Tomorrow, Monday May 13th, FDL Movie Night presents the 2012 Peabody Award winning film My Neighbourhood, the story of Mohammed El Kurd, a teenage Palestinian boy growing up in the in the heart of East Jerusalem. The 25-minute film shows the surprising turn of events when Mohammed’s family is forced to give up a part of their home to Israeli settlers.

Pepe is right (again) when he concludes that the Partitioning of Syria has been the Neo/Ziocon’s main objective all along. Divide et Impera…!

Denmark and Finland jointly announced they were joining Sweden, which had granted Palestine embassy status. The formal announcement was Monday, at a Scandinavian ministerial conference.

Since Israel launched air strikes in Syria last week, more and more liberal supporters of greater United States intervention are presenting arguments they have developed to support advocacy for arming rebel groups.

New York Times columnist and former executive editor, Bill Keller, argues President Barack Obama needs to “get over” the Iraq invasion that did not uncover any weapons of mass destruction. “I fear prudence has become fatalism, and our caution has been the father of missed opportunities, diminished credibility and enlarged tragedy,” Keller writes.

Fears that the Syrian Civil War would cause further regional instability seem to have been justified as the Syrian government has stated that airstrikes from Israel constitute a declaration of war. A war between Syria and Israel could draw Iran and the United States directly into the conflict.

Here’s the extended Cenk interview… Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: Chemical weapon use in Syria ‘could have been an Israeli false flag operation’

While the Obama Administration drones on about seeking a diplomatic solution the Department of Defense has been tasked with designing weapons for a war with Iran. In the event of a bombing campaign in Iran redesigned “bunker buster” bombs will be the stars of the show.

This diary is a preliminary attempt to specify a general conviction of mine that the way forward in the Middle and North Africa region (MENA) is through cooperation between the “democratic” secular movements and the Moderate Islamist movements (Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Tunisia’s Ennahda Party, and Hamas in occupied Palestine), and that this understanding is something U.S. progressives should support.

The title refers to one possible element of the specification. Given that the idea of a two-state solution, meaning Israel and a secular Palestine has become a mere fantasy that no longer has a realistic possibility of implementation, perhaps Fatah and Hamas can finally realize that it is vital for them to settle their differences, and come to an understanding on international issues to struggle for, of which one element might be a new two-state proposal.

President Barack Obama, during his visit to Israel, spoke at the Jerusalem Convention Center to Israeli students. It was a typically pragmatic speech, reminding the audience that US will defend the country against those who oppose its “right to exist” while at the same time outlining how Palestinians deserve a state of their own.

President Barack Obama is set to arrive in Israel next week- and has set the bar for peace about as low as it can get, saying that he won’t be carrying in a grand peace plan for the middle east when he arrives. So, the Obama visit is a low expectations game of international charades that, depending on how cynical your point of view, is either a solidification of allies before world war three ensues or a simply friends helping each other tread water in the sea of status quo that – in the powder keg of the middle east, is as untenable as David Hasselhoff’s sobriety.