Flotilla organizer Dimitris Plionis said Sunday that there would be "some action" at the beginning of the week, but he did not specify what the pro-Palestinian activists were planning to do.

Several hundred protesters say they want to breach Israel's sea blockade of Gaza and deliver aid to the Palestinians, but the Greek restrictions, announced Friday, were a major setback. Israel has said it will thwart any attempt to reach Gaza by sea.

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A co-founder of the right-wing blog RedState (and former Bush speechwriter) created a mini-controversy over the weekend when he issued a sociopathic endorsement of Israel's possible shooting of his fellow unarmed citizens on a flotilla currently sailing to Gaza; that flotilla is trying to deliver humanitarian supplies to Gazans and protest the ongoing Israeli blockade:

When asked by Israeli-American journalist Joseph Dana -- who is covering the flotilla for The Nation -- whether that sentiment applies to the shooting of journalists on board the ships, this was the reply:

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Israel maintains a naval blockade of Gaza and restricts goods transferred overland to the Palestinian territory, citing concerns they could be used to attack Israel.

The military said it ordered the ship to return to an Egyptian port where it had been anchored for several days. But it said the vessel disregarded the order, prompting it to fire warning shots. The ship then changed course to return to Egypt.

The Malaysian group, the Perdana Global Peace Foundation, said its ship was fired at when it tried to reach Gaza. The military denied firing at the ship.

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The walkout ushers in the country's worst political crisis since 2008 in one of the most volatile corners of the Middle East.

The tribunal is widely expected to name members of Hezbollah in upcoming indictments, which many fear could re-ignite sectarian tensions that have plagued the tiny country for decades.

"This cabinet has become a burden on the Lebanese, unable to do its work," Energy Minister Jibran Bassil said at a news conference announcing the resignations, flanked by the other ministers who are stepping down. "We are giving a chance for another government to take over."

Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and Syria, has denounced the tribunal as an "Israeli project" and urged Western-backed Prime Minister Saad Hariri -- the son of the slain politician -- to reject any findings by the court even before it announced any indictments.

But the prime minister has refused to break cooperation with the tribunal.

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That name, of course, is a play on the Gaza aid flotilla, the boats carrying humanitaritan aid that were raided in May by Israeli commandoes, who killed nine of the passengers.

Those participating in the Hebron Aid Flotilla select from donation levels ranging from $100 to $100,000 in order to "raise our voices and take out our checkbooks in protest against the evil discrimination against the Jews of Hebron and Eretz Yisrael." The main honoree and keynote speaker, will be Caroline Glick, the right-wing Jerusalem Post editor.

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Last week, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights released a comprehensive report detailing its findings regarding the May, 2010, Israeli attack on the six-ship flotilla attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Israel-blockaded Gaza.  The report has been largely ignored in the American media despite the fact (or, more accurately:  because) it found that much of the Israeli force used "was unnecessary, disproportionate, excessive and inappropriate and resulted in the wholly avoidable killing and maiming of a large number of civilian passengers"; that "at least six of the killings can be characterized as extra-legal, arbitrary and summary executions"; and that Israel violated numerous international human rights conventions, including the Fourth Geneva Conventions (see p. 38, para. 172). 

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AP Television News footage shows the Mavi Marmara leaving the port of Haifa on Thursday afternoon. The ship and two others released were part of a flotilla sailing toward Gaza to protest Israel's blockade of the Hamas-ruled territory.

Israeli troops intercepted the boats on May 31 and clashed with pro-Palestinian activists on board the Marmara, leaving nine Turkish citizens dead. The bloodshed provoked an international outcry and this week, Israel agreed to an international investigation.

Israel's Defense Ministry says Turkish ships arrived to escort the vessels back.

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Ship to Gaza Sweden spokesman Dror Feiler says the flotilla organization has grown and now has support groups around the world, including in the U.S., Venezuela, Chile, and Malaysia.

He says the European organizers met in Stockholm Wednesday to plan the new shipment, protesting Israel's blockade of Gaza.

Israeli commandos on May 31 raided the six-ship flotilla, killing nine people and sparking an international outcry.

Although Israel has said the soldiers acted in self defense, the bloodshed provoked an international outcry that forced Israel to ease its Gaza blockade.

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The report does not fault the commandos who opened fire after being confronted by violent pro-Palestinian activists on board one of the ships. Eight Turks and one Turkish-American died in the May 31 raid.

Declassified sections of the report released Monday say faulty intelligence led the military to underestimate the potential for violent resistance on board.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) -- Israel's first internal report on the deadly raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla will criticize the planning and intelligence-gathering that preceded the operation, and not the commandos who conducted it, defense officials said Monday.

Unclassified sections of the report were to be released later Monday. The report will not recommend dismissals, but some senior officers could be ousted or demoted in ensuing shake-ups, said the officials, who were familiar with the report but spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of its formal release.

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But that was then, and this is now. Over a month after the deadly raid, and after an overwhelming bipartisan majority in Congress signed onto an American-Israel Public Affairs Committee letter that expressed "strong support for Israel's right to defend itself," the Obama administration is letting Israel get away scot-free. Israel will continue with the status quo of occupation and blockade while the prospects for a Palestinian state continue to whither away.

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In a warm, yet carefully choreographed White House embrace, the two leaders took pains to persuade allies and enemies alike that a deeply important relationship is doing just fine.

The two nations clearly felt that was necessary. The meeting came five weeks after Israel's deadly raid on a flotilla that was trying to break the Israeli blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. That raid brought international outrage and tested U.S. support for Israel's security steps.

