Sailing forward

摘要

Ask almost any Israeli about the United Nations, and you will be told that the country gets a raw deal from the organisation that voted the Jewish state into existence in 1948. The talk in Israel is of a "built-in majority" of hostile states in the General Assembly, and a secretariat that is cool at best.rnBut this week Binyamin Netanyahu accepted a un inquiry into the bloody encounter between Turks and Israelis on May 31st, in which nine people from Turkey (one an American citizen) on a flotilla bent on delivering supplies to Gaza were killed by Israeli commandos. The prime minister's decision to help the investigation was calmly received in Israel, although Tzipi Livni, the opposition leader, complained that the army could be exposed to foreign prying.