Bird’s-Eye: Netanyahu announces what the results of the Israeli inquiry into the flotilla attack are going to be, while Uri Avnery looks at the real questions that the inquiry should ask. Meanwhile a fascinating Al Jazeera piece puts Israel’s behaviour in Gaza into a Middle-Eastern perspective, and a Jewish flotilla organizes as the next blockade breaker.

* Netanyahu Leaks Inquiry Results Mondoweiss

Israel has announced the creation of a committee of inquiry to look into the Israeli naval raid on a flotilla trying to break the blockade of Gaza that ended in the deaths of nine people…. Two foreign observers–who won’t have the right to vote on anything related to the commission–will indeed be on the panel, but one them is David Trimble, who… “is a co-founder of the newly launched Israel advocacy group, “Friends of Israel,“ …Other participants of the “impartial” committee include a former Israeli general. No Israeli soldiers will be questioned.

Haaretz reports: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the start of Monday’s cabinet meeting that the main goal of the Gaza flotilla probe is to prove to the world that the Israel Navy operation on the Gaza-bound aid ship was appropriate and met international standards.

* Who is Afraid of a Real Inquiry? Uri Avnery Counterpunch

If a real Commission of Inquiry had been set up (instead of the pathetic excuse for a commission), here are some of the questions it should have addressed:

1. What is the real aim of the Gaza Strip blockade?

2. If the aim is to prevent the flow of arms into the Strip, why are only 100 products allowed in (as compared to the more than 12 thousand products in an average Israeli supermarket)?

3. Why is it forbidden to bring in chocolate, toys, writing material, many kinds of fruits and vegetables (and why cinnamon but not coriander)?

* Reflections On The Flotilla Massacre Pervez Hoodbhoy Znet

To understand Israel’s decision, one must hark back to Moshe Yaalon, then chief of staff of the Israeli Defence Forces, who in 2002 said that “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.”

Let’s face the truth: Israeli crimes are extremely serious but they pale in front of those committed almost daily by religious extremists in Pakistan.  Israel murdered nine peace activists of the Mavi Marmara, but just hours earlier jihadists had killed over ninety Ahmadis peacefully praying in a mosque in Lahore.  Israel starves Gaza, but the Taliban have imposed an even more brutal blockade of Shias in Parachinar and Kurram. Israel does not amputate the limbs of its enemies or decapitate them, but the Taliban do. Israel has destroyed schools for Palestinians in Gaza, but the Taliban have blown up nearly a thousand schools.

* German Jews ‘inundated’ with requests to join new Gaza aid flotilla Haaretz

An association of German Jews planning to send a boat with humanitarian aid to break the Gaza blockade is searching for a second vessel, given the high number of requests to travel with the group.

The group, Jewish Voices for a Just Peace, had originally planned to send one small vessel from an unnamed Mediterranean port in mid-July, with the intention of getting aid past the Israeli-imposed blockade of Gaza.