Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council

There is no question that Israel's strategic environment at the moment is looking grimmer than it has in a while. Its long-standing good relations, at times something close to an alliance, with Turkey appear to be history. Meanwhile, following the Cairo embassy attack last Friday, it became clearer

Following the release of the UN "Palmer Report", which vindicated Israel's blockade of Gaza, Turkey has not only rejected the findings of the Report and maintained that Israel's blockade is illegal, but the Turkish government has been engaging in extremely provocative posturing regarding its stance

Over the weekend, the UN's Palmer Report into the Mavi Marmara maritime incident last May was published - the full report is available to read here, a good summary of its key provisions is here.  That report - which takes Israel's side on most questions relating to the Gaza

The United Nation's "Palmer Report" into last year's flotilla incident on the Mavi Marmara has vindicated Israel by finding that the naval blockade of the Gaza strip, including Israel's right to enforce the blockade including in international waters is legal under international law and it has also r

Cabinet divisions over a US-brokered reconciliation deal to resolve the Mavi Marmara crisis, and, it was hoped, allow Turkey and Israel to renew a normal strategic dialogue, have exposed a deep suspicion and distrust in Israeli political circles of Ankara's ruling Islamist government. Prospects for

Media and NGOs have always been quick to condemn Israel, yet are often silent about real and much more extensive human rights abuses in other countries. Therefore it should come as no surprise that news that the Turkish military had killed approximately 100 Kurdish people, while wounded more than 8

As a post on the blog Harry's Place notes, with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad running out of things to blame his current predicament on, he appears to be ramping-up violence to compensate. This is characterised by yet another watershed moment in the ongoing turmoil - Assad she

Another stark reminder of the astounding brutality displayed by the Assad regime in Syria surfaced last week when the Guardian translated and published a harrowing account of Syrian woman Samar Yazbek's shocking torture at the hands of Syrian authorities. Two huge men

If two million Palestinians in the West Bank deserve a state, what of the 18 million Kurds in the region who have endured 100 years of persecution? This is the tantalising question posed by Israeli analyst Dr. Guy Bechor who argues that Turkey should be careful what it advocates on behalf of Palest

As readers are probably aware, all of the top leadership of the Turkish military resigned over the weekend - including the Chief of Staff, and the heads of the Army, Navy and Air Force. What is the signficance of this - in a country where the armed forces have long played a strongly activist role i

While democratic reform seems to have been sweeping the Middle East, the strongest Muslim democracy in the region may have been quietly moving in the opposite direction. This morning's Jerusalem Post editorial took a rather down-beat tone concerning the retirement Friday of several of Turkey's top m

The acclaimed "Arab Spring" has given way to a murky summer, dominated by uncertainty, fog and danger as much as democratic hopes, according to academic experts. Some of the movements for reform which blossomed across the region earlier this year may take a long time to mature into democratic regime

The US administration's policy toward Syria is shaping up to be potentially the greatest missed opportunity of Barack Obama's presidency. If Syria were to break the right way and the regime in Damascus were to fall, the most tenacious state-sponsor of terrorism in the Arab world - Teheran's stronges

While this year's Gaza flotilla barely caused a stir, the ongoing saga of last year's continues. Last night, the UN's Palmer Commission confirmed rumours that the report that the release of the report they have prepared on last year's effort will again be delayed in the

The situation in Syria took an even graver turn yesterday. As the ruling Assad regime continues to brutalise dissenting citizens, some Syrians appear to be lashing out at the regime's minority Alawite sect. In retaliation, several Allawites went on a rampage of their own. Nada Bakri reports in The N

AIJAC's latest email Update looks at why and how the 2011 Gaza flotilla gambit fizzled out. In contrast to 2010's headline-grabbing political stunt that acted as a Trojan Horse for the Turkish Islamist IHH charity resulting in needless deaths and injuries, this was no replay.

As Stephen Pollard's column in the Guardian explained last night, Israeli diplomacy has all but prevented a repeat of last year's flotilla debacle. So successful has Israel been in stymieing the flotilla that what is actually setting sail amounts to one small boat with nine activists on b

This blog has been following the baffling hesitation that the West has been showing towards making criticisms of the Assad regime in Syria, despite intense crackdowns on civilian protestors, noting how Syria is interpreting this hesitation as a free pass to continue brutalising its civilians. After

Although the UN ‘Palmer report' on last year's Mavi Marmara raid was postponed until July 27 to enable talks to continue between Israel and Turkey, it is expected to justify Israel's blockade of the Gaza strip. The UN investigative committee was headed by former Prime Minister of New Zealand

While AIJAC has covered news about this summer's attempted Gaza flotilla in several recent posts by Daniel Meyerowitz-Katz and Tzvi Fleischer, the story of last year's flotilla has still not come to an end. Haaretz reported that the release of the UN's report on last year's flotilla incident, due t