The botched Israeli naval commando raid on the Gaza Freedom flotilla has a lot of people scratching their heads. How could Israel have made such an ill-advised decision to try to storm the ship the Mavi Marmara with 600 peace activists on board, which in the best of circumstances could only have ended in a public relations disaster? Once it did make that decision, why did members of the much vaunted Israel Defense Forces naval commandos Shayetet 13 conduct the assault itself in such an inept fashion virtually guaranteeing their humiliation and the loss of life?
These questions are only puzzling because most of us have bought the myth that the Jewish state has an unbroken record of strategic brilliance and military success going back at least to 1948. Typical is the argument by three U.S. Air Force Officers in a paper they wrote in 2000 for the National Defense University in which they held up Israeli national security decision-making as epitomizing Clausewitz’s ideal of a seamless link between tactical and strategic brilliance.
This myth persists in part because most people here are unfamiliar with the New Historians of Israel who systematically challenge many of the cherished misconceptions of the official history that sustain this myth. But it also survives because it is fostered by some supporters of Israel who use it to deflect criticism of particular Israeli government policies (“who knows better than Israelis what they need to ensure their security”) and to encourage the Israelization of American foreign policy (“after 9/11, we’re all Israelis now”).
But a cleared-eyed look at Israeli strategic decision-making and military performance since 1948, puts the Gaza Freedom Flotilla debacle and other recent Israeli blunders in a context which suggests we should not have been surprised at all it turned out as badly as it did. (For much more on this see my Power and Military Effectiveness)
On the strategic level, a good argument can be made, and indeed Oxford historian Avi Shlaim makes it, that Israel’s collusion with the Hashemite regime in Jordan before 1948 with the objective of thwarting the establishment of an independent Palestinian State at partition, provoked, or at least provided the rationale for, the invasions by the other Arab states during the War of Independence in an effort to undo this “deal” made at the expense of the Palestinians. Israel’s strategic blunder in joining France and Britain in the ill-fated Suez War of 1956, which united America and the Soviet Union in opposition, hardly merits mention.
Israeli claims, most recently advanced by the Jewish state’s current Ambassador to the U.S. in his book about the Six Day War of 1967, that the IDF struck first to preempt an Arab attack are questionable. But even if we concede their validity, Israel’s decision to go beyond destroying Arab military forces and seize territory was certainly unnecessary. Indeed, the origin of Israel’s strategic dilemma today is the settlement enterprise, which constitutes the most serious existential threat to Israel’s survival as a Jewish and democratic state.
The 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon had the twin goals of destroying the PLO and installing a pro-Israel Christian regime there to change the strategic environment in the region in the Jewish state’s favor. What Israel got instead was an 18 year festering sore and the creation of one of its most potent enemies – Hizbollah – along its northern border.
Having learned nothing after those 18 years, Israel invaded again in 2006 with the objective of teaching Hizbollah a lesson. Instead, the result was an inconclusive military campaign and a public relations disaster. Ditto, Gaza in 2008. Given this track record, what is most amazing that Israel is not ranked among such strategic dunderheads as Kaiser Wilhelm II’s Germany!
Our image of the IDF as a tactically highly proficient force is more grounded in reality, but still overdrawn. The enduring image of the War of Independence is of a Jewish David, armed literally with a sling, fighting an Arab Goliath, equipped with the most advanced weapons, and sometimes lead, at least in Leon Uris’ fevered imagination, by refuges from the Nazi Wehrmacht.
But this has things backwards: The Jewish forces in the war were better armed than most of the Arabs (save for the British-led Arab Legion in Jordan which hardly participated in it) thanks to arms from the Soviet Bloc and the United States. By the end of the war, the IDF substantially outnumbered the Arabs. By the way, the best students of the Blitzkrieg were in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, not the Arab capitals.
Since Israel took on the Egypt with the British and the French, this campaign hardly demonstrates anything more than the truism that greater numbers increase the chance of victory. The poster-child for Israel military prowess is the Six Day War, in which the Israelis did achieve some spectacular military victories. But the Jewish state was not a fighting a monolithic Arab coalition, and so could operate again Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in sequence, rather than simultaneously, further undermining the David/Goliath myth.
