If you don’t get this, do not panic

This was surprising to people whose only knowledge of Middle Eastern politics is that Arabs and Jews don’t tend to get on well. This move has its foundations in geopolitics, however, and geopolitical thinking tends to trump ethnic friction — even Jew-hating — at a policy level (it doesn’t stop individuals from being difficult about this, however). This announcement is Saudi’s public response to an Iranian statement which came a day prior that they would “inspect” ships in the Strait of Hormuz if ships bound for Iran were messed with. This, of course, was just a veiled threat to close the Strait if Iran feels too pressured. And Iran might be feeling a lot of pressure these days considering Russia’s announcement a day prior they are not only supporting the new round of American sanctions (toothless though they are) but also suspending S-300 missile sales to Iran. Russia now claims that the missiles are banned by the intent of the sanction resolution, despite the verbage Russia quietly inserted into the document which specifically exempts S-300 sales from the ban. This is a major reversal and has Iran feeling very isolated and alone.

The Iranians have Saudi (and the global economic recovery at that) by the balls in one very important respect: they can threaten the Strait of Hormuz. Around four fifths of the world’s oil supplies pass through the narrow waterway, making it one of the narrowest yet busiest shipping lanes in the world. If Iran were to start stopping ships to “inspect” them it would impact the price of oil, immediately causing a spike in general energy prices and thus threaten the global economic recovery by pushing already thin European margin expectations lower. [Link to Reuters story detailing some of this. It doesn’t get into much depth but does give a hint at the gravity of this threat.] If Iran wanted to be really mean it could drop (or merely act as though it has dropped) a few mines in the lane somewhere and even without an actual incident global shipping insurance would skyrocket, thus causing an even more massive spike in oil prices until de-mining operations concluded (which could take months depending on the situation). This — the very credible threat Iran poses to global oil supplies — is dictated by geography and therefore cannot be easily mitigated or averted. It is this sort of geographically dictated balance which forces a certain uneasy balance in the Middle East.

But what could upend the balance and force the location of a new one?

Turkey’s rise on the political scene poses problems for Iran as well as Egypt because it upstages both of them in their attempts to be the political face of the Middle East (Egypt is already the public face of the Arab countries). Turkey is still trying to stir the pot using the flotilla incident as a spoon in the Jew-hate stew, but how effective that will continue to be is questionable at this point as there are limits to the utility of Israel-bashing and that sort of play can be easily trumped by an Iranian threat to Persian Gulf shipping. But how to shift this balance entirely and create a new, more stable political power structure in the Middle East that would endure beyond a quick undercutting move by someone with geographic leverage?

Unfortunately for the Middle Eastern states, the geography of the region dictates that Turkey will be the only country with enough independent clout to not rely on a coalition, while Saudi will continue to have the big money clout and Iran will have the destructive power to threaten the whole system. So each is limited by another in some way but not in a stable or predictable way because each only has a single type of influence each: the influence of access (Turkey), the influence of generative power (Saudi), and the influence of destructive power (Iran). Of course, in all of this Saudi’s voice in international politics is already a fair bit smaller than Egypt — a gatekeeper state itself — whose voice is a fair bit smaller than Turkey.

So what is a way to decisively change the outlook in the region? It is impossible to remove Iran from the shores of the Strait, impossible to remove Turkey from being the access point (geographically as well as politically and culturally) between Europe and Asia as well as the absolute gatekeeper to Black Sea access, impossible to un-deposit the oil present in Saudi Arabia and impossible to revoke Egyptian control of the Suez Canal. The only way to significantly alter the balance would be to alter the implications of one of these geographic factors. The simplest of these to change would be the effect Iran can have by being on the shores of the Strait of Hormuz.

The three regional choke-points which channelize shipping and offer threat leverage to the states that border them.

Currently the Strait is significant because most of the world’s oil flows through it. But what if that could be somehow avoided and an already strong (but usually muted) regional player were brought into the calculation from an unexpected angle? If Saudi were to fund the construction of a pipeline which bypassed the Persian Gulf entirely, but did not run to the Red Sea (which could merely create two new gatekeeper states if and when the political winds shift: Egypt on the north end with the Suez and Yemen or any number of African States on the other), but rather ran a much more secure route to the Mediterranean Sea through Israel.

The pipeline would have branches running from the countries over which Saudi needs to gain influence; most notable are Kuwait, Iraq UAE and Qatar.

