Thomas Friedman on the Flotilla attack : It was definitely a "setup"

No question! No question, at all, that this flotilla was a setup, designed to trick the Israeli commandos into boarding it, from a helicopter. That is why those "humanitarian" activists were so well-armed with... poles and chairs and sticks and things one would find on a boat. They had set a trap, for Israel, to trick Israel into killing between 9 and 20 people. (But because Friedman is very balanced he admits that it was very stupid of Israel to fall for this trap and kill those people.)

You must always remember that while reasonable people consider Thomas Friedman to be a joke -- a barely literate cartoon mustache of oversimplification whose understanding of global politics is slightly less comprehensive than a USA Today infographic and who possesses about as much insight into world events as a lightly vandalized Wikipedia stub entry -- the sort of people who ineptly manage and run the nation take him very seriously and look to him to form their opinions about important subjects outside (and sometimes relating to) their immediate expertise, be that foreclosing on families or running the Defense Department for the Bush Administration.

From Alex Parene's article in Salon. More here.