If 1967 is the high-water mark for the myth, 1973 is when the tide started going out. Israeli tactics for defending occupied Sinai and Golan were defective and their much-touted intelligence services were caught napping on Yom Kippur. Only Israel’s nuclear arsenal and the intervention of the United States (Seymour Hersh argues that the two were not unrelated in his Samson Option) prevented a costly stalemate.
Finally, Israel’s military performance in Lebanon in 1982 and 2006 and Gaza in 2008 were hardly text book examples of tactical prowess.
Given that, the interesting question is what explains Israeli strategic and military ineptitude, particularly in recent years? The conventional view is that the Occupation, which involved the IDF in police and other non-military operations, blunted the sharp edge of the IDF’s sword. I find that explanation compelling in explaining the tactical erosion of the IDF’s capabilities.
John Mearsheimer makes a different argument, which I will call the Moral Hazard of the Israel Lobby. His logic, which I find helpful for understanding Israel’s strategic missteps, is that the promise of unquestioning U.S. support has, like the government bailout of the Savings and Loan industry, fostered a culture of risk-taking within the Israeli political elite (as it did among U.S. bankers) that leads them to ignore the costs and risks of the questionable strategic decisions they have made, particularly since 1967.
Placed in this historical context, the strategic debacle and tactical shortcomings of Israel’s military operations against the Gaza blockade runners seem to be par for the course rather than anything surprising. So next time any one tells you that the Israelis know best about their, or our, security, keep in mind their real track record.
Great post. I interrupt only to provide the news that the Irish flagged vessel Rachel Corrie has been captured according to tweets from freegazaorg. No injuries or struggle reported.
I disagree with John Mearsheimer.
First off, he needs to define the ambiguous phrase “risk taking”. In what sense? In the sense that a smart and wise individual calculates the odds against him and then decides whether to act or not, or in the sense that a madman decides to throw caution to the wind and ‘wing it’. In both scenarios, these individuals would be taking risks.
I will argue that once Israel acquired the territory it wanted, it merely needed the lobby to sustain its hold on said territory. Hence, we have seen the lobby do Israel’s work for her regarding Iraq and recently Iran. All the while, Israel focused internally on the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
The pounding of southern Lebanon from time to time was a simple show of force, on a small scale.
So to recap, we have the pre-1967 help of the allies like France, Britain and the US, and later, when Israel needed to look inward (re: occupation), the lobby used the US to take care of Iraq and so on.
In essence, Israel cannot sustain itself neither militarily, nor politically as an apartheid expansionist state.
What reinforces my theory is the simple fact that Israel never fought a war against an organized army without outside help, while at the same time, all its wars in which it fought alone have been against loosely regimented guerrilla groups that posses the most primitive of weapons.
Hence the myth of Israel’s strategic genius.
Avi; I agree with this analysis. The IDF is incompetent, brutal and stupid, and is going to get its head kicked in one day soon.
“… all its wars in which it fought alone have been against loosely regimented guerrilla groups that posses the most primitive of weapons.”
Not so, Avi, in 2006 Hizbullah proved to Israel that it was very much regimented since with only 3,000 professional fighter and a few part-timers, it held back and forced the retreat of Israel’s invading land army of 30.000.
That year it also proved that its weapons were far from primitive. Its Kornet-E and Metis anti-tank missiles immobilized about 50 “invincible” Merkavas and totally destroyed about 15 other ones and shot down a helicopter. It’s M-802 anti-ship cruise missile took out the ultra-sophisticated Hanit Saar 5 corvette that was anchored 10 miles off Beirut.
Israel’s armed forces appear strong only when fighting against women and stone-throwing Palestinian kids or unarmed activists on a peace ship or from the safety of an F16 at 50,000 feet; other than that it’s a cowardly group. So much for another one of Israel’s myths.
“……Israel’s armed forces appear strong only when fighting against women and stone-throwing Palestinian kids or unarmed activists on a peace ship or from the safety of an F16 at 50,000 feet; other than that it’s a cowardly group. So much for another one of Israel’s myths………”
Amen. Absolute bloody cowards. I’ve personally grown sick and tired of seeing first-hand arrogant, obnoxious, well-armed IDF and Israeli police thugs beating up Palestinian kids in person or lording it over other civilians who haven’t a hope of fighting back either personally, militarily or legally.
