West Asia

Someone ought to let mainstream news producers know that the nearly 4,500 US soldiers killed in the Iraq war were not the only victims.

The so-called ‘Arab Spring’ is creating an intellectual divide that threatens any sensible understanding of the turmoil engulfing several Arab countries.

“Despite this Israeli aggression, we will keep coming, wave after wave, by air, sea, and land, to challenge Israel’s illegal policies towards Gaza and all of Palestine,” said Huwaida Arraf, a spokeswoman for the Gaza flotilla activists. “Our movement will not stop or be stopped until Palestine is free.”

United States ambassador to Syria Robert Ford is quite a feisty diplomat. He shows up unannounced and uninvited at various hot spots in the country, greeted with varying degrees of enthusiasm and, oftentimes, anger.

When Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas decided to go to the United Nations to request the admission of Palestine as a full member, he appeared to have had an epiphany.

The UN Palmer Report, which largely exonerated Israel for murdering nine unarmed Turkish civilians in international waters on May 31, 2010, seemed in some ways like the last straw.