Instead, the White House appears to have made a choice to wait until this storm blows over so as not to appear to be pressuring Israel then risking another Israeli rebuke which would make president Obama look like a weak president when it comes to Israel.

After an embarrassing U.S. retreat from its demands that Israel ends its illegal settlement buildings in Arab East Jerusalem; earlier this year, the White House, therefore, seems reluctant to risk another humiliation at the hands of Israeli right wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The risk assessment of this case in White House seems to be about U.S domestic considerations with the mid-term elections looming in the horizon where the administration is eager not to anger the pro-Israeli lobby and supporters. More, president Obama has invested a lot of his moral and leadership capital, albeit with little or no results at this point, in the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks; a tough U.S stands against Israel, the argument goes, will not help Obama’s peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinians.

As far as Israel is concerned, it is in defiant mode turning on its massive public relations machine, and its supporters around the world were quick to try to paint the activist groups that organized the humanitarian flotilla as “Hamas supporters”, or “Hezbollah supporters”, or “Iran’s supporters” and all kind of ridiculous claims that could not be any further from the truth.

It is very hard to believe that Turkish, Swedish, Greek, Jordanian, Egyptians Kuwaiti, and Irish members of Parliaments who were on board of these ships are some kind of " terrorists" or members of Hezbollah; or that a Holocaust survivor, Arab, Pakistani, European, and Jewish peace activists are supporters of Iran. Israeli leaders then claimed that its elite navy soldiers used “paintball guns” and were “the victims” or that they were “defending themselves” against the “vicious” and “dangerous” activists. Of course, you really have to be a blind, or living under a rock or on Mars or all of those together in order to believe those claims.

In the Arab World, the killing of those activists Turkish and others, and the way Israel had carried its raid on them taking hundreds of Arab citizens’ prisoners; was very humiliating, this incident, exposed the fatal weakness of the Arab leaders as powerless impotent leaders. Recep Tayyib Erdogan, the Prime Minister of Turkey, on the other hand, is perhaps the most popular man in the Arab World today for his tough stand against the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. The lack of real leadership in the Arab World, and weakness of Arab states, made the Arab people look for a non-Arab in Istanbul, once more, to inspire and lead them.


*Ali Younes is a writer and political analyst based in Washington D.C. he can be reached at: ali.younes [At] charter.net.