Israel sounds like an unlikely choice, and it is, but that is one reason it would be a very secure relationship for the Saudis. Pushing oil through the port at Yaffo or Haifa would not cost very much as pipelines go, be much cheaper and less technically (and politically) challenging than the Nordstream project, instantly undercut the Iranian’s Hormuz threat and easily pay for itself over the life of the project. It would also secure but not empower Israel without undercutting the Egyptian position. If the pipeline were built with regional instead of just Saudi oil export in mind, Iraq, the UAE, Qatar, Yemen, etc. would all suddenly find their interests in line with the Saudis and Israelis on many issues because of the cheap, secure route now available for their oil. The pipeline route would be the preferred route for European and American oil exports in the best of times and a ready alternative in the worst.

But wouldn’t that give Israel a lever in the Arab states and undue influence? A lever, yes. Undue influence? No. The traditional Persian Gulf route would continue to exist. It would be as easy for Saudi to shut Israel out of the loop as it would be for them to shut the Iranians out. The difference is that Iran is a threat to Saudi, but Israel is not. As the formerly combative states neighboring Israel have found in the past forty years or so, there are significant benefits to cooperation with Israel and no real downside. Egyptian and Israeli policy are in lock-step, the Jordanians get their ocean access through Israel (not Syria and Lebanon), and even Syria coordinates most of what they are up to with Israel. There are social frictions but no concrete geopolitical reasons to move against this — and the social frictions are easy to overcome by subtly slowing or stopping the anti-Jewish media propaganda, a move which costs nothing.

Cutting Iran out of the influence game and removing the teeth from its threats could significantly shift the balance of the region. This could happen in a way that would likely avert widescale military conflict because it would promote a more stable situation. Turkey would now be in competition against a Saudi/Israel/Egypt bloc while Iran merely attempted to focus on Iraq and affecting a re-alignment with the US. Of course, Iran’s Iraq control plays would be made more difficult by the new influence Saudi could exert by lording its control of Iraq’s new Mediterranean pipeline access over it, but this represents a profitable diversity of options for Iraq, not further limitations.

Altering this energy export situation would force a realignment across the region which would, over the long term, promote stability because it merely increases creative options while limiting destructive ones. It would diversify the political economy instead of raising barriers to competitive entry — to put it in power game terms.

So will we see something like this? Possibly. But who knows. Never underestimate the Arab states’ ability to never miss a chance at missing a chance.

Hezbollah’s existence being technically independent of Iran makes Hezbollah a great vehicle of Iranian terror while being very much a tool of political plausible deniability. This is the largest reason the previous Bush administration labelled “state sponsors of terror” to be just as bad as the terrorist groups themselves — because the terrorists generally cater to the sponsoring nation’s foreign policy goals or are, in fact, direct tools of that nation’s policy.

That being the case, however, the whole purpose of having a surrogate militant organization is to not be seen as directly doing bad things yourself. It’s all right and fine for Iran to talk about wanting to murder every Jew on the planet and that the-Holocaust-never-happened-but-it-should, but actually having your military go out and murder Jews is another thing altogether. You can sponsor all the racism rallies you want but the moment you start shooting people is where lines start getting crossed (accept in Africa). For example, the sanctions efforts against Iran would look quite different were the IRGC to be seen landing on the beaches of Tel Aviv in uniform shooting kids. Instead they stand up and sponsor a surrogate organization to do those things and they therefore have a solid layer of political deniability for those actions.

And herein lies the flaw in my thinking. A political layer of deniability is precisely what Iran does not need when it comes to stealing center stage back from Turkey in the anti-Jewish tragedy. Iran needs to make itself appear to be doing things which are very direct and deliberate. And those things can’t be seen as directly targeting the Israeli civilian population. Targeting the Israeli civilian population is something that can happen on a routine basis, but not when the world’s media is focused in on Israel. Most people around the world see the relatively affluent, educated (gorgeous) Israelis and the relatively destitute Palestinians (well, specifically the Gazans, the West Bank variety are doing quite well these days) and assume something horribly unfair must be going on. Instead of making the boring, easy to support assumption that Israeli business and social practices work better than backward death cult superstition, they instead take the much more exciting and difficult to substantiate tack that the Jews are somehow screwing the Arabs out of something. Attacking Israeli civilians right now would cast the anti-Jewish camp in a surprisingly negative light globally in the West and undermine the global sympathy which has been so carefully sown through years of media use and is currently being reaped to great reward by the Turks.

