Oh, Bibi, you lovable rogue! Here's what you told us, here's the setup: you have one ship with a population of 400 Hamas sympathizers and a number of actual, real-life terrorists on board. These people are desperate to sacrifice their own lives if only they can cause the tiniest bit of embarrassment to Israel.
The ship also has a cargo, which may contain weapons for all you know. There could be missile parts on board. There could be grenades. There might be machine guns or shoulder-held rocket launchers disguised as cameras and so, so much more.
And there's another cache of arms hidden right beneath the fold...
So, how did you decide to deal with this... this Death Flotilla?
Your plan was a good one, Bibi, I'll give you that. In order to take over a ship containing ruthless terrorists and deadly weapons that could be used against your forces, you lowered a small, outnumbered band into the middle of the lethally armed murderers, knowing that your brave men would have no problem defending themselves with... with paint guns?
Did I hear you right? Did you want your soldiers to be slaughtered?
Or... and you'll forgive me, Bibi, I hate to put it this way, but I'm starting to suspect that you're lying to me. That's very hurtful.
Because you knew all along there were no weapons on board, didn't you? The paint guns prove that.
And now that I think about it, the hate-activists did do everything publicly. I mean, they announced their schedule; they hid nothing; they allowed their cargo to be inspected by anyone and everyone who was interested. They wouldn't even have been very hard to infiltrate if only -- if only! -- you had some kind of spying network, like, for example, Mossad.
Oh, you crafty scamp, Bibi! All those announcements to the press about the presence of terrorists, about weapons, when all the while you were up to something entirely different!
But what was it?
I've heard dozens of explanations over the last few days. You did it for the poll ratings; it was an act of thoughtless arrogance; you were sending a message to the activists, or the Gazans, or the Turks; you were deliberately testing the limits of US patience.
All fine theories, yet I feel that none of them account for the entirety of the facts.
So, I'm going to tell you what I think you were up to. My own pet theory, and why not? Everybody else is doing it.
Just a few days ago, you were due to visit the most powerful man in the word after Rupert Murdoch. President Obama holds the purse strings of your little enterprise and he has every reason to be mad at you after that little stunt you pulled with Joe Biden a while back. You were going to have to make a concession of some type to the President, on settlements, maybe, on who you were willing to negotiate with or... I don't know. But whatever it was, it wouldn't have been popular back home.
Therefore, like many great men before you, you were going to burnish your macho credentials with TV pictures of your elite, no-nonsense, top-of-the-line killers gliding onto the deck of a terror ship and teaching those hippies a non-fatal, non-internationally damaging lesson that they would never forget!
You were going to do it in international waters, because the idiots were delaying, hanging about outside the blockade zone and who knows? If you'd waited too long you'd have been making your concession to the President before you had anything to feed the dogs back home. Oh, my poor Bibi! The humanity!
And then it all went horribly wrong. Hippy Hamas-lovers died when they weren't supposed to. A show for your supporters turned into an worldwide crap-storm. Any concession you made to Obama in this situation, would suddenly look like an admission of murder or piracy or an attack on your second most important ally.
Oh, well. At least the blood-thirsty home crowd are really lapping it up now. And that's nice, Bibi, because it will make next-month's even larger concession that bit easier to swallow.
You rock!