Does the Israeli government owe anyone an inquiry over the flotilla affair? Yes, it does. To whom does it owe an inquiry? To several constituencies. It owes it to the Israeli public. This was a major incident that went badly wrong and has done the country damage. Israel is a democracy and its people are entitled to know in all clarity where mistakes have been made and, if there have been any offences committed, who was responsible for them. Then there are its own commandos. They were put at risk in what looks to have been a seriously-botched operation, and are entitled to know where the fault for this lies if there is fault, as seems prima facie likely. Equally, anyone aboard the flotilla who may have come to harm, including lethal harm, without themselves having incurred the risk of that through wrongdoing of their own is entitled to learn, if they still can, the details of how this came about. In a looser sense the Israeli government also owes an impartial inquiry to all Israel's friends, those who have the interests of the country and its people at heart, as well as to uncommitted but unbiased minds the world over with a disinterested concern in seeing justice done.
On the other hand, Israel does not owe an inquiry to that sector of world opinion that is composed of overt anti-Semites, overt anti-Zionists and perennial critics of the country whose notion of even-handedness in a long-running and intractable historical dispute is to keep one hand firmly pocketed while the other never stops gesticulating, sometimes obscenely. That it does not owe its enemies an inquiry should go without saying, but probably doesn't - so there, I've said it. However, the somewhat more nebulous but now very large sector of world opinion which purports to speak not in enmity, but in the name of justice, yet never of a justice that encompasses the people of Israel, is not owed an inquiry, much less an international inquiry - in circumstances in which Israel alone is called upon to submit itself to external inquiry of this kind, as if it might be, so to say, the Jew among nations, obliged to dance before its audience of critics, these partisans of justice who are capable of swallowing everything appalling across the planet without ever mooting the need for an international inquiry; not for North Korea, not for Russia, not for China, and not for anybody, except in this one case. Ma nishtana and then some. These are the pograunists of contemporary opinion and may be told where to park their petunias.
This does not mean, though, that Israel should ignore the suggestion to include an independent element in the composition of the inquiry it ought to set up - independent, that is, of Israeli judicial and other participants; some panel members from countries other than Israel itself, so long as they have unimpeachable credentials for fairmindedness (as well as tough-mindedness) and integrity. In the composition of the inquiry Israel has as much interest as anybody - more, in fact - in maximizing the possibility that unprejudiced opinion around the world will see its inquiry as an impartial and authoritative one. On those grounds it should accept international participation.