Palestinian fishermen ride their boats as they return from fishing at the seaport of Gaza City in the early morning of September 26, 2016. Photo: Reuters / Mohammed Salem / File.

This week, a Gaza group called National Authority for Return and Breaking the Siege in Gaza put Gazans injured during the current weekly riots on a boat to be captured by Israel — all for a publicity stunt.

They were pretending to try to sail to Cyprus, but they were barely pretending. They wanted Israel to intercept the boat in order to garner world headlines about cruel Israeli practices of stopping injured people from going on a journey that would probably harm the passengers more than the capture would.

This is the second such voyage from this group. The first one was in May; Israel intercepted that boat (originally planned to be a flotilla) — but outside the region, no one showed any interest.

The group is also demanding the release of the captain of the first boat, who is still being held by Israel.

Since the entire point of these things is publicity —  and the first one didn’t generate any — it’s entirely possible that one of the passengers is deathly ill and wants to die for the cause of gaining world headlines and making Israel look bad. It’s not as if this sort of thing hasn’t happened before.

Elder of Ziyon has been blogging about Israel and the Arab world for a really long time now. He also controls the world, but deep down you already knew that.