The Obama Administration has formally abandoned its public calls for an international probe of the Israeli attack on a Gaza-bound aid ship, insisting that reports that they were still in favor of it were false.

“We support an Israeli led investigation and we are open to potential ways in which the international community can participate in that,” insisted Philip Crowley, State Department spokesman.

11 days ago when the world was still reeling from the attack on the civilian aid ship, President Obama had made vague calls to reserve judgement until an international probe into the killings could take place. By this week, he was already making it clear that he was going to make sure that such a probe would not question the Israeli killings at all, but would instead focus on digging up dirt about the aid workers.

Even that led to Israeli condemnations, and privately the Obama Administration is said to have made deals to support only whatever internal probe Israel deigns to hold, though there remains internal opposition in Israel even to probing the killings themselves.

The “international probe,” just 11 days ago an excuse to avoid criticizing the killings in even the vaguest of terms, has at this point become inconvenient to the official Israeli narrative that the attack on the aid ship and the subsequent killings were actually a laudable act, and that the aid workers themselves, and the Turkish government which has complained so loudly about the killings, are the real villains. The narrative does not stand up to even basic scrutiny, of course, which is why even the neutered international probe, designed to demonize the aid workers and avoid even cursory examination of the attack itself, has become inconvenient.