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So Many Opinions, So Little Time

Your post-weekend flotilla round-up

by
Marc Tracy
June 07, 2010
An Israeli boat flying flags in support.(Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images)
An Israeli boat flying flags in support.(Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images)

• A much buzzed-about article discussed the aura of uncertainty and “soul-searching” in establishment Washington, D.C., over how to solve a problem like Israel. (Such talk even invaded a Seder in Bethesda, Maryland, although really, that happens every year.) [NYT]

• Israel released its official account of “Operation Sea Breeze”: It agreed on a commando boarding after four hours of trying to persuade the Mavi Marmara to divert itself. [WP]

• Analysts (as well as residents) agree: The Gaza blockade has failed to substantially weaken Hamas’s grip on power there. [WP]

• Top novelist Michael Chabon urges Jews to abandon their sense of their own exceptionalism. [NYT]

• Christopher Hitchens on the Turkey-Israel dust-up. [Slate]

• While many Israelis disagreed with the flotilla raid, many supported it, and many, many more support their military generally. [WSJ]

• How Israel’s foreign policy frequently clashes with the Obama administration’s general emphasis on multilateralism and the importance of international rules. [WP]

• Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab calls on the Obama administration to engage with Hamas. [WP]

• Tom Friedman notes that the flotilla brouhaha is a distracting sideshow; the main event is the successful, Salam Fayyad-led Palestinian state-building in the West Bank. [NYT]

• Ross Douthat notes that extrication from some land for demographic reasons presents a tough option for Israel, but is probably the only way for it to give itself a chance to survive. [NYT]

• Nahum Barnea really disapproves of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s leadership. [Ynet]

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