So how does Iran put itself back in the limelight without provoking a massive Western backlash? By simply copying the Turkish playbook, that’s how. To that end Iran has settled on doing three things (today’s news links to each):

• Offering military escort to Gaza-bound ships. This would guarantee a military (and likely short, one-sided) confrontation with the IDF. The confrontation would not go in Iran’s favor — and for this reason this course of action is highly unlikely to be actually carried out — but the public sympathy generated could potentially be enormous.
• Offering the Iranian Red Crescent to deliver aid. This would also guarantee some sort of military confrontation, and while the result would not be as spectacular (in the sense that fireworks are spectacular) the media effect would likely be only slightly less than the Turkish experiment was. This is a potentially wise move, but for the fact that Hamas is not entertaining the idea — perhaps not willing to be seen standing between Turkey and Iran and thereby polluting the issue.
• Being the first to press with maritime Gaza news. When you’re first to press you can spin the story a certain way. Today the Israelis interdicted an unusual maritime Hamas attack effort, killing four or five infiltrators at sea. By any national security standard this is a good thing, but the way it was spun in the Iranian press was brilliant. The stories carried the headline “Israel kills four Palestinians off the shore of Gaza” instead of “IDF interdicts terrorist attack squad at sea” — a natural and easy twist of words. This is something Iran is already expert at, and also is something most folks disregard out of hand. Accept that right now the world is enthralled by anything said about Israelis and water.

So that’s about it. A second hasty article. I still believe the possibility of eventual Hezbollah involvement in the issue is very high, but that it will come at a later time. Iran is currently very uncomfortable with the way the Russians have pulled away from them in their American sanction-dodging efforts and is feeling very threatened by the sudden spike in Turkish popularity with the global anti-Jewish political base.

This should be interesting to pay attention to.

Stratfor is, as usual, on the ball and as usual George Friedman demonstrates that he is a far more elegant writer than I am (and he better be, this is his job, not hobby). Enjoy.

This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR

By George Friedman

On Sunday, Israeli naval forces intercepted the ships of a Turkish nongovernmental organization (NGO) delivering humanitarian supplies to Gaza. Israel had demanded that the vessels not go directly to Gaza but instead dock in Israeli ports, where the supplies would be offloaded and delivered to Gaza. The Turkish NGO refused, insisting on going directly to Gaza. Gunfire ensued when Israeli naval personnel boarded one of the vessels, and a significant number of the passengers and crew on the ship were killed or wounded.

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon charged that the mission was simply an attempt to provoke the Israelis. That was certainly the case. The mission was designed to demonstrate that the Israelis were unreasonable and brutal. The hope was that Israel would be provoked to extreme action, further alienating Israel from the global community and possibly driving a wedge between Israel and the United States. The operation’s planners also hoped this would trigger a political crisis in Israel.

A logical Israeli response would have been avoiding falling into the provocation trap and suffering the political repercussions the Turkish NGO was trying to trigger. Instead, the Israelis decided to make a show of force. The Israelis appear to have reasoned that backing down would demonstrate weakness and encourage further flotillas to Gaza, unraveling the Israeli position vis-à-vis Hamas. In this thinking, a violent interception was a superior strategy to accommodation regardless of political consequences. Thus, the Israelis accepted the bait and were provoked.

The ‘Exodus’ Scenario

In the 1950s, an author named Leon Uris published a book called “Exodus.” Later made into a major motion picture, Exodus told the story of a Zionist provocation against the British. In the wake of World War II, the British — who controlled Palestine, as it was then known — maintained limits on Jewish immigration there. Would-be immigrants captured trying to run the blockade were detained in camps in Cyprus. In the book and movie, Zionists planned a propaganda exercise involving a breakout of Jews — mostly children — from the camp, who would then board a ship renamed the Exodus. When the Royal Navy intercepted the ship, the passengers would mount a hunger strike. The goal was to portray the British as brutes finishing the work of the Nazis. The image of children potentially dying of hunger would force the British to permit the ship to go to Palestine, to reconsider British policy on immigration, and ultimately to decide to abandon Palestine and turn the matter over to the United Nations.

