The comments came hours after all remaining pro-Palestinians activists from the aid ships were sent to Ben-Gurion airport near Tel Aviv to be deported.
Israel has come under harsh international condemnation after its commandos stormed a six-ship aid flotilla Monday in international waters, setting off clashes that killed nine activists and wounded dozens. The nearly 700 activists — including 400 Turks — were trying to break the 3-year-old Israeli and Egyptian naval blockade of the Gaza Strip by bringing in 10,000 tons of aid.
Israel rejects claims that Gaza — which has been under an Israeli and Egyptian blockade since the Islamic militant group seized power in 2007 — is experiencing a humanitarian crisis. Israel says it allows more than enough food, medicines and supplies into the territory.
Netanyahu insisted the blockade was needed to prevent militants from being able to carrying out attacks against Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
"Israel is facing an attack of international hypocrisy," Netanyahu said in a statement broadcast from his office.
He said the flotilla was seeking to flout the blockade, not to bring aid to Gaza.
"If the blockade had been broken, it would have been followed buy dozens, hundreds of boats," he added. "Each boat could carry dozens of missiles." Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen has appealed to Israel to let a private Irish ship deliver its aid cargo to Gaza but admitted Wednesday that Israel would probably block the ship because part of the cargo was concrete.
The 1,200-ton ship Rachel Corrie carries wheelchairs, medical supplies and concrete. It was named after an American college student crushed to death by an Israeli Army bulldozer while protesting house demolitions in Gaza.
The ship was supposed to join the aid flotilla but was delayed by mechanical problems. It is currently waiting off the Libyan coast.
Those aboard include Mairead Corrigan, a 1976 Nobel Peace Prize winner from Northern Ireland, and Denis Halliday, who previously ran UN humanitarian aid programs in Iraq.
Israel dropped plans to prosecute dozens of pro-Palestinian activists detained after Monday's raid, opting instead to deport them all immediately in an apparent effort to limit the diplomatic damage from the raid.
"Keeping them here would do more damage to the country's vital interests than good," Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein wrote in the order.
