Israel has attacked Gaza Flotilla (dead and wounded)

[Ed Jewett]

Memorial Day 2010 Israel Does Not Understand 4GW

The story du jour.


Having previously failed to break Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza that denies HAMAS war material and economic aid, a coalition of Islamists, Palestinian nationalists and Western Leftists used ships of Turkish registry. The IDF took the bait and blundered into an ambush where the commandos were promptly swarmed by the “peace activists”, overpowered (!) and then had to bloodily shoot their way out of a debacle.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU12KW-Xy...r_embedded



RealClearPolitics has a better video.


Taking stock of this bit of guerrilla theater gone lethal, let’s see what the supporters of HAMAS terrorism gained:

• The world is hearing a false narrative that Israel massacred unarmed peace activists.
  
• Turkey’s ruling, authoritarian, crypto-Islamist Party has a further wedge to downgrade Turkey’s traditional military cooperation with Israel while putting political pressure on Turkish secularists and Army leaders.
  
• Israel’s diplomatic isolation is greatly increased
  
• Additional strain is put on the already lukewarm relationship between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government
  

On the moral level of war, HAMAS supporters - whose strategic objective is to end Israel’s blockade of Gaza, so that HAMAS can rebuild it’s military strength - have scored a solid triumph while the IDF have acted with all the instinctive propensity for causing self-inflicted wounds of Richard Nixon confronting the Watergate break-in.
Because Israel is powerful and democratic and its enemies, despite their viciousness and authoritarian politics, are weak, the Israelis are not held to the same moral standards by international observers (many of whom, it must be noted, begin with a strongly anti-Israel or at least, anti-Western, orientation). In a 4GW paradigm, even acting in self-defense is not enough for a strong state to play the role of “the good guy” in a globalized media environment, unless the weak side does something that is viscerally morally repulsive - ex. Abu Zarqawi ’s extreme brutality and lust for staging ghoulish beheadings of captives on the internet.
There seems to be a stunning political-strategic tone deafness on the part of Israeli leaders in recent years. Perhaps there is a degradition of IDF tactical excellence as well. Overpowering highly trained, heavily armed, elite commandos by untrained civilians is not possible unless said commandos were sent in poorly briefed, with unworkable ROE (IMHO, this was more likely a prepared ambush than a spontaneous act). There’s no half-way method of seizing a hostile ship by force. Either you do it swiftly, while citing appropriate legal justification or you don’t and employ a different set of responses to turn the ships away in a manner that does not alienate observers.
Military force used ineffectually is as counterproductive as force used excessively. From a Boydian strategic perspective, the initiative is lost, opponents are “pumped up” while one’s own side and sympathizers are demoralized. Political irritants become inflated into disasters. HAMAS, Hezbollah, al Qaida and similar entities are not the old, state-sponsored, state-centric, PLO and they are not playing the PLO’s game.
ADDENDUM:
Abu Muqawama gives the “peace flotilla” way too much benefit of the doubt here, but his analysis of how poorly the Israelis handled this situation is spot on:

One could, from the start, think a number of different things about those participating in the peace flotilla to Gaza. (Naive? Righteous? Courageous? Anti-Semitic?) But for the sake of argument, and putting ourselves in the shoes of an Israeli naval commander, let’s assume the most malevolent of motivations for the people participating in the peace flotilla. If I am in charge of doing that for the Israeli Navy, I am going to assume these people are smart and are deliberately trying to provoke a crazy response from my sailors and soldiers that will produce ready-for-television images that both isolate Israel within the international community and further raise the ire of the Arabic-speaking and Islamic worlds. I mean, that is my base assumption for what this group is trying to do. So naturally, the last thing I would want my forces to do would be to overreact, right? It’s like when your convoy gets fired on inside a crowded market: the last thing you want to do is return fire with 7.62mm, killing a bunch of civilians and giving the enemy exactly the effect he was looking for.
If something does go wrong, meanwhile, I am going to have a response ready. I am going to have my very best spokespersons on international and Israeli television. I am most certainly not going to let people like Danny Ayalon provide my government’s response, right? Because a live wire like Ayalon — who the Turks already hate, with an understandable passion — will just say something incredibly crazy like how the people in the aid flotilla were terrorists with ties to al-Qaeda. (Even if you can prove this is somehow true, everyone you need to be speaking to right now — the international community, the Turkish people, the Arabic-speaking world — is just going to think you are nuts for saying it or will roll their eyes and say, “Oh, of course he’s saying that.”)
In reality, what happened today is the Israelis got their butts handed to them. The Israeli response to this aid flotilla was a fabulous gift to Hamas and Iran. (Try to imagine, if you will, the Israelis trying to go before the U.N. Security Council to gather support for sanctions on the Iranian regime right now. They would be more likely to leave New York with sanctions on their own regime!)

ADDENDUM II.
George Friedman of STRATFOR ( Hat tip to Adam Elkus)
Flotillas and the Wars of Public Opinion

….The bid to shape global perceptions by portraying the Palestinians as victims of Israel was the first prong of a longtime two-part campaign. The second part of this campaign involved armed resistance against the Israelis. The way this resistance was carried out, from airplane hijackings to stone-throwing children to suicide bombers, interfered with the first part of the campaign, however. The Israelis could point to suicide bombings or the use of children against soldiers as symbols of Palestinian inhumanity. This in turn was used to justify conditions in Gaza. While the Palestinians had made significant inroads in placing Israel on the defensive in global public opinion, they thus consistently gave the Israelis the opportunity to turn the tables. And this is where the flotilla comes in.
The Turkish flotilla aimed to replicate the Exodus story or, more precisely, to define the global image of Israel in the same way the Zionists defined the image that they wanted to project. As with the Zionist portrayal of the situation in 1947, the Gaza situation is far more complicated than as portrayed by the Palestinians. The moral question is also far more ambiguous. But as in 1947, when the Zionist portrayal was not intended to be a scholarly analysis of the situation but a political weapon designed to define perceptions, the Turkish flotilla was not designed to carry out a moral inquest.
Instead, the flotilla was designed to achieve two ends. The first is to divide Israel and Western governments by shifting public opinion against Israel. The second is to create a political crisis inside Israel between those who feel that Israel’s increasing isolation over the Gaza issue is dangerous versus those who think any weakening of resolve is dangerous.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 31st, 2010 at 11:21 pm and is filed under 21st century, 4GW, IO, Tactics, analytic, arab world, disinformation, extremists, islamic world, islamist, john boyd, legitimacy, mideast, military, navy, non-state actors, politics, public diplomacy, strategy, terrorism, theory, war.

