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Wieseltier Joins the Fray

Cameron condemns, Abbas has a prize, and more flotilla reax

by
Marc Tracy
June 03, 2010
The New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier, painted by Avigdor Arikha.(National Galleries of Scotland)
The New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier, painted by Avigdor Arikha.(National Galleries of Scotland)

• Leon Wieseltier’s opening quip says it all: “Operation Make the World Hate Us, it might have been called.” [TNR]

• David Cameron, the new Tory British prime minister, calls for an end to the Gaza blockade. [JPost]

• Elliott Abrams accuses the Obama administration of abandoning Israel to the United Nations “lynch mob.” [Weekly Standard]

• Prime Minister Netanyahu’s full defense of the raid. [Ben Smith]

• Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of “state terrorism”; renamed the upcoming Palestine Investment Conference the “Conference of Freedom” (remember, it was the “Freedom Flotilla”); and gave all the flotilla activists Palestinian citizenship. [JPost]

• An essay bemoans the raid but reasserts support for the blockade. [NYT]

• Columnist Nick Kristof urges President Obama to speak out against the blockade, for the sake of both Israeli and American interests. [NYT]

• While ceding the stupidity of the raid, Michael Rubin argues that Israel’s relationship with one-time ally Turkey had already frayed, and that this was the deliberate doing of Prime Minister Erdogan. [Forward]

• I have a feeling Gideon Levy’s comparison of Netanyahu to Ben-Gurion is a wee bit sarcastic. [Haaretz]

• Former President Jimmy Carter defends the Gaza blockade and the raid. Not! [AP/Vos Iz Neias?]

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.