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.

President Clinton preferred to use reconciliation to pass HillaryCare in the 1990s, but he was dissuaded by West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, who argued that it would be an abuse of the process. Mr. Byrd, author of a four-volume history of Senate rules and procedures, told the Washington Post last March that “The misuse of the arcane process of reconciliation—a process intended for deficit reduction—to enact substantive policy changes is an undemocratic disservice to our people and to the Senate’s institutional role,” specifically citing health reform and cap and trade.

Not quite as advertised…

Furthermore, Democrats are outright misleading the American public by advertising the cost of their plan to be only $849 billion over its first 10 years. According to the CBO analysis, only 1 percent of the costs will have even started to accumulate during the first 4 of those 10 years, so the “first 10 years” metric is misleading in itself. When taking a more honest look at the costs, the CBO’s numbers read quite differently (from the New York Post):

As the CBO analysis indicates, the bill’s real 10-year costs would start in 2014. And in its true first decade (2014 to 2023), CBO projects the bill’s costs to be $1.8 trillion — double the price Reid is advertising.

And that’s even though the CBO optimistically assumes the government-run “public option” wouldn’t cost a cent.

Over this same 10-year span, the 2,074-page bill would hike taxes and fines on Americans by $892 billion — more than the alleged price of the bill.

Why then are we adding more entitlement programs that we cannot afford? How are we going to pay for this? Of course, the answer is, and has been for some time, to simply borrow more from other countries like China (from the National Review):

Consider next the matter of debt. Obama inherited the Bush budget deficits — and then drove them through the roof. Indeed, he is on schedule not only to run up consecutive trillion-dollar-plus annual shortfalls, but also in his tenure nearly to match the aggregate debt piled up by all previous administrations combined.

A large portion of the new Obama borrowing has to be covered abroad, mostly through Chinese and Japanese purchase of U.S. government bonds.

The Obama administration expects to borrow yearly hundreds of billions of dollars from the Chinese to expand American health care. In some sense, therefore, 400 to 500 million Chinese — most of them without much access to even rudimentary medicine, doctors, and hospitals — will be working overtime to loan Americans enough money to ensure universal access to hip replacements, gastric bypasses, and flu shots.

Cut through the soaring rhetoric: We are left with an America that assumes the world’s less well-off will directly subsidize our own better-off.

No wonder that Obama has cooled his rhetoric on Chinese smoky coal plants, Tibet, mercantile trade policies, and human rights. All such idealism falls before America’s voracious appetite for borrowed cash.

The American Thinker touched on this topic quite well:

The other day, an Israeli archeologist presented a discovery of Biblical coins going back to the fall of Jerusalem in 67-70 C.E. It was the Roman Emperor-to-be Titus Flavius Vespasianus who conquered Jerusalem that year and razed it to the ground.

That was a long time ago, you say. But in Jerusalem, it’s right there in a never-ending flow of archeological discoveries. It’s here and now. Most of those Second Temple shekels went molten in the fire that swept the city when the Romans finally brought down the walls, killing innumerable Jews. Genocide was official Roman policy for rebels against Rome. In the city of Rome today you can still see the triumphal arch Titus built for himself, depicting his celebratory parade followed by the defeated Jews in chains. They are carrying an enormous Menorah carved in the marble on the top of Titus’ triumphal arch.

American military people can still understand that, but most American civilians can’t. We live only in the present. The average American has forgotten even Pearl Harbor, not to mention all the other bloody American sacrifices that still make us safe today. Third-world Socialists like Obama can never, ever understand it. Obama was quoted sanctimoniously honking that “more settlement-building doesn’t make Israel safer.” That lofty and typically arrogant platitude is contradicted for Israelis when they look at those rows upon rows of Jerusalem stone buildings, every row another fortification against an enemy that has never stopped attacking. The “settlers” are those people putting their bodies — and their children’s bodies — on the line of defense.

Here is an excerpt:

Oh, how we RAILED against Bush in 2000…and how we RAILED against the surge in support Bush received post-9/11 when he went to Ground Zero and stood there with his bullhorn in the ruins on that hideous day.