There was in fact a ship called Exodus, but the affair did not play out precisely as portrayed by Uris, who used an amalgam of incidents to display the propaganda war waged by the Jews. Those carrying out this war had two goals. The first was to create sympathy in Britain and throughout the world for Jews who, just a couple of years after German concentration camps, were now being held in British camps. Second, they sought to portray their struggle as being against the British. The British were portrayed as continuing Nazi policies toward the Jews in order to maintain their empire. The Jews were portrayed as anti-imperialists, fighting the British much as the Americans had.

It was a brilliant strategy. By focusing on Jewish victimhood and on the British, the Zionists defined the battle as being against the British, with the Arabs playing the role of people trying to create the second phase of the Holocaust. The British were portrayed as pro-Arab for economic and imperial reasons, indifferent at best to the survivors of the Holocaust. Rather than restraining the Arabs, the British were arming them. The goal was not to vilify the Arabs but to villify the British, and to position the Jews with other nationalist groups whether in India or Egypt rising against the British.

The precise truth or falsehood of this portrayal didn’t particularly matter. For most of the world, the Palestine issue was poorly understood and not a matter of immediate concern. The Zionists intended to shape the perceptions of a global public with limited interest in or understanding of the issues, filling in the blanks with their own narrative. And they succeeded.

The success was rooted in a political reality. Where knowledge is limited, and the desire to learn the complex reality doesn’t exist, public opinion can be shaped by whoever generates the most powerful symbols. And on a matter of only tangential interest, governments tend to follow their publics’ wishes, however they originate. There is little to be gained for governments in resisting public opinion and much to be gained by giving in. By shaping the battlefield of public perception, it is thus possible to get governments to change positions.

In this way, the Zionists’ ability to shape global public perceptions of what was happening in Palestine — to demonize the British and turn the question of Palestine into a Jewish-British issue — shaped the political decisions of a range of governments. It was not the truth or falsehood of the narrative that mattered. What mattered was the ability to identify the victim and victimizer such that global opinion caused both London and governments not directly involved in the issue to adopt political stances advantageous to the Zionists. It is in this context that we need to view the Turkish flotilla.

The Turkish Flotilla to Gaza

The Palestinians have long argued that they are the victims of Israel, an invention of British and American imperialism. Since 1967, they have focused not so much on the existence of the state of Israel (at least in messages geared toward the West) as on the oppression of Palestinians in the occupied territories. Since the split between Hamas and Fatah and the Gaza War, the focus has been on the plight of the citizens of Gaza, who have been portrayed as the dispossessed victims of Israeli violence.

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.

The Geopolitical Fallout for Israel

It is vital that the Israelis succeed in portraying the flotilla as an extremist plot. Whether extremist or not, the plot has generated an image of Israel quite damaging to Israeli political interests. Israel is increasingly isolated internationally, with heavy pressure on its relationship with Europe and the United States.

In all of these countries, politicians are extremely sensitive to public opinion. It is difficult to imagine circumstances under which public opinion will see Israel as the victim. The general response in the Western public is likely to be that the Israelis probably should have allowed the ships to go to Gaza and offload rather than to precipitate bloodshed. Israel’s enemies will fan these flames by arguing that the Israelis prefer bloodshed to reasonable accommodation. And as Western public opinion shifts against Israel, Western political leaders will track with this shift.

The incident also wrecks Israeli relations with Turkey, historically an Israeli ally in the Muslim world with longstanding military cooperation with Israel. The Turkish government undoubtedly has wanted to move away from this relationship, but it faced resistance within the Turkish military and among secularists. The new Israeli action makes a break with Israel easy, and indeed almost necessary for Ankara.

With roughly the population of Houston, Texas, Israel is just not large enough to withstand extended isolation, meaning this event has profound geopolitical implications.

Public opinion matters where issues are not of fundamental interest to a nation. Israel is not a fundamental interest to other nations. The ability to generate public antipathy to Israel can therefore reshape Israeli relations with countries critical to Israel. For example, a redefinition of U.S.-Israeli relations will have much less effect on the United States than on Israel. The Obama administration, already irritated by the Israelis, might now see a shift in U.S. public opinion that will open the way to a new U.S.-Israeli relationship disadvantageous to Israel.

The Israelis will argue that this is all unfair, as they were provoked. Like the British, they seem to think that the issue is whose logic is correct. But the issue actually is, whose logic will be heard? As with a tank battle or an airstrike, this sort of warfare has nothing to do with fairness. It has to do with controlling public perception and using that public perception to shape foreign policy around the world. In this case, the issue will be whether the deaths were necessary. The Israeli argument of provocation will have limited traction.

