An Israeli report states there was not enough shock and awe in the flotilla raid:
Flawed intelligence-gathering and planning led to Israel’s botched and deadly raid on a Gaza-bound protest flotilla, with security forces underestimating the potential for violence, said the official report released Monday.
The report, however, praised the commandos who took part in the operation, saying they were justified in opening fire and killing nine after being confronted by violent pro-Palestinian activists on board one of the ships.
The report concluded that intelligence-gathering was deficient and that various intelligence units did not communicate properly with each other. It criticized the operation’s planners for not having a backup plan in the event of violence.
It did not recommend any dismissals, though it is possible that some senior officers will be ousted or demoted in an ensuing shake-up.
“We found that there were some professional mistakes regarding both the intelligence and the decision-making process and some operational mistakes,” the report’s author, retired general Giora Eiland, told reporters at a Defense Ministry briefing where declassified sections of the report were discussed.
I haven’t read the report yet, but it appears that the “mistake,” at least as is noted in the NPR write-up, was insufficient firepower. No one seems to have even questioned the fundamental problem, which was the mindset that determined the raid needed to take place in the first place, and the wisdom of boarding foreign flagged vessels in the middle of the night in international waters with guns blazing and then being surprised that you are met with violence. Hoocoodanode!
Seems to me waiting until daytime when the ships were actually out of international waters and then disabling the ships or boarding them when they reached shore, during the daytime, with live cameras showing the world that they were using as little force as possible would have not only made more sense from a tactical standpoint, but from a PR one. I’m thinking the military that invaded Gaza killing 1,000 Palestinians while only losing a dozen or so soldiers would have the manpower to pull that off. Not quite as dramatic as helicopter launched commando raids with guns blazing in the night and then selective releasing heavily edited and redacted videos and simply lying about stuff on your Flickr feed, but who am I to judge?
Just hopeless.
BTW- this is just the military report, and not the overall report that shoud be released in the future.