The year before last, the EU Goforits were on the verge of letting Turkey into the EU. I’m sure you can imagine how well that would be playing right now – but on a less financial and more geopolitical level, this merits some very serious consideration.

For those willing to look, listen and weigh the hype on both sides of the Gaza ‘hoax’ (if I may call it that) it is becoming increasingly obvious that a high degree of well-planned goading has been going on here. The best analogy, I think, is a soccer one: Team A decides that Team B’s excitable striker needs a painful pull on his underarm hair in order to get him sent off. UN referee duly shows the striker a red card when he retaliates by chucking paintballs at Team A’s clogger.

People might find my flippancy (by using that analogy,and the word ‘hoax’) offensive, but it’s mainly my response to a situation of quite staggering hypocrisy among the Western European leaders – and the expected naivety of their more bourgeois and intellectual citizens. Among many other things, we need to sort out where the EU stands in the world; because if it’s going to stand on the side of sanctimonious gestures, then all the more reason for letting it tear itself up.

The Flotilla episode is a small leaflet drop in a long-running and ruthless holy war – nothing more, nothing less. The two sides in this war are the Islamics (who want their own way about everything) and the rest of us (who care very little either way about anything). This enormous difference in attitudes is the key to Islam’s propaganda and terrorist success to date.

I am unable to comprehend why anyone in Europe, who isn’t an Islamic moaning about everyone’s desire to be nasty to Muslims, would want to demonise Israel in quite the way its governments and leaders have in recent days. This isn’t to let Netanyahu off the hook (see analogy above) but rather to ask a helpful question such as “Are you all completely mad?”

Let us – please – for just a few minutes here examine the factual reality. Forget accounts of flotillas and idiot talk about piracy in Israel’s own territorial waters: instead, why don’t we just get some facts in a row:

1. The Israelis do not want the destruction of the Islamic religion, or even those states which show off its advantages to such good effect. Hamas wants the destruction of the Jewish State.
2. The Israelis have a democratically elected Government and a relatively free press. Hamas seized power by force and is busy mopping up any and all opposition to it.
3. The Israelis have never threatened to wipe any other nation off the face of the earth. Iran’s leader (in power via an election so fixed that demonstrations and repression lasted for three months afterwards) has threatened to turn Israel into “a nuclear pancake”.
4. The Israelis have transformed a desert into a thriving balanced economy in half a century. The Arabs are good at firing guns in the air, and ditching democracy at the first opportunity.
5. Eqypt, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Jordan and Syria have all obtained leaders via assassination nd/or revolution in the last forty years. Israel holds regular elections and has never had any leader assassinated by its own citizens.
6. The Israelis have been attacked by various combinations of their neighbours twice without warning – once on the main Jewish holiday. They routed the invaders on both occasions.
7. The Israelis were bombed by indiscriminate Hamas missiles for several months prior to their Gaza invasion to take out those doing it.

Right people, the EU is going to face geopolitical threats and terrorism from various directions over the next twenty years, and will need friends in the Middle East. Which of the two protagonists above would you like as an ally – and I’ll have to hurry you, because this ‘dilemma’ won’t wait.

Now let’s move back to recent events. As the Slog has so far established, the Israelis boarded the ship using paintball guns. They boarded just the one ship. Why? Jews are not stupid: on the ship they found guns and weapons. Videos from above show the passengers throwing weapons over the side and firing live rounds at the Israelis. Why? Several calls by this and thousands of other sites to search the one ship involved have fallen on deaf ears. Why? The man Hasan Nowarah from Glasgow told the BBC he was a humble volunteer – when if fact he personally organised the whole UK operation as Chairman of an anti-Israeli group in Scotland. Why? The return of deportees evoked a hero’s welcome in wannabe EU State Turkey. Why? The Israeli government had urged the flotilla not to try to breach the blockade before the ships set sail from waters off Cyprus on Sunday and offered to take some aid in for them. The activists refused. Why? Without knowing all the facts, Turkey immediately withdrew its ambassador in Tel Aviv on Monday. Why? When the Israelis began pressing charges of assault against the activists, Turkey issued an ultimatum. Why?

So in the light of that people, hands up all those who still want Turkey in the EU? Hands up all those who still think our Government’s outright condemnation of Israel was a good – or even strategically wise – move?

I am continuing to dig around this issue, and wherever I dig it seems that things aren’t what they seemed at first sight to be. Some of course will never want to see the truth, because for all kinds of reasons it is uncomfortable and inconvenient at the moment. The Foreign Office will never get it (sadly, Hague has already gone native) but then the Foreign Office has been wrong on every major issue since 1934 – and virulently anti-semitic, as was its protege Anthony Eden.

But all this will change in time. When it becomes clear that Turkey is the next domino in the Islamic sights (and already endemically anti-Israel anyway). And when the obvious happens and the mad folks in Iran get the Bomb. And when innate Iraqi instability collapses, and Iranian insurgents take over. And when the Americans get tired of being in Afghanistan. And when it becomes increasingly clear that a large minority of Britain’s Muslims (like Hasan Nowarah) have no love for our country at all. And when a response to nuclear capacity is vital, the EU is as usual all over the shop, and only the Israelis have either the skills or motivation to do what’s necessary. And when and when and what then, people?