Internationally, there is little doubt that the incident will generate a firestorm. Certainly, Turkey will break cooperation with Israel. Opinion in Europe will likely harden. And public opinion in the United States — by far the most important in the equation — might shift to a “plague-on-both-your-houses” position.

While the international reaction is predictable, the interesting question is whether this evolution will cause a political crisis in Israel. Those in Israel who feel that international isolation is preferable to accommodation with the Palestinians are in control now. Many in the opposition see Israel’s isolation as a strategic threat. Economically and militarily, they argue, Israel cannot survive in isolation. The current regime will respond that there will be no isolation. The flotilla aimed to generate what the government has said would not happen.

The tougher Israel is, the more the flotilla’s narrative takes hold. As the Zionists knew in 1947 and the Palestinians are learning, controlling public opinion requires subtlety, a selective narrative and cynicism. As they also knew, losing the battle can be catastrophic. It cost Britain the Mandate and allowed Israel to survive. Israel’s enemies are now turning the tables. This maneuver was far more effective than suicide bombings or the Intifada in challenging Israel’s public perception and therefore its geopolitical position (though if the Palestinians return to some of their more distasteful tactics like suicide bombing, the Turkish strategy of portraying Israel as the instigator of violence will be undermined).

Israel is now in uncharted waters. It does not know how to respond. It is not clear that the Palestinians know how to take full advantage of the situation, either. But even so, this places the battle on a new field, far more fluid and uncontrollable than what went before. The next steps will involve calls for sanctions against Israel. The Israeli threats against Iran will be seen in a different context, and Israeli portrayal of Iran will hold less sway over the world.

And this will cause a political crisis in Israel. If this government survives, then Israel is locked into a course that gives it freedom of action but international isolation. If the government falls, then Israel enters a period of domestic uncertainty. In either case, the flotilla achieved its strategic mission. It got Israel to take violent action against it. In doing so, Israel ran into its own fist.

Situation
A pro-Palestinian advocacy group arranged a convoy of private boats to head to the Gaza strip to deliver aide materials. Israel has the Gaza strip under naval blockade because Hamas has taken over there and continues to attack Israel. Running the blockade is something Israel told them not to do and gave permission for an alternative route for aide supplies, but the blockade runners weren’t having any of it. This is not unlike other civilian revolutionary ideas where civilians take it upon themselves to toss their bodies on the spears of whatever faction they dislike and then scream about the injustice of it all.

Details
Self-proclaimed revolutionaries seeking to go down in a blaze of glory is pretty normal and entirely un-newsworthy. This sort of behavior is fairly common for any religiously-connected group, and particularly ordinary those infected with Islam. The political side of this is where things get interesting, however.

Turkey is finally awake and trying to rise up in political importance after the last 100 or so years of total dormancy. If you recall from history class, Turkey is the modern name for the Ottoman/Byzantine/East Roman Empire. The place has a complex history but a fairly uniform geopolitical profile. Turkey happens to be afflicted with Islam at the moment, however, and this makes the rise a bit tricky as the pragmatic elements of the government that really understand geopolitical maneuver (specifically the Turkish Army, which is a highly politicized element of society) are at direct odds with the more religious elements of the government and society. But Turkey derives one great merit from this internal division: it can be interpreted as the Last Great Hope for an Islamic country to achieve lasting geopolitical significance on the same level as, say, Germany; or it can be interpreted as a secular, calculating geopolitical player which gives only lip-service to Islam. Which way one chooses to portray or interpret Turkey can comfortably be based on whichever way is most expedient for the parties involved. For example this allows Turkey to be an official military ally of Israel while at the same time being a supporter of the Gaza convoy.

Turkey is trying to take over the responsibility and influence that the US currently has in Iraq while at the same time attempting to be seen as a key factor in influencing Iran in the future. Since most of the heavy lifting is already complete in the Middle East (for now) and maintaining a large presence in the Middle East would come with significant and unjustifiable opportunity costs for the US over the long term, the US is happy to hand over its responsibilities to Turkey and thereby buy itself the freedom to focus on other areas which have been recently neglected (such as managing the recent Russian play to re-form an extended empire based on the old Soviet borders).

Turkey sees the convoy as a win-win for Turkey at the expense of giving Israel a lose-lose. Turkey can do this without lifting a finger as it is a private effort to run the Gaza blockade that is generating the situation in the first place.

