Absolutely incredible. They threw the weapons overboard RATHER than employ them against their aggressors. Frankly, I would never have been able to exert that kind of self-control. I shudder to think, but the adrenal fear of waking from sleep while being brutally invaded on neutral ground combined with the sleek, almost preternaturally comfy responsiveness of my captured MP5 would likely have resulted in some serious foreplay at the very least.

Drop it overboard? Oh, the pain of that. I really don't think so! To turn the other cheek as pirates were bearing down on me with all that lethal force at their command? Incredible self-discipline. Incredible! I've never seen or heard of anything to compare except a story of an extremely similar kind, the Masada siege. I am stunned and in awe. I bow down before the manifestly superior self-control of those flotilla activists. The only thing I can think of off-hand is the incredible spiritual resolve of the besieged occupants of the Masada, in which brave, noble, spiritually superior Jews outwitted their Roman aggressors by killing themselves before they could be ignominiously and humiliatingly slaughtered by overwhelmingly superior force. Um, hey, wait. The various heroics of Jews in concentration camps also qualify as equivalently saintly. But then that's the way it goes with all asymmetric warfare against totalitarian regimes, isn't it? Yeah, it is.

Of course there is another possible interpretation. Let's say Mike Renzulli and others of his ilk were caught out so very badly on their "facts" that some sort of shambled together pack of nonsense was required in order to reassemble a modicum of credibility around here in order to have the base support required for further psyops. A retraction would have been an excellent, though insufficient, start. But this is not the Israeli way. Retraction is weakness. If it must be done, it must be done on page 37, while on page 1 we will feature these fictitious replacement narratives:

Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda, Terrrrrist, Terrrrrist, Terrrrrist! Nope, no facts there, public didn't go for it, reporters FOIA'd our IDF for evidence. Man, that's pesky. So crap, bail, pwned, what now?

"Guns were thrown overboard by a Turkish mercenary force of which EVERY dead body and captured survivor had exactly $10,000 in unspecified currency in his pocket?" Ok, lets do that. Mike Renzulli said it. IDF said it. And CNN, MSBC, CBS, Faux, and BBC all said it too. Well, darn it, that didn't quite fly, it was instantly rejected as a lie, and we had to retract it (except unlike what the Israeli government humbled down to and did world-wide, we never did actually retract it here at podunk Freedoms Phoenix, did we Mike?) Instead we figured we'd just ignore and retry, ignore and retry, ignore and retry.

Ok, we (says the IDF) have a problem. We said guns were tossed overboard. We're screwed on that "fact". Just screwed. It sounds too pat and absurd, even IF it were true. So let's take a more subtle tack, even though that doesn't come too naturally. Thank IHVH we have this admission from a defender that he tossed some captured guns. Phew.

Aw, damn it! That proves that they were so peaceful that they tossed the only decent weapons that were on the boat (i.e. our IDF weapons). Why didn't we foresee this obvious, obvious outcome? Jeez we are sure looking like ---holes now. I even called Robert Aumann, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Thomas Schelling, from the University of Maryland and Harvard University. I mean we got these guys the Nobel Prize, for -------'s sake. £723,000 in prize cash plus some major perks? That's some fairly serious eesh. You'd have thought we'd get an airtight tactic out of these big-head bozos, for all the $ we laid out. But NoooOOOOooo. They tell us to cover up with this "our guns tossed over" line, and it didn't fly at all. Now people think our commando's are such pussies that unarmed civilians can disarm us at will. Now what the hell do we do? Aaah, just wait it out, as always, and keep the grease flowing to congress. What else? Stupid Yanks will forget in mere weeks.

So which is it IDF? Preternaturally peaceful protesters purged powerful pieces prior to potential pogrom? Or, propaganda purporting preposterous positions pinioned by perceptive public? The days when Israel can have it both ways are just about over. Choose, Mike. While you still can.