Obama’s decision to make nice to the Arabs and insult Israel did not go unnoticed.

This is another one of those: This wouldn’t be happening if Obama was President. Impeach Sarah Palin! moments.

So far only 16 are dead. That count will go higher.

Richard Fernandez has the details on the clash between the Israeli navy and a flotilla of boats trying to break the Gaza/Hamas blockade.

The ‘aid flotilla’ bound for Gaza met the immovable object and the resulting clash, under circumstances yet only sketchily described, may have resulted in 16 protester deaths and 6 IDF personnel injured.

It seems all those Harvard-faculty theories about how to get a Mideast peace agreement are not working like they assured themselves they would. Of course, a nuclear war there would soon lead to the peace of death. Maybe that was the plan all the time.

Together those three developments — the shadow of the Iranian nukes, the missiles of Hezbollah and the loss of American support — may have fostered a regional perception that Israel is vulnerable. Certainly the flotilla organizers could not have been insensible to the rising pressure on Israel and were determined to exploit it, nor was it lost on the IDF that if they showed weakness in the face of the flotilla there would be more to follow. In one sense the flotilla put to sea on the perceived political tides and were met by IDF elements sailing on the contrary currents. The result was a clash inconsequential in itself, but not in the sparks that it may generate.

The problem is that the strategy of pressuring Israel to win brownie points with the Arab world and get the peace negotiations moving is a two edged sword. Its proponents may hope that it will provide space for the diplomats to maneuver. Having failed for decades to pull on the Arab side of the rope, they will now try the Israeli end. But it also embolden’s Israel’s enemies and makes the Jewish state that much more paranoid. The combination of Syrian and Iranian thrusting and the Israeli determination to defend itself at all costs can lead to a dangerous situation. Certainly there is enough explosive in the region to make things dangerous. Recently, the Times of London reported that Israeli nuclear armed submarines are now on rotating patrol off Iran’s coast.

Is this the part where Emperor Palpatine says "I have foreseen it. Everything is going to plan?"