At the outset the convoy was either going to make it there or not, which presented two major (and likely) outcomes and two minor (and unlikely) outcomes:

• Major 1- The convoy makes it to Gaza after Turkey is seen exerting pressure on Israel. This would be perceived as an influential win for Turkey as a defender of the Palestinians, thus winning it many cool-points in the Islamic world and upstaging Iran as the prime anti-Israel entity.
• Major 2- The convoy does not make it to Gaza. In this case Turkey can talk mad shit about Israel and progress the situation further, possibly arranging another convoy with official state sponsorship the next time, etc.

Either way, Turkey gets a benefit and all they have to do is talk.

Israel has a bad situation on its hands either way, however. If the convoy makes it there then Israel would be seen as weak and this would encourage further attempts at running the blockade, which would inveitably result in a mass influx of lethal cargo reaching Gaza and reigniting conflict all over again. If the convoy is interdicted then Israel is seen as being worse than a pile of assholes because “interdiction” involves military action against unarmed activists.

• Minor 1 - The convoy organizers simply fail. Convoy dissolves due to lack of interest/balls. This almost happened. The convoy shrank from being “hundreds” of boats to eventually 7 to finally 5. But 5 did set sail.
• Minor 2 - The decides that forcing a situation which generates further drama involving the Palestinians is less important than actually delivering supplies to the Palestinians and accepts Israel’s offer for an alternate transportation schedule and route.

These outcomes would have been funny, but once this really caught on all over Al Jazeera too many people wound up with a vested interest in seeing the convoy happen than to allow it to be cancelled.

It’s worth remembering that it’s a fair bet that there isn’t any contraband on this initial shipment of aid supplies. If interdicted the activists will want to show the world that this was a big fuss over deliveringfuckingbabyfoodholyshit to make Israel appear evil. That, in fact, is all this is about. It has nothing to do with the actual delivery of supplies. If that were the case they would have accepted Israel’s offer for an alternate transport of cargo after inspection, just like all the other thousands of tons of supplies Israel lets through monthly.

Turkey is not directly sponsoring the convoy, as this would place the state itself in direct conflict with Israel. The two are allied so this would get trickier than the Turks want it to be. In this case the Turks have a great amount of deniability, however, because technically speaking this is a Cypriot convoy, not a Turkish one. Turkey sees this as a win-win situation.

A newcomer to Earth might wonder why Israel thinks it is OK to blockade Gaza in the first place, and why they are not taking similar action against the West Bank. At this point Israel feels it is safe to cut Gaza off because for the most part the Palestinians who subscribe to a “war with Israel at all costs, murder all the Jews” philosophy are concentrated in Gaza and support Hamas there and the more normal Palestinians who are of a more pragmatic mind are now by and large loacted in the West Bank. This distinction is important to understand the Palestinian situation, because there are in fact two Palestinian situations and they are very different from one another.

All that background blah blah blah. And now on to the calculation bit…

Calculation and Outcomes
The convoy went and Israel did, in fact, decide to interdict using naval forces. Three missile boats from the Israeli Navy approached the ships in the early morning, told them to stop, got told to fuck off, and boarded the vessels. In the process of boarding people got angry, started trying to stab Israeli soldiers and got shot. At the moment I’m hearing anything between 10 and 16 people got killed and anywhere from 20 to 80 people were injured. The situation is very unclear right now, but it just happened a few hours ago and is an ongoing event, so when you read this 3 months from today don’t ding me for not having exact counts.

One might ask “How is is justified to shoot civilians while boarding?” The answer lies in the difficulty of boarding operations. Ships are fabulously tight places full of nooks, crannies, steep stairs, etc. If a large group of folks was aboard a ship and very serious about not being taken over, they could arrange some pretty serious MacGyverness, melee-weapon ambushes, barricades, etc. without much trouble. In the current scenario there we have a group of people who are likely predominantly Muslim and super Jew-haters who are naive enough to think personally being a part of this convoy was a good idea. A group of that demographic being interdicted by a group likely to consist mainly of armed Jews is bound to involve some resistance, and “no guns” does not equate to “not armed” in a practical sense. Hence the shootings.

Of course, the media is likely to start spouting all sorts of unsupported drivel about how bad the Israelis are. Al Jazeera already is, and in fact there are already riots in several countries which suffer from widespread Islam and also happen to have an Israeli embassy or consulate. It will only be a matter of time (I give it no more than 12 hours) before European governments will either have to choose to publicly condemn Israel or face backlashes from their own imported populations as well.