They don’t seem to good at dealing with men who can fight back even if it is only clubs against M16s.
too good not to
In 1967, although Nasser was, irony of ironies, blockading the Straits of Tiran for Israeli-flagged ships, he had made it clear to the Americans that he had no interest in attacking Israel as he was bogged down in Yemen fighting a war against the Saudis and British. So there was no attack on Israel to pre-empt. It was just a naked land grab by the Israelis.
As for the other examples of military prowess, it should be remembered that the Arab armies that Israel has fought over the years have been conscripted and poorly equipped and led and this weakness was clearly demonstrated to all by the way the Americans, British and French carved up the Iraqi army after the invasion of Kuwait.
As for the attack on the Gaza Convoy, that was nothing more than a publicity stunt designed to improve the tarnished reputation of the IOF. And that is the problem, occupying a country screws up your military big time.
As the War Nerd says:
“John Mearsheimer makes a different argument, which I will call the Moral Hazard of the Israel Lobby. His logic, which I find helpful for understanding Israel’s strategic missteps, is that the promise of unquestioning U.S. support has, like the government bailout of the Savings and Loan industry, fostered a culture of risk-taking within the Israeli political elite (as it did among U.S. bankers) that leads them to ignore the costs and risks of the questionable strategic decisions they have made, particularly since 1967.”
That is not a bad theory there, Mr. Mearsheimer .
Makes sense.
I agree, americangoy–Avi’s argument is not inconsistent with Mearsheimer’s. The point is Israel has grown soft and plans short-term, always relying on US diplomatic (especially in the UN) and, if needed, US military and financial aid. Hence, no substantial risk. This may be now changing as many who dissed Mearsheimer ( & Walt) have now borrowed their POV, without giving credit to those two “anti-semites.”
Who knows, with the play the latest Free Gaza flotilla is getting, the American masses might even wake up to the Israeli occupation that has been going on since 1967, and the blockade for the last three years?
Even the annual aid to Israel may become known to the masses? Even
the actual history of the Palestinians since 1917 may become known to the US masses? Not likely, but at least possible now…
The thing is, breaking international law is a slippery slope. First you break it with some refugees. Then the refugees organize to resist. So you break it in Lebanon. Then you wind up with Hezbollah. Then you break it to fight Hezbollah. And Hezbollah gets stronger.
Meanwhile, you break it with illegal settlements in the West Bank. Then, to shore up that violation, you break it again with a Wall that steals farmers’ land to make settlements more wealthy and secure. Farmers and their supporters organize to resist. You must break them. Tear gas isn’t enough. Beatings and arrests aren’t enough. So you start shooting to kill.
With each violation, Israel paints itself further and further into a corner, which forces it to slip further into depravity — it’s either that or admit they f—ed up from day one, when they made their fundamental mistake of ignoring the humanity and rights of Arabs and Muslims, believing these things to be incidental to their aims and strategies.
Surprise! Arabs and Muslims remain human no matter what any Israeli strategy-maker thinks. And humanity is a force to be reckoned with, even after sixty years of being cudgeled and stomped.
Palestine is, in the end, a lesson in the strength of humanity, the persistence of dignity, the unrelenting force of justice. They could have given up long ago, but they didn’t. And they won’t.
A great post, Pamela..Very insightful..
Israel has won all it’s battles riding on the backs of either the French, Brits or Americans.
When it wanted to ‘go it alone’ in Lebanon 2006, they got the shit kicked out of them.
Truth is, most jews are stupid. So are most moslem, most christian, most hindu, most buddhists, most druids and most athiests too are stupid.
Oh yeah, agnostics are stupid and this here too, yours truly :-)
An interesting article about Israel’s commando complex:
link to haaretz.com
“The botched Israeli naval commando raid….”
Botched? Why bothched? Has it ever occurred to Michael Desch that the assault went pretty much as planned? That the murders were planned? That US/Israel was retaliating against Turkey for joining with Brazil to negotiate with Iran? That these two warfare states were scuttling peace efforts? I highly recommend reading the following:
Over at the Counterpunch website, Rannie Amiri has a post titled “The Real Motive Behind the Gaza Flotilla Attack” that is well worth reading.
link to counterpunch.org
repay the Turks for negotiating a nuclear fuel-swap deal with Iran (which significantly set back Israel’s case for military intervention).
I was highly surprised and pleased about that. Hmmm? but had not really connected it to the fact that the Turkish ship was attacked.
