Wieseltier Joins the Fray
Cameron condemns, Abbas has a prize, and more flotilla reax
June 03, 2010
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.