Israel obviously made a choice and thought about this long and hard before it did. It was forced, in this case, to directly consider the political realities and evaluate them against the facts of the situation. Its options were nothing but crap but they obviously decided that this was the least shitty of the options available. They are betting that the political pain of interdiction, while more intense, will be short-lived and act to discourage future scenarios of a similar nature (probably correct). The option of not interdicting and allowing the convoy through would encourage future situations and incidents and eventually the blockade would become meaningless, Hamas would become rearmed and regnite serious conflict, and in the end more Israelis and Gazans would get hurt — a far less acceptable outcome.

Thus the interdiction.

The way the media is getting a hold of this will be interesting to watch. Al Jazeera obviously has a vested interest in playing this up as much as possible and indeed already are. The American and European media will likely initially play their news the same way and then tone the anti-Israeli side down a bit and attempt to become more balanced (likely producing a few editorial pieces which state, essentially, the same things I’m putting out here, but in about a week or so).

Turkey will enjoy this, however, despite the fact that civilians were hurt and there was really nothing anyone could do about it other than just not entertain the idea of trying to run a naval blockade put in place by a country which is not known for leniency in security matters. Once again, however, this was all about forcing a politically difficult situation on Israel for the benefit of Turkey and not at all about delivering supplies to the Gazan Palestinians.

This situation will not just blow over, however. Very likely the fallout of this will extend far beyond the initial set of outcomes. Most critical in my mind right now are the Iranian connected reactions. As I stated above, Iran is being upstaged by Turkey here, and that is not acceptable. For this reason it is entirely likely that Iran will engineer some sort of disruption on the north end of Israel through Hezbollah. Another full-blown war is not likely because it is not yet in Hezbollah’s interest to tackle the IDF so directly just now, but anything is possible. In fact, preparations have been underway for about a year now for another conflict with Israel and despite the time not really being ripe for any side concerned, this sort of pressure from a new direction could cause other things to pop loose in ways that nobody expected.

At the very least there will be a slew of new global protests against the Israelis and their perceived supporters. The US will be extremely uncomfortable with this because at the moment the future seems to be brighter for Turkey than Israel and an empowered regional power in the form of Turkey would be far more useful to the US than an isolated and tiny Israel. Expect to see the US try to stay out of it (impossible), fail to and in the end leave enough ambiguity to not be seen as supporting Israel. This won’t matter on the Islamic street, however (which is where America really has trouble figuring out how the social media game works) because Israel is viewed as a distant US territory that just happens to be crowded with hated Jews.

Crazy world. Once again, this won’t blow over, but rather lead to some larger movements down the road… unless it fizzles, but that is entirely up to the media. The media has a vested interest in seeing this get blown up huge, though, so I seriously doubt that outcome. The average person will probably not understand how the convoy interdiction today will likely precipitate Hezbollah action tomorrow, but whatev.

It is a regular experience when evaluating power relationships to find that a political reality may be contrary to the facts of a situation. Such divergence is common any time a popular misconception is so widespread that it creates its own political truth.

One example of this is the effect of misinterpreting the holding of elections for having democracy. This quaint political reality has led to millions of dollars of annual effort being wasted across the developing world despite most developing nations only loosely adhere to their constitutions anyway. Africa is one such developing region and Zimbabwe is a showcase example of this behavior. Political realities have their own sort of power that usually trumps the power inherent to truth. This is why elections are held in Zimbabwe at all — they are important even if not for the reason that is publicly believed.

Political realities must be observed and obeyed, just like facts. Because of their basic nature political realities almost always receive far more treatment by politicians in the media than the concrete core issues do. If the power brokers of Zimbabwe were to refuse the public its chance to play out a process it anticipates participation in — even an election process that same public is suspicious of — the level of civil malcontent and international demonization would likely far exceed the levels seen over the last several years.

The key problem is that the average person simply does not have enough time to hear about more than a very few events around the world every day and take in and interpret only a very few facts about each of those. People take their hard facts through a straw. Average people do seem to find time to invent or accept conspiracy theories and over simplified interpretations to cover over the gaps in their specific knowledge of world affairs. Journalists are particularly adept at this, finding ways to write huge articles replete with semantically ambiguous blather and speculation but sparse on hard facts. Average people also often find time to go vote, join a protest or further communicate and reinforce whatever public misconception they are a customer of — after all running around the street breaking windows in Greece is a lot more fun than researching that country’s economic fundamentals.