But the optics and words of Tuesday's visit all sent one message: unshaken cooperation.

Netanyahu emerged with a pile of promises from Obama that the U.S. is both committed to Israel's security and a believer that the prime minister wants peace with Palestinians. For his part, Netanyahu showed the urgency that Obama wants in boosting peace efforts, though he didn't say in public just what he might have planned.

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Working together to do what, exactly? That is unclear. Supposedly Obama will not press Bibi on the tough stuff, like extending the West Bank settlement freeze. Instead they will just both decide that direct peace talks would be a good thing, and Bibi will say that he's always been willing to sit down with Mahmoud Abbas but those damned Palestinians won't meet with him.

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This is great news for bipartisanship! It's less great for fans of common-sense Israel policy, or realistic approaches to finding solutions to the endless Israel/Palestine conflict.

We fully support Israel’s right to self-defense. In response to thousands of rocket attacks on Israel from Hamas terrorists in Gaza, Israel took steps to prevent items which could be used to support these attacks from reaching Gaza. Israel’s naval blockade, which is legal under international law, allows Israel to keep dangerous goods from entering Gaza by sea. The intent of the measures is to protect Israel, while allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza.

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Pollak is running because Schakowsky -- who is Jewish -- does not love Israel enough. She does love Israel, of course -- "I thought about my childhood again and the number of times I had saved my nickels and dimes to buy a tree certificate that we used for birthdays and anniversaries to plant trees in Israel and make that desert bloom," she said on the floor of the House earlier this year -- but she also might support the existence of a Palestinian state.

Seriously, the evidence that she is even remotely anti-Israel is ridiculous, even by the standards of the professional right-wing smear artist.

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On the surface, this would seem unremarkable. As victims of the Holocaust, Jews might be expected to stand beside the Armenians and their tragedy. After all, the massacres and death marches across Anatolia during the fog of World War I became a model for Hitler himself.

But this sudden embrace of the Armenian Genocide actually marks a shameless turnaround for the major American Jewish organizations. For decades, they have helped Turkey cover up its murderous past. Each year, the Israel lobby in the U.S. has played a quiet but pivotal role in pressuring Congress, the State Department and successive presidents to defeat simple congressional resolutions commemorating the 1.5 million Armenian victims.

Genocide denial is not a pretty thing, they now concede, but they did it for Israel. They did it out of gratitude for Turkey being Israel’s one and only Muslim ally.

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Well, only some of them called for everyone to be denied visas. Most of them just called for an "investigation" into the terrible terror ties of the activists aboard the flotilla, sponsored by a Turkish NGO called IHH that is not on any American watch list.

But to the assembled politicians and most of the small crowd, it is already settled -- based on decade-old investigations and foreign intelligence reports -- that IHH has ties to al-Qaida and Hamas. (Well, it does have "ties" to Hamas -- anyone looking to build anything in Gaza is forced by the Israeli siege to deal with Hamas.)

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Our Alex Pareene is on the scene and will have a full report shortly. He just sent along this video of Charlie Rangel likening Hamas to....the Soviet Union?

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The inquiry will be headed by a retired Israeli Supreme Court justice and it will include two high-ranking foreign observers: Nobel Peace laureate David Trimble of Ireland and Canada's former chief military prosecutor, Ken Watkin. The Cabinet gave its approval on Monday.

Israel has come under harsh criticism for its May 31 raid on the flotilla. Nine pro-Palestinian activists were killed in the raid.

The addition of the foreign observers is meant to boost the credibility of the Israeli-led probe.

The White House has backed Israel's inquiry into the raid, calling it "an important step forward."

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

LUXEMBOURG (AP) -- EU officials said Monday there were indications Israel may agree to relax its blockade of Gaza by opening at least one border crossing to large-scale commercial traffic.

EU diplomats also said Israel would likely drop its restrictive list of goods permitted into the region, which has left the territory's 1.5 million Palestinians mired in poverty.

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This would happen in two ways: First, with the existence of a Jewish homeland, the presence of the Jew on Orchard Street would seem less an unexplainable whim of history than a matter of preference: I choose America. With this choice, all the old charges of dual loyalty -- the Jew will always honor his people above his state -- would fade. A Jew living in New York would be no more sinister than an Irishman living in Boston, or a Pole living in Chicago. (The fact that the same man coined both the phrase "the melting pot,"  for the U.S., and "a land without a people for a people without a land," for Palestine, is no accident.)

What's more, in filling out all ranks of a national society, the citizens of Israel would show that the image of the Jew, as bankers and professors and such, that is, as anything but manly men, was a lie. As Golda Meir (or someone just like her) said, "We will know Israel is a success when we have Jewish cops chasing Jewish criminals." A Jewish state would make being a Jew ordinary, in other words, even boring. No longer the object of conspiracy theories and millennial fantasies, the Jews would become regular, beat-walking, ordinary Joes, thus set free.

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The White House also announced a $400 million aid package for Gaza and the West Bank.

"The situation in Gaza is unsustainable," Obama declared as he met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the Oval Office. He said the attention of the world is on the problem because of the "tragedy" of the Israeli raid that killed nine people trying to bring in supplies.

Obama called for narrowly tailoring Israel's broad blockade on goods entering the Gaza Strip so that arms are kept out, but not food, building materials or other items needed for the Palestinians' daily life and economic development.

"The key here is making sure that Israel's security needs are met but that the needs of people in Gaza are also met," said Obama.

"So if we can get a new conceptual framework ... it seems to me that we should be able to take what has been a tragedy and turn it into an opportunity to create a situation where lives in Gaza are actually, directly improved."

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