"A report by three UN-appointed human rights experts Wednesday said that Israeli forces violated international law when they raided a Gaza-bound aid flotilla killing nine activists earlier this year."

With these words did a Toronto-area newspaper lead off its report on the international community's latest ritual excoriation of Israel last week. Only later in the article does one learn that these "experts" had been commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), a sham organization that is dominated by rogue dictatorships.

Echoing the debunked propaganda that circulated in the days immediately following the flotilla confrontation, the HRC report presents a black-and-white narrative of marauding Israeli soldiers willfully slaughtering helpless do-gooders. Indeed, the report authors go so far as to denounce Israel's larger campaign to prevent weapons and terrorists from being smuggled into Gaza

-- even though Gaza's Hamas leaders consider themselves in a state of war against Israel, are holding an Israeli hostage and repeatedly have used Gaza as a staging ground for rockets attack against Israel.

The HRC could have saved time by dropping the pretense of objectivity and simply asking Hamas to write the report itself.

Fortunately, the report to the HRC attracted relatively little attention -- at least, compared to other ritual denunciations of Israel. This is in large part because the Council's effort to investigate the flotilla incident has been superseded by a more credible inquiry launched by UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon, and headed up by former New Zealand prime minister Geoffrey Palmer. Mr. Palmer's investigation, unlike the HRC's, has the support of most Western nations, and will enjoy the co-operation of Israel itself (which properly boycotted the HRC effort).

But there's no need to wait for the Palmer report to know the truth about the flotilla episode. The Israeli government has released numerous eyewitness film clips showing its commandoes being mobbed and brutalized by flotilla activists who, as we know from studying their own words, were seeking "martyrdom."

But don't take it from us, or even from the Israeli government. In recent days, independent Turkish book author and newspaper reporter Sefik Dinc has confirmed the essential truth that the flotilla leaders all along planned to instigate violence against the Israelis. Whatever the conclusions of the HRC's kangaroo inquiry, it is these flotilla ringleaders who ultimately bear responsibility for the deaths that took place that day.

To quote Israeli journalist Barry Rubin, who has reviewed translations from Mr. Dinc's eyewitness account, the author "is sympathetic to the [flotilla] militants but also points to the responsibility of the Turkish government and the IHH, the sponsoring Islamist group, for the crisis.

His text and pictures show the Jihadists taking out iron bars and clubs, preparing for battle, beating Israeli soldiers, and trying to throw one of them into the sea.

Mr. Dinc also reports that Israeli soldiers opened fire only trying to rescue soldiers taken hostage. His account corresponds in almost every detail with that given by Israel.

He writes: 'When everyone who had been assigned a task reported to their stations, clubs were taken out of a hiding place.... In addition to the wooden clubs I'd seen earlier, there were now iron bars as well.' Those passengers not choosing to participate in the attack went down to lower decks. The first three soldiers who landed were beaten and dragged to the upper deck."

The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, an Israeli NGO focusing on intelligence issues, reviewed Mr. Dinc's book, and concluded that "IHH operatives and their supporters fired live ammunition as soon as the first soldiers descended from the helicopter. One IDF soldier suffered a knee injury from a non-IDF weapon as soon as he came on board the ship.... IHH operatives used three weapons taken from the Israelis against other IDF soldiers. It appears that two of them were thrown into the sea, as were one or two non-IDF [guns], at least one of which was used to fire on the commandos descending from the helicopter."

All in all, nine activists died on board the flotilla. And their deaths deserve to be remembered -- not as victims of Israeli aggression, but as casualties of what we now know to be a violent martyrdom operation orchestrated by Israel's enemies.