Basically I am not too fond of too fast dot connections, but it is indeed a strange coincidence.
Keith, Israel, has an aversion to peace. The assault on the USS Liberty, the attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador to London, the Entebbe Raid were other such Israeli ventures to stir trouble; the Lavon Affair was another. Israel does not want peace and we keep forgetting that Israel doesn’t want Shalit and never did because he provides the pretext Israel needs for a lot of things. Turkey in addition to raining on Israel’s Iran picnic, had been pushing to resume the peace talks between Israel and Syria. Talks had been progressing about the Golan when Israel started the war on Gaza which caused the talks to stop.
WALID- Both the US and Israel have an aversion to peace. Both are warfare states that rely on military Keynesianism to manage their economies. Additionally, Israel needs conflict and warfare to advance its Zionist agenda. Furthermore, Israel has a tradition of murdering Arab leaders which it pursued quite blatantly during the Nakba when lists were compiled of Arabs who had been active in opposing the British occupation. During the cleansing operation, when they came upon an Arab on the list, they executed him. This continues in the present, an assassination occurring when they want to scuttle peace efforts. Of course, the US empire engages in the same types of activities.
Keith, I totally agree with that Rannie Amiri article, even though some of it is speculation. You can’t kill nine civilians with a heavily armed commando, some at point-blank range, on a boat in international waters by accident. There were other ways of stopping that boat. It seems to me that there is a reason that all of the dead so far have been Turk (and Turkish American), or were on the Turkish boat.
Dear Keith — First rule of political analysis: never discount the role of ineptitude in human affairs. For more on this see the Chabon piece in todays NYT WIR at link to nytimes.com. Best, Mike Desch
Dear Mike,
You refer to the murderous commando raid as “botched.” You describe it as “inept…virtually guaranteeing their (commando’s) humiliation and the loss of life.” I disagree, to put it mildly. Based upon the evidence and Israel’s history, I conclude that the raid was intended to be deadly violent, including intentional assassination. “Botched” implies operational ineptitude suggesting that the violence and deaths were inadvertent, not intentional, the consequence of things gone awry. As such it is a form of Israeli apologetics. It suggests that these guys are clowns, not murderers. With this in mind, I would be most interested in what caused you to conclude that the raid was “botched” (not merely ill-conceived), and that these murderers have been “humiliated?”
Sincerely,
Keith
Perhaps the sort of previous victories is not what israel is seeking now. Maybe they really only want to cause bloodshed and chaos. Maybe what they want is a mass display of extreme terrorism against these peoples in the more recent wars. Maybe they are seeking what terrorists seek. Israel is certainly a terrorist nation. Perhaps goals are different now than they were before, though saying your intention is just to kill, terrorise and bestow chaos wont get israel much good press, so they frame their intentions in the propaganda of the goals of yesterday. This would jive with the results of few israelis harmed, but many 1000′s of victims in the places they’ve attacked.
Another factor that’s changed is israel owns the usa now. Their control was not complete in 1967 or 1973. In corporate-speak, they had majority interests then, but not controlling interests. Now they have impunity as far as the usa is concerned. Fanatics with impunity don’t need to worry about their effectiveness as much, since they don’t have to answer to anyone. This creates laziness in thinking. In military terms, it takes the edge off. The americans will back them up if they blunder, so it wont be the end. Sort of like the rich son using dad’s money to run his company. He messes up, dad will come to the rescue, so he puts less effort into it.
Finally, israeli “brilliance” is one of the most persistent goebbelsian lies around. That brilliance exists only in propaganda. The reality is israelis are abject cowards. They attack weaker foes and make sure they are attacking from a superior position with superior numbers. This they learned from the German blitzkrieg tactics. A persistent myth about German blitzkrieg is that the Germans won against large odds in those early WW2 battles. That’s not true. The Germans won because they concentrated greater numbers in the regions they attacked than their opponents had in those regions. The israelis use this tactic. There is nothing particularly brilliant about it. If you’re the attacker, you have the luxury to chose where and when you will strike. Your opponent doesn’t usually have that luxury, they have to stretch their forces out to cover all possibilities. Unless they know exactly where they will be attacked and when. Then they can concentrate their forces there. Anyway, I’m rambling here, but in short, the israelis are nothing special and never were. It’s a myth.
