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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704515704575282670417642484.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTTopStories

By CHARLES LEVINSON And JAY SOLOMON

JERUSALEM—Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused his nation’s critics Wednesday of an “international offensive of hypocrisy,” as the growing diplomatic crisis over the raid on a flotilla of pro-Palestinian activists threatened to deepen Israel’s isolation from much of the rest of the world.

Speaking as Israel said it was completing the expulsion of nearly 700 activists detained when their Gaza-bound ships were intercepted Monday in an operation that left nine dead, Mr. Netanyahu said the blockade of the Palestinian territory is necessary to prevent missile attacks against Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Terrorists affiliated with the Palestinian faction Hamas were to blame for the violence aboard the Mavi Marmara, one of the ships headed to the Gaza Strip, he said.

Early Thursday morning, hundreds of the deported aid activists arrived at Istanbul airport, greeted by throngs of supporters waving Palestinian and Turkish flags.

Israel’s bungled attempt to stop the aid flotilla from reaching Gaza also highlights how an increasingly forceful strategy by Palestinians and their supporters to turn to boycotts, international isolation, and relatively nonviolent protests is confronting Israel with a challenge it appears ill-prepared to counter.

Israel has faced rising international criticism since the 2006 Lebanon war, and last year’s Gaza conflict fueled a new burst of condemnation. The 2009 election of Mr. Netanyahu and a less accommodative government fed doubts in the international community that Israel was committed to making compromises with the Palestinians that many outsiders thought necessary to the pursuit of peace.

Israeli officials point to a significant toughening by many allies on important Israeli strategic issues, including peace efforts with the Palestinians. The United Nations has intensified pressure for Israel to accept U.N. oversight of its nuclear program, and to agree to ban nuclear weapons from the region.

The fallout also has ricocheted beyond diplomacy, Israeli officials say. It is reflected in incidents including British grocery chains dropping products produced in Israeli settlements; Scandinavian pension funds divesting themselves from an Israeli defense company; and the spread of an annual “Israel Apartheid Week,” backed by mostly left-leaning Western groups, to 50 cities world-wide.

The Swedish Football Association has appealed to UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, to cancel a Friday match in Israel between the countries’ under-21 squads, according to the Eurosport news channel and Swedish newspapers. The move couldn’t be independently confirmed.

The Israeli foreign ministry recently issued a quiet warning to diplomats to scale back public appearances overseas, after a string of incidents in which protesters disrupted speeches by Israeli diplomats. In February, protesters in the state of Vermont interrupted a performance of the Israel Ballet.

“There is a sense, a fear here, that the more extreme anti-Israel ideologies are seeping into more accepted mainstream discourse,” said a senior Israeli official responsible for tracking and combating efforts to delegitimize Israel. “It’s no longer some abstract intellectual debate,” he said. “It’s people pushing the debate into mobilizing others into thinking this is a totemic issue of human rights and right-versus-wrong—and it’s not.”

A recent report by the Reut Institute, a Tel Aviv-based think tank that provides strategic-thinking support to the Israeli government, warned the deligitimization effort “has already gained strategic significance and may evolve into an existential threat.” It said that Israel’s freedom to act militarily against perceived threats has been limited as a result of the campaign.

The report criticized Israeli leaders for having “no coherent conceptual response” to push back against global critics. It panned an Israeli security doctrine that military might alone would ensure Israel’s defense and has historically considered international opinion to be a peripheral security concern.

On Wednesday, Turkey, whose citizens accounted for all nine of those known to have been killed in the flotilla incident, said it would cancel three military and maritime-rescue exercises with Israel that were planned for this year and recalled its ambassador from Israel.

Some Western officials fear that if Israel feels isolated and cornered, it may be more likely to turn to unilateral force to confront threats from enemy states such as Iran.

Israeli critics of the handling of the flotilla operation are concerned that it has undermined the country’s ability to deter its more potent foes. If Israel’s most elite commando unit can’t execute a relatively straightforward operation just off Israel’s coast, they say, that calls into question the military’s ability to pull off a far more complicated strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities thousands of miles away. Israel’s military has defended the flotilla operation.

Well before Monday’s sea battle, Israeli officials had been blaming the Obama administration’s tough line on Israel for emboldening other countries to follow suit. “It is clear that many countries feel they have more leeway, and that if America can afford to speak the way it does on Israel, then why should they stay behind,” another senior Israeli foreign ministry official said in an interview before Monday’s bloodshed. “America draws the line and they all align themselves on this.” U.S. officials stress that all their actions are designed to strengthen Israel’s national security, and that establishment of a Palestinian state is essential to that.

U.S. officials have rushed to assure Israel of continued American support amid the fallout of Monday’s clash. Washington has refrained from the blunt criticism of Israel’s handling of the flotilla incident that allied governments, especially European ones, have issued in recent days.

Israeli officials have grown particularly concerned about what they view as the European Union’s increasingly aggressive stance over the Arab-Israeli conflict. These officials acknowledge that Europe has normally taken a more pro-Palestinian position than the U.S. But they say that the Obama administration’s public criticism of Mr. Netanyahu’s government has been seen as a green light by some European nations to press Israel further.

Some European diplomats in Jerusalem say the new tone coming from Washington has had an impact, but that shifting public opinions in their home countries are also playing a role.

In recent months, both the U.S. and the EU have formally signed onto the Palestinian Authority’s timetable for the creation of an independent Palestinian state within two years.

But some European countries have also been pushing for the EU and the U.S. to join the fray more directly if the talks falter over the next two years. In particular, they’ve sought to lay down the terms of a peace agreement, according to an April draft of an EU statement on the Arab-Israeli conflict for submission to the U.N. Security Council, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Israel has strongly rejected such a stance.

The draft said that the Quartet of bodies engaged in pushing for Mideast peace—the U.S, the EU, Russia and the U.N.— should “propose solutions for the end game” if talks stall. Perhaps more significantly, it said the Quartet should reserve the right to unilaterally recognize the establishment of Palestinian state “on the basis of the 4 June 1967 border” if negotiations fail.

This language was eventually stripped out of the statement, according to diplomats engaged in the process. But members of Mr. Netanyahu’s government were alarmed nonetheless by how far the EU draft went, according to Israeli officials. A spokeswoman for the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, declined to comment on the internal deliberations.

The chill between U.S. and Israel comes amid a series of other big diplomatic setbacks in recent months. A U.N. report, the Goldstone Report, accused Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity for their conduct in the Gaza War last year. Israel has dismissed the report as unbalanced.

Both the EU and the Mideast Quartet have hardened their positions since then, explicitly recognizing East Jerusalem as the rightful capital of a future Palestinian state for the first time.