The UN Human Rights Council's resolution to condemn Israel and investigate its deadly raid of a pro-Palestinian ship puts "complete responsibility" on Israel for the clashes that left nine people dead, the U.S. State Department said on Wednesday.

Leaders on Capitol Hill seem unlikely to come to an agreement on Israel's role in a deadly raid Monday that killed nine activists on a flotilla carrying aid to Gaza, sparking criticism the Obama administration is not forceful enough in acting in defense of a key ally.

A PROTEST at Sydney Town Hall last night closed down a central city block during peak hour, with thousands marching to condemn the Israeli attacks on the Gaza flotilla.

Has Israel lost it? Can the Gaza War of 2008-09 (1,300 dead) and the Lebanon War of 2006 (1,006 dead) and all the other wars and now yesterday's killings mean that the world will no longer accept Israel's rule?

Don't hold your breath.

Strongly condemning Israel's actions against the humanitarian flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip, the United Nations Human Rights Council voted today to dispatch an independent, international probe into violations of international law resulting from Monday's incident.

The final boat in the Gaza aid flotilla was sailing at full speed towards the territory’s coast tonight despite warnings that it would be intercepted by Israeli forces.

The MV Rachel Corrie, a 40-year-old cargo ship bought by the Irish arm of the Free Gaza Movement, was delayed and avoided capture during Monday night’s assault. Tonight it was still in international waters about two days from Gaza, carrying a consignment of aid and 19 activists and crew, among them five Irish nationals, the organisation said.

The Irish taoiseach, Brian Cowen, warned Israel tonight that he expected no violence against those on the Rachel Corrie.

As expected by many, the serial terrorist Israeli army attacked on May 31st 2010, the "Freedom Flotilla" ships with gas bombs and live fire, murdering at least 19 humanitarian international activists, 16 of them Turks including one MP, and injuring 29 others. The Israeli navy, then, kidnapped the 700 humanitarian activists and their ships to Israel.

"Following the massacre committed by Israeli forces against solidarity activists on board the Freedom Flotilla in international waters, there have been increasing calls by Arab, Islamic, and European countries to launch a new aid fleet much bigger than the first one. This is a clear challenge by the free people of the world in the face of Israel’s arrogance," Madhi said.

During a televised speech Tuesday, Erdogan said future flotillas bound for Gaza territorial waters under Israeli threat would be accompanied by a military escort to ensure their safety.

"To American eyes a vague “terrorist threat,” a creation of their own government, is sufficient justification for naked aggression against Muslim peoples and for an agenda of world hegemony."

An Arab member of the Israeli parliament who was on board the international flotilla that was attacked on Monday as it tried to take humanitarian aid to Gaza accused Israel yesterday of intending to kill peace activists as a way to deter future convoys.

Haneen Zoubi said Israeli naval vessels had surrounded the flotilla’s flagship, the Mavi Marmara, and fired on it a few minutes before commandos abseiled from a helicopter directly above them.

Terrified passengers had been forced off the deck when water was sprayed at them. She said she was not aware of any provocation or resistance by the passengers, who were all unarmed.

The British protests against cuts on 22 June will be part of a cross?European fightback. There are moves towards a day of coordinated strikes and demonstrations across the continent.

Here it comes – the White House whitewash of Israel’s bloodied hands – an odious act of complicity that flouts international law and sets the scene for more state terrorism and murder of civilians.

After days of conspicuous US absence from joining the rest of the world in unequivocally condemning Israel over its killing of civilians on board the international convoy bringing humanitarian aid to the desperate people of Gaza, we now have the nauseating sight and sound of Washington defending the indefensible.

Over three hundred thousand people (more than three per cent of the Portuguese population) marched today in central Lisbon in a mega-demonstration against the socially insulting policies of the conservative, right-wing Government provided by the Socialist Party, an insult to Socialism, an insult to Government and the epitome of laboratory politics practised by professional politicians who have never had a real job.

