(Video Below)

CBS– Israeli naval commandos stormed a flotilla of ships carrying aid and hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists to the blockaded Gaza Strip on Monday, killing nine passengers in a botched raid that provoked international outrage and a diplomatic crisis.

Dozens of activists and six Israeli soldiers were wounded in the bloody predawn confrontation in international waters. The violent takeover dealt yet another blow to Israel’s international image, already tarnished by war crimes accusations in Gaza and its 3-year-old blockade of the impoverished Palestinian territory.

In Turkey, which had partly sponsored the humanitarian mission, thousands of protesters condemned the raid. The Turkish prime minister described Israel’s pre-dawn commando assault as “state terrorism.”

 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanhayu canceled a much-anticipated meeting with President Barack Obama in Washington on Tuesday in a sign of just how gravely Israel viewed the uproar. In Canada, Netanyahu announced he was rushing home but said he had called the American president and agreed to meet again.

President Barack Obama voiced “deep regret” over the raid and “expressed the importance of learning all the facts and circumstances” surrounding the incident.

The U.N. Security Council held an emergency meeting Monday, while the Arab League planned to meet Tuesday in Cairo.

The activists were headed to Gaza to draw attention to the blockade, which Israel and Egypt imposed after the militant Hamas group seized the territory of 1.5 million Palestinians in 2007.

There were conflicting accounts of what happened early Monday, with activists claiming the Israelis opened fire without provocation and Israel insisting its forces fired in self defense.

Continue readng about the Aid Flotilla Being Attacked by Israeli Commandos.

© COPYRIGHT CBS, 2010

GUARDIAN– Secret South African documents reveal that Israel offered to sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime, providing the first official documentary evidence of the state’s possession of nuclear weapons.

The “top secret” minutes of meetings between senior officials from the two countries in 1975 show that South Africa‘s defence minister, PW Botha, asked for the warheads and Shimon Peres, then Israel’s defence minister and now its president, responded by offering them “in three sizes”. The two men also signed a broad-ranging agreement governing military ties between the two countries that included a clause declaring that “the very existence of this agreement” was to remain secret.

The documents, uncovered by an American academic, Sasha Polakow-Suransky, in research for a book on the close relationship between the two countries, provide evidence that Israel has nuclear weapons despite its policy of “ambiguity” in neither confirming nor denying their existence.

The Israeli authorities tried to stop South Africa’s post-apartheid government declassifying the documents at Polakow-Suransky’s request and the revelations will be an embarrassment, particularly as this week’s nuclear non-proliferation talks in New York focus on the Middle East.

They will also undermine Israel’s attempts to suggest that, if it has nuclear weapons, it is a “responsible” power that would not misuse them, whereas countries such as Iran cannot be trusted.

A spokeswoman for Peres today said the report was baseless and there were “never any negotiations” between the two countries. She did not comment on the authenticity of the documents.

South African documents show that the apartheid-era military wanted the missiles as a deterrent and for potential strikes against neighbouring states.

Continue reading about Israel Selling South Africa Nuclear Weapons.

© COPYRIGHT THE GUARDIAN, 2010

Photo by Flickr user The Official CTBTO Photostream

BUSINESS WEEK– Israel will not allow an international flotilla of ships to reach the Gaza Strip with construction materials and humanitarian supplies, a government official said, calling the action a provocative stunt.

“While they have wrapped themselves in a humanitarian cloak, they are engaging in political propaganda and not in pro-Palestinian aid,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said today in a telephone interview from Jerusalem.

The eight vessels, carrying 10,000 tons of cargo and some 550 pro-Palestinian activists through the Mediterranean Sea, will probably reach the coastal waters of Gaza by May 28 or 29, Dror Feiler, one of the organizers, said by satellite phone from aboard the Swedish-Greek ship Sofia.

Israel has restricted entry of people and goods into Gaza since it was taken over by the militant Hamas movement in 2007, allowing in only a limited range of supplies including food, clothing and medicine in truck convoys.

Israeli Navy ships have stopped three previous efforts by the Free Gaza Movement, an international group formed in 2008 to deliver aid, to reach the territory by sea.

The ships set sail from Ireland, Sweden, Turkey and Greece, Feiler said. Some are carrying television crews that plan to broadcast live any confrontation between Israeli forces and the activists.

“This is not going to look good on television,” said 58-year-old Feiler, an Israeli-born resident of Sweden. “We’re on a peaceful mission to help end the misery of the people in Gaza and it’s going to be very ugly if Israeli soldiers try to take over our ships.”

Continue reading about Israel Planning to Block Aid Ships to Gaza.

–With assistance from Saud Abu Ramadan in Gaza. Editors: Ben Holland, Peter Hirschberg.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jonathan Ferziger in Tel Aviv at [email protected]

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Hirschberg at [email protected]

© COPYRIGHT BUSINESS WEEK, 2010

ALTERNET– Hispanic students fill nearly half the seats in Arizona’s public school classrooms, but a new law signed by Governor Jan Brewer Tuesday makes it illegal for these students to learn about their heritage in school. HB 2281 prohibits schools from offering courses at any grade level that advocate ethnic solidarity, promote overthrow of the US government, or cater to specific ethnic groups—regulations which will dismantle the state’s popular Mexican-American studies programs.

Much like Arizona’s new immigration law, this ethnic studies ban is political interest dressed up to look like education reform. The bill was passed largely because of State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne’s personal distaste for the Tuscon Unified School District’s Chicano studies program, in which 3 percent of the district’s 55,000 students participate. He has been hell-bent on squashing the program ever since learning several years ago that Hispanic civil rights activist Dolores Huerta told Tucson High School students that “Republicans hate Latinos,” the Associated Press reports.

“Traditionally, the American public school system has brought together students from different backgrounds and taught them to be Americans and to treat each other as individuals, and not on the basis of their ethnic backgrounds,”…

Continue reading about Arizona Banning Ethnic Studies in School.

© COPYRIGHT ALTERNET, 2010

Photo by Esparta