11 Responses to “Israel Does Not Understand 4GW”

1. Mithras Says:
   May 31st, 2010 at 11:54 pm
   Perhaps there is a degradition of IDF tactical excellence as well.
   
   Their performance in the 2006 Lebanon war was less than impressive, too. Maybe they believe their own hype; maybe occupation duty causes good soldiers to rust.
   
2. anon Says:
   May 31st, 2010 at 11:56 pm Israel could also go for the ultrakill by nailing Hamas in the digital media for their outright lies.Dozens of these activists published outright lies about the event, in text, on the internets. They are smoked.
   
3. Joseph Fouche Says:
   June 1st, 2010 at 12:54 am It’s interesting that the IDF had cameras available to counter the enemy narrative. Unfortunately, they seem to have been sent to film a version of the Keystone Cops.
   
4. zen Says:
   June 1st, 2010 at 2:01 am It was Keystone Cop-like. Were but for ppl being killed, one can almost hear the Benny Hill theme playing as the video runs.
   .
   It may be, as I am not an expert on things Israeli, that the leadership of the IDF has reached a period of careerism, CYAism and an American-like disconnect of military operations from grand strategy and political judgment.
   .
   Imagine having fifty of your friends on hand and a squad of Navy SEALS burst in, brandishing weapons at you. If you spontaneously swarm them, armed with fists, pipes and knives, you will most likely all die. If you swarm them because you expected their arrival and had some rudimentary tactics ready, you will do better but you will still probably die. Now imagine the SEALS have been ordered to capture you without shooting anyone - unless they are about to be killed. Well, then the odds change. Significantly.
   .
   That sounds like what the Israeli commandos were ordered to do by someone unwilling to accept any responsibility for making realistic military and political decisions and hoped to get by on bluffing, sticking the soldiers with the consequences ( physical, legal, professional and political) if their bluff was called.
   .
   Any readers with real knowledge of the Israeli political scene/IDF are asked to weigh in here.
   
5. Joseph Fouche Says:
   June 1st, 2010 at 2:23 am It makes me wonder how much input Netanyahu put into this operation. Netanyahu is a former commando. His older brother was the commander (and sole Israeli military casualty) of Israel’s greatest special commando raid, Operation Entebbe. Goes to show that military experiences not a panacea in a political leader.
   
6. zen Says:
   June 1st, 2010 at 2:27 am JF,
   .
   Agreed. Netanyahu also used to be a skilled spinmeister/talking head in his younger days with a good grasp of media nuances, especially American media. That capacity appears to have atrophied.
   
7. Stephen Pampinella Says:
   June 1st, 2010 at 3:00 am Nice analysis.Not an expert on the Israelis, but Sergio Catignani’s work is a great insight into their strategic culture. He argues the IDF has a penchant for seeing all problems as having military solutions, leaving them unable to conceptualize the political consequences. http://www.amazon.com/Israeli-Counter-In...160&sr=8-1
   
8. Schmedlap Says:
   June 1st, 2010 at 3:14 am When I saw the video of dudes fastroping into a crowd of angry people, I thought "WTF? Seriously? WTF???" I am no expert on highly specialized operations like this, but it seems to me that dropping some flashbangs and/or tear gas onto the boats before zipping down the rope would have been a good idea, both in hindsight and foresight.
   
9. zen Says:
   June 1st, 2010 at 3:21 am "He argues the IDF has a penchant for seeing all problems as having military solutions, leaving them unable to conceptualize the political "
   .
   Hmmmm……sounds familiar…..who else is like that ?
   
10. zen Says:
    June 1st, 2010 at 3:23 am I’m with you, Schmedlap. My thought is "not allowed to". I suppose the commanding officer on the scene could simply be an incompetent but how likely is that in so politically sensitive an incident? Micromanagement seems more likely.
    
11. Eddie Says:
    June 1st, 2010 at 3:29 am Never bring a paintball gun to a pipe fight (and I gather there were some knives and bags of marbles too).
    You could argue the Israeli blockade of Gaza is itself proof they do not understand 4GW. It accomplishes little for the security of Israel and postpones the day of accountability for Hamas by giving them a valid excuse for Gaza’s economic devastation and social decay (almost the same way we prop Fidel up by keeping the embargo).
    I’m no specialist on the IDF so I’ll leave that discussion of their problems to the better-knowledgeable, but I can speak fairly well for Israeli politics. Bibi is in a weak coalition government packed with fascist and religious extremist parties. He has a veritable cast of amateurs appointed to posts in the government he had little say in choosing, so its difficult for him to rein in the more dimwitted and asinine ideas hatched by the underlings of his aligned parties. This doesn’t excuse his inability to prioritize what matters for Israel’s strategic interests over his narrow political needs (its doubtful him and Tzipi Livni could come to terms for sharing power that he could live with, so he in essence picked his poison knowing the domestic political constraints he was shackling himself with), but it does explain much of the incompetence Israel has experienced since he assumed power.