Getting into a bloody confrontation further illustrates leaders’ stupidity

When will it be that Israel is just a little less right and a little smarter instead? Almost everything we do in recent years suffers from lack of sophistication, insufficient consideration and negligence.

It appears that the dictum “don’t be right, be smart” grows more meaningful around here from one incident to the next, from one operation to the next, and from one war to the next.

What does it mean to be smart? For example, sending Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon to brief the foreign press in an incident where we killed Turkish nationals is not smart; this is the same Ayalon who reprimanded the Turkish envoy months ago, humiliating him by refusing to shake his hand and making him sit in a low chair during heated discussions.

It’s just like throwing a red rag into an arena of hungry bulls. Where’s the tact? Where’s our common sense?

It’s not as though the alternative, sending Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, was much better. Yet someone needs to think ahead, see the overall picture, understand the implications and predict the reactions.

Yet we don’t need to go that far: As to the trap awaiting our troops at sea May 31, we could say — and see — that the writing was all over the water. For weeks in Israel they’ve been talking about the sail, and what needed to be done about it. Yet they didn’t do one simple thing: Thorough intelligence checks of the people who were on board these ships.

So is it any wonder that the incident on board the Mavi Marmara caused such shock to the Israeli public? Nobody prepared us for this. Nobody told us there would be such bloodshed and that we would again find ourselves facing an international entanglement.

Then again, why should they prepare us? Our leadership itself didn’t know this.

When the defense minister spoke May 31 about a radical Turkish group, it was all very nice, but why did he have to do it after the fact? If you knew, Mr. Minister, that members of this organization were aboard the vessel, why didn’t you prepare accordingly?

And if you didn’t know — why didn’t you know?

There’s not much to say about it: There wasn’t much brainpower at work here. And it’s not as though we needed a spark of genius. Common sense would be enough in order to understand that this is precisely what these protesters were seeking: a violent clash before the cameras.

We can say with certainty that Hamas leaders were not overwhelmed by tears when they heard about the fatalities. They could not dream of better results: IDF fighters shooting “peace lovers.”

Israel played right into Hamas’ hands in an amateurish, pathetic way. So great, we’re right. But why the hell did we stop being smart?

One thing should be clear: There is not even one word of criticism here in respect to the Israel Defense Forces flotilla fighters. They apparently did precisely what they had to do.

The question is why they even had to be there to begin with. Didn’t all our wonderful minds — starting with the prime minister — have any better ideas than deploying soldiers on a deck where 600 unknown individuals are waiting for them? Is this the only way to stop ships?

What about causing some kind of mechanical mishap? Throwing a bolt into the engine? And if we’re already at it, why did we even need to stop them? Israeli officials spoke early this week of the need to maintain the blockade as if Gaza is hermetically sealed; as if these ships, which were transporting wheelchairs and milk, were the dangers posed by the besieged Gaza, rather than the endless weapon smuggling operations.

The repeated sights of soldiers being beat up with bats were like a blow to the stomach. It was sad to see our political and security establishment exposing them to this humiliation because of thoughtlessness.

In a normal country, we would have urged someone to resign. Sorry, what I meant to say is that in a normal country someone would have already resigned by now.

Yet around here, the prime minister decides to return home from Canada after long hours of deliberations. And this is supposed to reassure us.

Sima Kadmon is a political commentator in Israel whose articles appear in the newspapers Yediot Achronot and Ma’ariv.

This piece appeared on Ynetnews.com.