Now that the Israelis have had time to set the stage for the ‘legend’ of what happened aboard the Mavi Marmara, there is not much else to do but point out the sheer incompetence of their propaganda:
1 Fake video
- IDF video #1 Aerial view (actual) by infra-red photography
link to youtube.com
- IDF video #2 Side view
link to youtube.com is a blatant fake
The hijacking occurred at night but the video was clearly made in broad daylight.
They have photoshopped in a lot of brightness and contrast trying to fake Infrared night photography. But the result isn’t even close. Genuine infrared photography has almost zero halftones. Every pixel is either black or white. The IDF video is full of halftones.
link to solstudio.web.id
2 – Single Israeli caused 6 of 9 (acknowledged) deaths, and may get Medal of Valor
link to timesonline.co.uk
This was the ‘battle’ re-enacted in the IDF video mentioned above.
3 – Gaza flotilla activists were shot in head at close range
Nine Turkish men on board Mavi Marmara were shot a total of 30 times, autopsy reveals
link to guardian.co.uk
(it is standard IDF practice to give a ‘finishing-off’ shot or two.)
4 – Ludicrous radio transmission, entitled “Radio Transmission from Mavi Marmara to Israeli Navy”
link to aliabunimah.posterous.com
I watched the transmission of the original of the full video, and no such replies were heard.
The following is a transcript of the audio:
ISRAELI SHIP “This is the Israeli Navy, you are approaching an area which is under a naval blockade”
MAN’S VOICE 1 “Shut up, go back to Auschwitz.”
WOMAN’S VOICE “We have permission from the Gaza Port Authority to enter.”
MAN’S VOICE 2 “We’re helping Arabs go against the US, don’t forget 9/11 guy”
On hearing the recording Adam Shapiro, co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement, identified the woman’s voice as that of his wife Huwaida Arraf, chair of the Free Gaza Movement. However, Arraf was not aboard the Mavi Marmara. She was aboard one of the small passenger vessels in the six-boat flotilla, called Challenger 1.
Colonel Pat Lang was a US military liaison withe Israel, and has nothing but scorn for their military and intel capabilities. He’s not alone in the military.
Israel has never fought a war above sea-level, and doesn’t fight anywhere but in the nabes. They do gang warfare, like the Mexican 13, or whatever they’re called. They do the equivalent of taking off from Battery Park in F-16s and drop armaments and white phosphorous on Jersey City.
And as someone pointed out on HuffPo recently, where was the Irgun and Lehi during WWII? Why weren’t they helping German Jews? If they were such military experts and so canny and cared so much about Jewish lives, why weren’t they lending a hand to save the Jews of Europe? Instead they ganged up with the Nazis to bring out Jews to fight the British, which is why the Nazis helped them.
There is an International Student Testing Body called TIMSS. It measures student achievement in 4th, 8th, 12th grades. By 8th grade in science
England is 5th, US 11th and Israel 24th behind Serbia and Bulgaria
link to nces.ed.gov
In maths by 8th grade England is 7th, US 9th and Israel 24th
link to nces.ed.gov
When testing is done on a level playing field we discover that Israelis are average. So why all the hype about being smart and innovative, brave brilliant
Where Israeli’s excel is in scheming and deception, such as stealing industrial secrets, illegal insider trading of information, nepotism towards other Israelis and Jews, and illegal scams like Bernie madoff, and earlier Michael Millikan.
It is worth remembering the description General Franks gave of one such spy who passed on secrets to Israel, Doug Feith Franks described him as “The stupidest f—ing man in Washington”
And on study of 12th graders by PISA involving tens of thousands of students from over 50 Countries in science, Finland was first UK 14th US 29th Israel 39th coming in between Greece and Chile
This is the executive summary of the latest report
link to pisa.oecd.org
Israel, like the usa, and now the UK, as well, are churning out well indoctrinated clones, otherwise known as dumbing down their respective populations. While indoctrinated clones don’t innovate much or produce scientific breakthroughs, they also don’t give corporate oligarchs headaches. It’s a trade off that business men have no problem making. What’s innovation or science worth to a bunch of monopoly capitalists bent on world domination? They want passive populations of followers, not innovators. The 60′s showed these oligarchs what happens when the public starts knowing too much. From that point on, they realised it’s better to educate a few and keep the majority in ignorance. And use brute force to dominate their rivals, rather than example or brain power.