That brings me to a situation I find very interesting today: the fallout of the Polish plane crash.
[Note: The following half of this article includes Putin image memes from across the net that represent a political reality of today, though not all represent actual truth.]

On the day of the crash I wrote that nobody was going to believe that the Russians did not somehow cause that plane crash. This statement was completely independent of whatever facts come out concerning whether they actually did or not. I was pushing the idea that the political reality would be that the Russians killed their top opponents in the Polish government even if the fact was they didn’t. The statement of fact would have to wait until today (it turns out the case for a simple plane crash on landing is pretty solid) but the effects of the political reality took hold immediately. In a situation like this the fact does not matter, the political reality does.

Now we have a few weeks between us and the crash, but people still refuse to accept that it was likely an unfortunate accident rather than a case of hard political engineering. The reason is that the first stories to hit public eyes is the one that sticks, and the first media stories were rampant with speculative Russian conspiracy theories so that is all that is remembered.

Polish President literally going down in flames = Front page news
Results of crash investigation = Page 6 or so, even if the Polish President was aboard

But let’s rewind again to the day of the crash.
Nobody knows what is really going on.

We only have one fact: The Polish President’s plane just crashed with scores of senior government officials on board including the most critical opponents of Russia’s regional expansion policy. And the crash happened in Russia. On the way to a Polish-Russian atrocity-remeberance/memorial event, no less. Another time and place could never be as symbolic to the Poles. This is undeniably advantageous for Russia

At this point we have:
Truth = Unknown
Political reality = The Russians did it

There is only one actionable piece of information to be had and that is the assumption. Even if the truth were known it would not be a meaningful revelation because nobody would believe it anyway. So that still leaves only one piece of actionable information.

I wrote at the time of the crash that the Russians should find a polite, politic and sly way of claiming credit for the crash while officially distancing themselves from it. An hour later they had already demonstrated how deft they were at this sort of image game and I updated my write-up. Medvedev appointed Putin the head of the crash investigation — giving the man who stands to gain the most from the crash the authority to sign the official record of how it happened. He then sent the head of a GRU directorate (”Ministry of Emergency Situations” — an organization created to appear like Russia’s version of FEMA) to “prepare the scene for investigation” — which sounds like a post-sabotage cover job to those who know what that ministry actually does.

To pro-Russian elements — who loved the Soviet, hate America and actually believed that Big Brother was only watching them as a protective and loving sibling — the appointment of Putin indicated that Medvedev cared so much about the crash investigation’s accuracy that he would appoint The Putin Himself to check up on it. The dispatch of a GRU chief to the scene can be seen from the same perspective as an indication that the earnest Russians were concerned with not contaminating the scene and helping out with the disaster recovery so much that they mobilized their version of FEMA to accomplish it.

Either interpretation is a benefit to the Russians. This disregard for fact and focus on political reality demonstrates how well the Russians understand the game. On the one hand it is good to be seen as a steward of honesty and regional goodwill when anything like this happens. On the other hand it is extremely useful to be seen as a scary, dominating force that will eleminate its regional opponents in permanent ways if it feels like doing so. The fearful grow more afraid and compliant for an apparent lack of alternatives, the trusting deepen their trust. It is a win-win for Russia, and that is the heart of playing to political realities and not getting wrapped around the axle about truth.

This stands in stark contrast to the Israeli (and to some extent the American) government. They (particularly their military’s public relations department) are obsessed with truth and consistently allow their opponents to shape the media perceptions of them by refusing to make statements until after the conclusion of investigations. That is a terrible practice because it ignores the impact of political realities and focuses on the much less powerful truths of a situation.

The first one to press owns the press despite having no time to locate any truth. The last to make a statement has the most time to investigate a situation before speaking but will have no impact on the press at all — and might not even be considered newsworthy by the time he comes forward. In this example, First to press = Israel’s rivals who aren’t so concerned with truth; Last to press = Israel’s government who is obsessed with researched truth but does not understand or ignores how political realities shape the human landscape.

Almost comical.

In somewhat unrelated news today, here is a story about the short-sightedness of populism that I find hilarious: European countries are suddenly realizing their social subsidies are unsustainable. Daily Finance version and New York Times version.