hamas narrative cloaked in Europe’s trademark parlor activism, is behaving with a fecklessness for which it deserves strong rebuke. It is not to the advantage of any respectable nation to carry Hamas’s water."
Flotillas and the Wars of Public Opinion  "The next steps will involve calls for sanctions against Israel. The Israeli threats against Iran will be seen in a different context, and Israeli portrayal of Iran will hold less sway over the world."
'We're the only ones who believe them'  “After wandering around for 15 months, vacillating between pandering to the Israelis and trying [t]o punish them, [Obama administration] have decided they have to work out some kind of relationship with Netanyahu that allows them to do something serious,” said Aaron David Miller, a former American peace negotiator. “They need to weather this crisis with the relationship with the Israelis north of where it is now.”
Flotillas and Falsehoods  "Don’t members of the press ever resent being so used?"  Mona Charen.
 About those “peace activists"  "But despite the blockade it is important to note that Israel allows trucks with essential supplies like food and medicine to enter Gaza every day."
 Israel, the Truth and the Asymmetric Warfare Of Embedded Journalism  "What is remarkable about the footage is that the only attack it depicted was of the passengers upon the Israeli commandos, using bars and knives. The footage did not show the soldiers shooting. Yet the images were described as an Israeli attack".
Obama pals back violent Gaza flotilla  "Activists from president's circle of friends top supporters of anti-Israel protest ships." Gotta watch out for those guy in your neighborhood.
Israel Can Win Every Battle but Still Lose the War  Max Boot. " Although the Israelis were perfectly justified in trying to stop Hamas from receiving outside aid, the way they went about it resulted in a public-relations catastrophe. A friend asks me in essence, So what? Is growing international approval really a problem for Israel? I believe it is."

Sestak Job Offer Violated Federal Law?

Human Events  "However, what is illegal and not normal practice in Washington is to promise a federal job or appointment to an individual in exchange for future political activity. 18 U.S.C. § 600 prohibits the use of government-funded jobs or programs to advance partisan political interests. The statute makes it unlawful for anyone to “promise any employment, position, compensation, contract, appointment, or other benefit” to any person as a “consideration, favor, or reward for any political activity or for the support of or opposition to any candidate or any political party…in connection with any primary election.” "

Vets Blast Obama For Skipping Memorial Day at Arlington Cemetery

Human Events  “The President seems to demonstrate almost weekly just how, at least to me, little he cares about this country and our history and our heritage,” ....“He seems almost to resent it, which is the most mind-boggling thing in the world, because without a country like America Barack Obama could not be President. He seems to dislike our institutions… and that’s a sad, sad thing,” said Swindle, a decorated Vietnam prisoner of war and Sen. John McCain’s cellmate in Hanoi."   Michelle Oddis

In Their Own Words: CBO Admits Obamacare Unsustainable

Heritage "Putting the federal budget on a sustainable path would almost certainly require a significant reduction in the growth of federal health spending relative to current law (including this year’s health legislation). In other words, our nation’s budget is on an unsustainable path and Obamacare did nothing to change that."

The National Security Strategy of 2010. Or 2006. Whatever.

Max Boot "...the Bush National Security Strategy of 2002 was a truly innovative and influential document that will be long remembered for declaring the need for preventative action against aggressors and terrorists. Eight years later, I can still recalls some of its lines: “The gravest danger our Nation faces lies at the crossroads of radicalism and technology” and “America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed.”
"There is no such intellectual groundbreaking in the Obama document, which is, as Peter Feaver notes, more than anything a continuation, with some slight adjustments, of the National Security Strategy produced by the Bush administration in its second term."

U.S. Churches Speak Out for Iraq's Struggling Christians

Weekly Standard "Struggling Christians in Iraq, as throughout the Middle East, must tread very carefully. Western Christians can be more explicit about the threat and its primary perpetrators. That even the National Council of Churches, with its mostly liberal dominated Protestant communions, is joining the U.S. Catholic bishops to advocate on behalf of persecuted Iraqi Christians is progress. But will they ever name the persecutors?"

Bloody clash off Gaza coast leaves 10 dead

Hot Air "The preferred media headline so far this morning has been “Israelis kill 10 peace activists in Gaza flotilla,” but that’s not quite what happened. The IDF attempted to head off a number of boats attempting to run the blockade on Gaza, a blockade necessitated by Hamas’ repeated attacks on Israel. They boarded the lead ship by helicopter, expecting to either convince the occupants to turn back or to commandeer the boat themselves. What they didn’t expect was to find armed “peace activists,” and a bloody melee ensued:"

Israeli commandos: Gaza flotilla crew tried to lynch us "A Reuters cameraman on the Israeli navy ship Kidon close to the six-vessel aid convoy said commanders monitoring the operation were surprised by the strong resistance put up by the pro-Palestinian activists. One of the commandos said some of the soldiers were stripped of their helmets and equipment and a number were tossed from the top deck to a lower deck and then leapt into the sea to save themselves. "
Eyewitness report: A brutal ambush at sea "One soldier who came to the aid of a comrade was captured by the rioters and sustained severe blows. The commandoes were equipped with handguns but were told they should only use them in the face of life-threatening situations. When they came down from the chopper, they kept on shouting to each other “don’t shoot, don’t shoot,” even though they sustained numerous blows".

You Can Take the Pol Out of Chicago. . .

Commentary "[Obama] ducked a personal response and had his lawyer issue a memo on the Joe Sestak job-offer scandal on the Friday before Memorial Day. He thereby succeeded in revealing that Sestak is a fabulist, his own White House is little more than a Blago-like operation, an ex-president has been reduced to the the role of a “cut out,” and the whole lot of them practice the same sleazy-politics-as usual that Obama ran against (which, ironically, was symbolized in the primary by Hillary Clinton)."    Jennifer Rubin