In most of its coverage BBC depended on Israeli sources whilst the Palestinian side has been ignored. PRC suggests that such coverage harm the image of BBC and could classify it as an alternative for some Israeli media outlets.

The precise details of the seizure and ensuing massacre remain vague. And for good reason: Israel, whose officials have for weeks been discussing diplomatic options for confronting the flotilla (whose approximately 700 participants are accompanied by some 10,000 tons of cargo), launched a media disinformation blitz parallel to the military operation. In a pattern reminiscent of the Gaza assault of 2008-9, communications from the flotilla were persistently disrupted, its satellite telephones entirely cut off just prior to the pre-dawn assault. Within Israel, the military censor moved almost immediately to prohibit reporting about details of casualties.[1] Having established a near monopoly on access to information, the Israeli government dispatched its spokespeople to tell their story.

I am a Jew and I am outraged and ashamed by the acts Israel has perpetrated. I am not a self hating Jew, not an anti-semite, as some religious extremist Jews have accused me and other Jews who criticize Israel.

The protesters slammed the attack that left at least 20 international peace activists dead as “illegal and deplorable” and demanded justice for those responsible.

“This is not a Muslim issue, it’s not an Arab issue, it’s a human rights issue,” a 41-year-old demonstrator told The Detroit News.

Amid international outrage over the brutal assault, Tel Aviv has remained unabashed about its military action against the Flotilla, vowing to continue its naval blockade of Gaza as an ‘act of self defense.

Reporters Without Borders is urging the Israeli authorities to release a list of the journalists who were arrested during Monday’s raid on the humanitarian flotilla and to say where they are being held.

There were at least 15 foreign journalists travelling with the flotilla who still cannot be reached directly, the Paris-based media watchdog said. These are the names of the journalists known to have been aboard the flotilla:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been privately asking foreign leaders to "dial down" criticism of Israel until all the facts of the flotilla attack are known, according to a source who personally discussed the matter with her.

"She says she's been working the phones for last 24 hours trying to get people to cool off a little bit, to see what the facts are," the source tells me, adding that she said she was trying to "dial down some of the rhetoric of the inernational community."

"It's difficult," the source adds. "She says people are furious."

Today, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) held a conference call with bloggers, where she received questions — including from ThinkProgress — about Israel’s raid of the flotilla carrying humanitarian aid and activists bound for Gaza. Pelosi refused to speak directly about whether Israel’s blockade is causing a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

The "European Campaign to End Siege on Gaza", announced that it already obtain the funding of the first three ships of the new fleet which will go to the Gaza Strip, which will be named "fleet of Freedom 2", related to the name of the First Fleet, who was exposed to piracy and a bloody massacre by Israel against the peace activists on board.

Captain Huseyin Tokalak said the Israeli Navy had threatened to sink his ship, Gazze, before Israeli commandos took over the vessel at gun point, the Reuters news agency reported.

President Obama’s reluctance to comment in any but the most vague terms of the massacre of 19 aid workers by Israeli commandos late Sunday night has left many wondering exactly where the US government will fall on an issue which has been blanketly condemned by virtually every government in the civilized world and virtually every government outside the civilized world.

But the lack of White House comment has opened the door for Congressmen to stake out public positions on the matter and, perhaps predictably, those that have commented have universally praised the killings.

The Nicaraguan government Tuesday suspended the country’s diplomatic ties with Israel in protest of Israel’s deadly raid on the Gaza-bound international aid flotilla on Monday, various media outlets reported.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has made it clear that Turkey is ready to go in war with Israel.

In his parliamentary address Erdogan accused Israel of a "bloody massacre” as he described Israel's raid on a flotilla, including a Turkish ship, carrying relief supplies to blockaded Gaza.

Despite the international pressure, Israel is not going to lift the blockade of Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters on Wednesday. He warned against delivering lethal supplies to the Gaza Strip, which he said remains a hideout for terrorists.

The World Council of Churches has condemned the Israeli naval raid on a Gaza-bound vessel carrying humanitarian aid in international waters before dawn Monday that killed at least 10 civilians and injured more.

