Here is the view of Daniel Pipes (A prominent pro-Israel and neoconservative strategist) on the issue:
"Free Gaza" Flotilla Defeats the Israel Defense Forces
by Daniel Pipes
May 31, 2010
Cross-posted from National Review Online
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2010/05/free-gaza-flotilla-defeats-the-israel-defense
One of the most important rules for a strategist is not to be put on the defensive. David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, developed this concept into a doctrine of forward defense that brilliantly served his state in its early years.
Eventually, however, Israel's enemies realized that they could not win a conventional war. Instead of launching planes, tanks, and ships at the Jewish state, they turned to other means – weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, and (most recently) political delegitimization. Delegitimization turns the rules of war upside down: in particular strength is weakness and public opinion has supreme importance.
Israel's command structure, having mastered the old ways of war (the ones that lasted to 1973), has shown utter strategic incompetence at the new ways of war (in place since 1982). The new rules require an agile sense of public relations, which means that a powerful state never physically harms, even inadvertently, its rag-tag political adversaries.
Rachel Corrie has been an albatross around Israel's neck since 2003; today's dead on the seas off Gaza will prove an even worse source of anti-Zionism. Thus did the "armada of hate and violence" achieve its purpose. Thus did the Israelis fall into a trap. (May 31, 2010)
June 1, 2010 update: As sometimes happens, lots of readers were not satisfied with my analysis, this time of the "Free Gaza Flotilla" episode. Some put it nicely:
* "In four short paragraphs you told the entire sad truth of what happened. I wish the solution could be written as succinctly."
* "If a powerful state can never physically harm, even inadvertently, its rag-tag political adversaries, how do you prevent lethal cargo from getting to Gaza? How do you keep a blockade in effect to protect your citizens?"
* "Weren't the Israelis damned if they did and damned if they didn't?
* "Your posting identifies Israel's difficulties, but we know them all too well. I'd like to read an essay or article detailing what Israel could have done, realistically."
Others are more incensed:
* "I am absolutely astounded at what you are saying. What would you have had the Israeli Government do with these ships?"
* "How can you criticize the Israelis without saying what they should have done differently?"
* "Good points. But what would YOU have done instead?
* "So, how should Israel be responding?"
My reply:
(1) I cannot offer a detailed alternative, for I am not on the scene, I lack the relevant knowledge and experience, plus I am a strategist, setting out the broad outlines to win, not a tactician, figuring out implementation in detail. I do know that Israeli soldiers should never have rappelled their way into the trap on the Mavi Marmara. They should have had intelligence about the ship's passengers' readiness for a clash and found some way to avert a bloody confrontation. That might have meant boarding the ship with protective gear; anchoring it at sea; or towing it to an Israeli harbor.
(2) This incident fits a larger pattern, for Palestinians and their supporters are wising up and finding creative ways to impugn Israel in world opinion. Supermarkets in Norway refuse Israeli produce, universities in the United Kingdom break relations with Israeli counterparts, and so on. Palestinians a while back organized a march from Jordan to the Israeli border. Currently, they are boycotting West Bank products made by Israelis. Will Jerusalem finally learn to take this challenge seriously? For some thoughts by specialists on the matter, see my extracts from a thoughtful article by Leslie Susser.
(3) This is not an exclusively Israeli dilemma but one that extends across the Western world. Israel just feels it first and hardest, as so often is the case.