We were convinced that ANYONE who was president would have done what Bush did, and would have set that right tone of leadership in the wake of that disaster. President Gore, President Perot, President Nader, you name it. ANYONE, we assumed, would have filled that role perfectly.

Well, we told you before how much the current president, Dr. Utopia, made us realize just how wrong we were about Bush. We shudder to think what Dr. Utopia would have done post-9/11. He would have not gone there with a bullhorn and struck that right tone. More likely than not, he would have been his usual fey, apologetic self and waxed professorially about how evil America is and how justified Muslims are for attacking us, with a sidebar on how good the attacks were because they would humble us.

The full post is a decent read with an interesting perspective and it definitely generated a “buzz” as it currently has over 1,000 comments.

We miss him too:

Ron Paul rightly points out that corporatism and greed are not principles of capitalism.

In Charanya Krishnaswami’s defense of the Democratic health reform plan on Tuesday, she reiterates some common fallacious arguments that are misinformed, misrepresent the opposition, and frame the debate in a rather elementary fashion.

Krishnaswami seems to believe that the “public option” will bring honest competition to the health insurance market. This could not be further from the truth. The proposed plan has the very real potential of crowding out private insurance; and by force, not by providing more competitive rates.

In the latest Pelosi bill, an employer mandate will require small business owners to provide coverage for their employees or face an 8 percent payroll tax. Many economists have predicted that small business owners will drop their employees onto the “public option” since the 8 percent payroll tax will most likely be cheaper than the cost of providing private insurance.

Private insurers will also be subject to new regulations that control the price of premiums and require insurers to provide an “essential” level of coverage and benefits. This would be like Apple forcing Dell to put more expensive hardware in their computers and charge less to sell them. Dell would most certainly shut down as that level of production would be unsustainable. In short, the Pelosi bill is to competition as Yasser Arafat was to world peace — the relationship only seems harmonious if you’re liberal.

Then Krishnaswami goes on to imply that opponents prefer the “status quo” where rape victims are denied care on the basis of “pre-existing conditions.” All emotionally ridden anecdotal arguments aside, the notion that opponents prefer the “status quo” is elementary thinking to say the least. Everyone, for the most part, agrees that our current health care system can be improved and that reform is needed in certain areas. No one wants to see anyone get turned away for “pre-existing conditions” or get denied care because they can’t afford insurance.

But, if opponents are guilty of defending the “status quo,” so is President Obama. President Obama has said that the goal of the “public option” is to provide “a better range of choices, make the health care market more competitive, and keep the insurance companies honest.” Everyone agrees that these principles are desirable, but it is ironic that President Obama has spent his entire political career voting against every effort to make the health insurance market more open and accessible.

While serving in the Senate, President Obama voted against allowing tax deductions for health care costs, against allowing competition across state lines, against allowing the use of tax-free Health Savings Accounts to pay for health insurance coverage, against requiring undocumented immigrants to own health insurance, and against other reform efforts that would have increased competition, decreased costs, expanded coverage, or some combination of the three.

Another issue with Krishnaswami’s logic is the assumption that having no insurance implies that no health care is provided. This is, of course, false. For example, just a few miles away, Parkland Memorial Hospital provides millions of dollars of health care services to thousands and thousands of uninsured undocumented immigrants every year. Parkland has even sent an invoice to Mexico without expecting to actually be paid.

Krishnaswami also cites the number of uninsured to be around 46 million, which has been broken down numerous times and exposed as the scare tactic that it is. For example, 17.6 million uninsured earn more than $50,000 and can easily afford private insurance. 9.7 million are undocumented immigrants or non-U.S. citizens and should not be covered by the American taxpayer anyway. 14 million qualify for Medicaid or other government programs that already exist. That leaves around 5 million out of 307 million that are truly uninsured and can’t afford insurance.

Lastly, health care is not a human right as Krishnaswami claims, but a commodity just like food, water, or shelter. However, health care is arguably already treated as a positive right in America as more than half of Americans receive “free” health care from government programs like Medicare and Medicaid at the expense of the American taxpayer of both today and, as debt continues to accumulate over time, tomorrow.