There is widespread agreement in Israel and around the world that, whatever the rights or wrongs about the Gaza flotilla, something went badly wrong with the operation to stop it.
One commentator in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz remarked that "
my six-year-old son could do much better than our current government."
--snip--
Five of the six ships in the flotilla did stop, but the main one, the Mavi Marmara, did not.
(Update: several readers have pointed out that the protesters, as well as the UN high commissioner for human rights, consider the whole blockade illegal and that therefore, in their view, the Israeli argument becomes irrelevant.)
'Unexpected'
Warnings having predictably failed, Israel decided to use force.
It did so using members of its seaborne special forces, Flotilla 13, with helicopters and speed boats.
There has been debate within Israel as to whether this was the right unit to use. It is trained for combat, not crowd control --snip--
Q&A: What went wrong?