What a dreadful mess the Israelis made this week. Yes, the flotilla was on an explicitly political mission; yes, it was manned by a bunch of unsavoury - though media-savvy - Turkish Islamists; and yes, for humanitarians those guys certainly knew how to swing an iron bar. But by making this an international incident, and by giving them the footage they wanted, the Israelis walked into the trap. As George Packer reflects, it's illustrative of the dumbing-down of Israeli policy-making:
At one time, Israelis understood counterinsurgency much better than Americans, which is why U.S. officers looked to their Israeli counterparts for advice in the early years of the Iraq war. At one time, the Israelis understood that self-interest demanded subtlety, restraint, and attention to perception. As others have pointed out, these qualities have been disappearing from Israeli strategy and tactics, and the current right-wing government seems determined to isolate and destroy itself with the unbending principle of self-defense.
If any good comes out of this it will be the end of the blockade in its current form, which many observers sympathetic to Israel - including our former Prime Minister - have been calling for, for some time.
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