A US naval attack group led by the George Washington nuclear-powered aircraft carrier is making for South Korea for holding emergency exercises with a South Korean naval force.

Military manoeuvres with gunnery and missile firing are held one month ahead of schedule. Yet another US-South Korean military exercise is due in late June, the one against enemy submarines.

North Korea has been blamed by an international investigation for sinking the South Korean corvette Cheonan in March, killing 46 sailors, but China has refused to join condemnation of its ally Pyongyang and said it is still assessing the evidence.

In a transcript of an interview with Japanese broadcaster NHK posted on the Chinese Foreign Ministry website on Wednesday, Wen declined to say whether China would support any censure of the North by the U.N. Security Council. As a permanent member of the Council, China could veto any such action.

Residents of the illegal Yitzhar settlement set fire to more than 100 dunums of Palestinian lands near Urif village, southwest of Nablus on Wednesday afternoon, Palestinian officials said.

Beijing didn't elaborate, but China leaders were angered by the Obama administration's recent decision to go ahead with arms sales to Taiwan worth more than $6 billion.

On their return home, many of the activists accused the Israelis of having opened fire without warning.

"Israeli commandos started shooting from the air without warning," Kuwaiti lawyer Mubarak al-Mutawa, who was on the main vessel, the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara, told reporters in Kuwait City.

Morrocan MP Abdelqader Amara told AFP in a hotel in Amman: "The Israelis used live ammunition and showed us all the barbarism and cruelty in the world although all of us were unarmed."

There was very little official information about the condition of the injured passengers being treated in Israeli hospitals. Physicians for Human Rights put the number of wounded activists at 52.

“Gaza is an “Iranian-sponsored terrorist state,”

The United States was identified Wednesday as the world's No. 1 user of targeted killings, largely as a result of its dependence on unmanned drone attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Flotilla attack: ‘First the shots, then the ship was turned into a lake of blood’

Israel’s propaganda war in the media is obviously successful. Israel’s act of terrorism on the seas was an act of war…. now they are prepared to go full scale. Psychological preparation has been underway for a number of years now with many pre announced air raid drills. It is drummed into the Israeli skull that they are surrounded by enemies… watch the following to see children being traumatised during one of these drills.

Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to the United States, called his country's raid on an aid flotilla en route to Gaza "perfectly legal, perfectly humane and very responsible" in an interview Tuesday with Fox News.

Oren likened the attack to that of the US in World War II.

"The US acted under similar international law when it fought the Germans and the Japanese in World War Two," the ambassador said.

Egypt has allowed a shipment of electric generators into Gaza, the first time it has let in non-food or medical supplies since Israel’s 2008-2009 assault on the strip.

President Obama’s reluctance to comment in any but the most vague terms of the massacre of 19 aid workers by Israeli commandos late Sunday night has left many wondering exactly where the US government will fall on an issue which has been blanketly condemned by virtually every government in the civilized world and virtually every government outside the civilized world.

What good is a government if they can’t regulate every aspect of your life? From the same lawmakers that brought us the Detroit economic calamity comes a new bill, aimed at controlling the flow of information to the unsuspecting public even more than the mainstream does now.

The 'Rachel Corrie,' the Irish-owned ship with Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Maguire on board, continued to sail towards Gaza waters despite Israel making it clear they were giving no guarantees about its safety.

An Arab member of the Israeli parliament who was on board the international flotilla that was attacked on Monday as it tried to take humanitarian aid to Gaza accused Israel yesterday of intending to kill peace activists as a way to deter future convoys.

Haneen Zoubi said Israeli naval vessels had surrounded the flotilla’s flagship, the Mavi Marmara, and fired on it a few minutes before commandos abseiled from a helicopter directly above them.

Terrified passengers had been forced off the deck when water was sprayed at them. She said she was not aware of any provocation or resistance by the passengers, who were all unarmed.

