The Israeli government has been increasingly harsh in enforcing their blockade, culminating in a May 31 attack on a Turkish aid ship Mavi Marmara that left nine aid workers dead. The Irene’s trip has been organized by a Jewish group, “Jews for Justice for Palestinians,” which opposes the blockade.

The group says it is particularly important that they attempt the voyage to show that “not all Jews support Israel’s policies in Gaza.” But the trip also presents a unique problem for Israeli officials, who will have a difficult time selling a violent attack on the ship the way they did in the case of the Mavi Marmara.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry slammed the trip, as it has slammed so many others in the past, as a “provocation,” and insists that the ship has to be boarded because “they could be carrying weaponry.” The ship is expected to arrive in Gaza sometime Tuesday.

The ship that is preparing to sail from Lebanon has nothing to do with humanitarianism,” insisted Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, adding that the ship is plotting to help “kill Israeli civilians.”

Exactly how a ship full of cancer medicine is going to kill civilians is unclear, but while most will shrug off Barak’s comments as typical rhetoric, few doubt the credibility of Israeli threats to use military force against the boat, particularly in the wake of the May 31 killing of nine aid workers on a similar ship by Israeli commandos.

The Lebanese government so far doesn’t appear to have committed to stopping the ship, but the Cypriot government has said they won’t allow it to sail to Gaza if it tries to arrive there first. Direct sailing from Lebanon to Gaza would not be allowed, according to Lebanese officials.

Lazaro and 9 other detainees are being held on a variety of immigration and procedural charges, but despite the criminal complaints detailing what could charitably be called an elaborate conspiracy, but might more reasonably be called a needlessly convoluted wild goose chase, none of them has actually been charged with spying.

According to lawyers, details of the charges suggest that the “spies” at best had managed to infiltrate American society as far as PTA meetings and a few cocktail parties in suburbs along the East Coast.

The evidence against Lazaro, in fact, appears to be that an FBI bug at one of these random cocktail parties heard him tell his wife about his family fleeing to Siberia during the second world war.

The 11th suspect, Christopher Robert Metsos, remains at large, having been bailed out after his arrest in Cyprus and vanished. It is unclear if he even remains on the island, and officials have condemned the Cypriot court for bailing him in the first place.

The announcement comes just a day after officials in the Lebanese government insisted the ship wouldn’t be allowed to sail to the Gaza Strip, claiming it amounted to an illegal attempt to send a ship to an “Israeli-controlled port.”

The Julia will apparently get around this law by not heading to Gaza directly. Instead the aid ship will head north to Cyprus first, will be searched again in a Cypriot port, and then will head to Gaza from there. It is expected the ship will arrive sometime this weekend.

A second Lebanese ship, the all-female “Mariam” is also expected to depart sometime soon on a similar attempt to deliver aid. It is unclear if the two ships will attempt to make the trip together or separately, and both have kept the specifics of their timing secret in the face of potential Israeli attack.

Israel, for its part, says it will use the same commandos that attacked the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish aid ship that attempted to voyage to Gaza three weeks ago. The commandos killed nine aid workers on board the ship.

The Israeli Navy has planned to capture and seize all the vessels and detain the aid workers on board. They even have tents set up in advance for the mass processing of the aid workers, which incude a Nobel laureate, a Holocaust survivor, and several European MPs.

The planned attack on aid workers in international waters and the seizure of their cargo of medicine and building materials has taken on an air of shocking palatability in the mainstream of public discourse, with no real doubt that Israel’s military will crush the aid workers by any means necessary and no real questioning of why.

Israel’s list of banned goods is downright bizarre, and while officials claim no complete official list exists, the capricious banning of things like pencils and chocolate under its blanket ban on “luxury” items to the strip has stripped any pretense of legitimacy the blockade may once have enjoyed.

At this point, much of Israel’s blockade seems downright mean-spirited, ensuring that things like ginger and coriander never reach the shores of the tiny enclave. But the flotilla’s cargo isn’t just barrels of cumin and sesame seeds, aiming to make Gaza’s steady diet of rice, chickpeas and air strikes more palatable.

The bulk of the cargo, though no official list has been made public, seems to be building materials, long banned by Israel but badly needed since Israel’s January 2009 invasion of the strip, which left many of the buildings in ruins with no material to repair them. Some Gazans have taken to rebuilding their homes out of mud since Israel feels things like wood and cement are simply too much of a “luxury.” The remainder will be medicine that, while not actually banned, has only been allowed in in an extremely limited manner.

Somehow no question of the legitimacy of Israel’s blockade is ever raised, and when Israeli officials let out the clarion call for European nations to foil the aid ships, though many nations didn’t do so there was no real public discussion of it.

At the end of the day, Israel did manage to convince Cyprus to block the aid ships from gathering in its territorial waters, which will perhaps delay the confrontation by a few hours. Israeli officials have lauded Cyprus’ move as “an ethical deed.” As those officials order their military to seize medicine bound for the sick and building materials bound for the homeless, one wonders that anyone considers their estimation of what is ethical important at all.

Among those captured by the Israelis was former US Congresswoman and 2008 Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, who was also on board a ship which tried to reach Gaza in December before nearly being sunk by the Israeli Navy. That ship managed to flee to Lebanon, however.

McKinney’s current status is unclear, however. While previous military reports insist all those aboard were taken captive, Israel’s consulate in Atlanta claims the whole thing was a McKinney plot to “get in the papers” and that she is not among the detainees.

The Israeli navy defended the move, saying the ship posed a security risk. Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said the government was planning to eventually free the captives, adding “nobody wants to keep them here.”

The ship had struggled to leave the island nation of Cyprus last week, with Cypriot authorities reportedly blocking the voyage under pressure from the Israeli government. The Cypriot ambassador has informed Israel that they only allowed the boat to sail under assurances that it was going to head to Egypt. The ship was flying a Greek flag, and the Greek government has reportedly demanded that the passengers be released.

The latest voyage, laden with three and a half tons of medical aid at a time when Gaza hospitals are running dangerously short on them, ran afoul of an Israeli naval patrol boat in international waters. One of the ships passengers, 2008 US Presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, reports the ship was rammed three times by the Israelis. Others report shots were fired at the Dignity, though this has not been confirmed.

After the attack, the Dignity’s captain was radioed by the Israelis, who accused the ship of “being involved in terrorist activity.” The ship began to take on water; passengers were ordered to put on life vests and the lifeboats were readied, but the ship managed to reach the Lebanese port city of Tyre safely.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor defended the move, saying it was because the ship refused to respond to radio contact. His story was not without its flaws however. Though he claimed the “physical contact” was because they refused to respond, he condemned the report that the ramming was intentional as “absurd.” He likewise claimed the ship was escorted by the patrol boat back to Cyprus waters, yet the ship reported after the attack that it didn’t have the fuel to return to Cyprus and is now docked in southern Lebanon, far from Cyprus. The Cypriot government will reportedly demand clarification from the Israeli government about the incident.