But as the announcement was made this morning and the list of the nationalities of the victims was released by the Israeli Interior Ministry I noticed a funny thing; Israel is claiming they have repatriated 11 U.S. citizens but 12 are reported to have been abducted from the flotilla in the first place. What happened to the 12th U.S. citizen? Israel released one U.S. citizen yesterday. Is that person included in Israel’s list of 11 that have been repatriated?

Michael Rivero of What Really Happened has reported that there are unconfirmed reports coming out of Greece that one of the fatalities was a U.S. citizen. Though this report is still unconfirmed at this time, this new discrepancy begs the question “what happened to the 12th U.S. citizen”? Where the Greek rumors correct?

An old Israeli saying describing various less-than-esteemed military leaders says: "He was so stupid that even the other generals noticed." The same derisive remark could be applied almost without exception to the present generation of Israeli politicians.

It is often said, by Israel’s defenders, that the Jewish state is part and parcel of the West: that Israel, the only democracy in the region, must be defended because they are, after all, reliable allies who share our values, the heritage of Athens and Jerusalem. That has been the conventional wisdom – and it’s wrong. The Mediterranean Massacre underscores the wrongness of this assumption.

NATO HQ in Brussels is today a very unhappy place. There is a strong understanding among the various national militaries that an attack by Israel on a NATO member flagged ship in international waters is an event to which NATO is obliged - legally obliged, as a matter of treaty - to react.

Jake Tapper, a reporter for ABC News writes that “there won’t be any daylight between the US and Israel.” The rationale? A senior administration official says “The president has always said that it will be much easier for Israel to make peace if it feels secure.”

Of course, that’s nonsense. Israeli security has nothing to do with it. The reality is that Israeli aggression is possible only because Israel understands that the US is its poodle and that the US will work on its behalf in the UN and elsewhere, no matter what Israel does. The Israel Lobby is ultimately to blame, meaning ultimately the influence of Jewish money on the political process.

At least four Palestinian/Israelis, Free Gaza Movement board director, Lubna Masarwa, Sheik Raed Salah, leader of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, Mohammed Zeidan, Director of International Advocacy Programme for the Arab Association for Human Rights. and Hamed abu Dabis are facing multiple serious criminal offences for their participation in a peaceful voyage to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

After a full day in court represented by excellent attorneys from Adalah, they were remanded until June 8, evidence of how seriously the situation is for these four human rights workers.

This illegal incarceration is just another example of Israel’s draconian policies.

The radical Islamic movement Hamas won a large majority in the new Palestinian parliament, according to official election results announced Thursday, trouncing the governing Fatah party in a contest that could dramatically reshape the Palestinians' relations with Israel and the rest of the world.

A Turkish customs official on Monday denied Israeli allegations that activists aboard a Turkish aid ship for Gaza stormed by Israeli forces possessed weapons, the Anatolia news agency reported.

"Allegations that there were weapons aboard the Turkish ship are baseless," Fevzi Gulcan, the head of customs at the Mediterranean port city of Antalya, told Anatolia.

Retired Army Col. Ann Wright, a Honolulu resident, is reportedly being held by the Israeli government after commandos stormed a flotilla of ships taking aid to Palestinians in Gaza, killing 9 and wounding dozens of others.

Wright is a former state department official who resigned in protest over the Iraq war. She was on one of the ships attempting to take supplies to Palestinians cut off by the Israelis in Gaza.

Wright has been highly critical of Israel.

“They've been able to get away with any criminal act and violation of international law, and America protects them," Wright said in an interview conducted aboard one of the ships just before the attack.

“It was clear from the size of the force that boarded the ship that the purpose was not only to stop this sail, but to cause the largest possible number of fatalities in order to stop such initiatives in the future.”

Until Monday morning, the Mavi Marmara (Blue Marmara) had an undistinguished, if industrious, career. Relentlessly plying Istanbul's passenger routes, the ship carried hundreds of thousands of commuters and holidaymakers through the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara. It is doubtful whether any of those passengers would have remembered her name; they were certainly not aware that they were on board one of a very select group of sea-going vessels that have permanently altered world politics. The list includes the HMS Victory, the Bismarck, the General Balgrano - and now the Mavi Marmara.

Well, now Israel has done it. They have actually provoked Turkey to the point that they may start a war over this incident massacre:

Two days ago, Israeli forces attacked a humanitarian aid flotilla in international waters. The whole purpose of the activists on the raided Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, and several others around it, were to bring aid and supplies, including playgrounds for children, to Gaza. They paid the price by being the targets of Israeli machine guns.

At least 10 unarmed civilians, most of whom are Turks, were killed. Dozens of others were injured.

There is no need to mince words in the face of this atrocity: Israel has committed piracy, barbarism and state terrorism.

I am up to my eyeballs work-wise, but just had to comment on the Israeli attack on the Turkish ship trying to bring supplies to the beleaguered Gazans. Sweet Jesus, when is the U.S. going to understand that the reflexive embrace of whatever Israel does -- particularly under the leadership of a one-dimensional bully -- is not in our interests?

The ruptured disk may have allowed much of the heavy drilling mud being injected into the well last week to escape into the rock formation outside of the wellbore, people familiar with BP's findings said.

This poem was written before the barbarian attack on the Freedom Flotilla, but in the translation I added a verse to salute the European martyrs of Palestine.

Regardless of the details of the flotilla incident, sources say President Obama is focused on what he sees as the longer term issue here: a successful Mideast peace process.

“The president has always said that it will be much easier for Israel to make peace if it feels secure,” a senior administration official tells ABC News.

BP Plc has given up trying to plug its leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico any sooner than August, laying out a series of steps to pipe the oil to the surface and ship it ashore for refining, said Thad Allen, the U.S. government’s national commander for the incident.

Smarter people than me say that the lobby has become institutionalized; and that good journalists like my old friend Fred Hiatt are caught up in it not out of ideological commitment but because in Washington it's the water everyone who cares about his/her career swims in. I bet Bill Keller operates that way? Barack Obama? Walter Russell Mead? And the sad thing about the institutional lobby is that its liberal exponents, having checked their values/judgment at the coatcheck some time back, will just roll along with it till they really are dern sure that the rules have changed.

This spring while I was in Israel for Passover my Israeli Palestinian friends in Haifa showed me pictures and stories of disabled people(men, women and children) in Gaza using sticks instead of crutches or utterly house bound for lack of a wheelchair. Many of the disabled were as a result of the Gaza war. Understandably, I was very moved by their plight even though I don't have any sympathy for Hamas. My Nephew who is a captain in the Golani Brigade arranged a meeting with the IDF bureaucrats responsible for the the Gaza blockade to hear my request to provide some wheelchairs and crutches for Gaza thru official Israeli channels.

ITALIAN prosecutors are investigating the Vatican bank on suspicion of involvement in money laundering, La Repubblica daily reported on Tuesday.

He said he was disappointed with Washington's cautious response to an incident he likened to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

The United States has blocked demands at the UN security council for an international inquiry into Israel's assault on the Turkish ship carrying aid to Gaza that left nine pro-Palestinian activists dead.

A compromise statement instead calls for an impartial investigation which Washington indicated could be carried out by Israel.

For extorting from me and my fellow Americans $6,000,000,000 (billion) a year for the last 4 decades, we bless thee.

For taking our most sophisticated weapons technology and stealing it for yourself without paying the American patent holders, we bless thee.

For taking that high-tech military technology and selling it to our enemies, such as the Russians and Chinese, thus further endangering us, we bless thee.

For using that weaponry in a sustained attack against a United States ship, the USS Liberty, in an attempt to sink her, thus preventing US servicemen from revealing to the rest of the world information concerning the war crimes they witnessed you commit against Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai Desert during the Six Day War, we bless thee.

Lebanon's military fired anti-aircraft artillery at Israeli warplanes that were flying over Lebanon, a senior Israeli security official said on Tuesday.