Nine deaths, and Israel wound up apologizing, paying $20M, easing the blockade, etc. in that case.
Crippling it elsewhere gives you deniability, too. That was the French goal; they just fucked it up.
EA-3167 · 1d ago
Deniability? Modern forensics are quite impressive, and drones/missiles/etc don't just go away when they detonate. Besides, that was a whole flotilla acting in the public eye, and Hamas still had the veneer of legitimacy for many in the West. None of that applies here, and it's hard to imagine that attacking a civilian vessel with a drone would be better than the Flotilla mess either.
All told this is a very odd story and waiting until more information is available seems reasonable. This isn't 1985, there's no expectation that an investigation won't reveal exactly what happened. Especially when there are other plausible explanations that don't involve Israel sending a drone 2000km with all of the risks that entails.
ceejayoz · 1d ago
> Deniability?
Yes. Enough, at least, for people to look the other way. Not at all uncommon - Russia's "Little Green Men" in Crimea, as an example. It doesn't matter if everyone knows who did it if you can go "nuh uh wasn't us!" and have allies go "good enough for us!"
> Modern forensics are quite impressive, and drones/missiles/etc don't just go away when they detonate.
Drones are not tough to procure commercially, or build from widely-available components. Especially at the nation-state level. The video footage looks more like a series of small FPV drones, not Hellfires from a Predator style thing.
> Especially when there are other plausible explanations that don't involve Israel sending a drone 2000km with all of the risks that entails.
You don't do that. Ukraine has been launching short-range FPV drones off their remote controlled jet skis for a while now. Launch 'em from a nearby cargo ship, or shore, or any number of other options.
Why?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_flotilla_raid
Nine deaths, and Israel wound up apologizing, paying $20M, easing the blockade, etc. in that case.
Crippling it elsewhere gives you deniability, too. That was the French goal; they just fucked it up.
All told this is a very odd story and waiting until more information is available seems reasonable. This isn't 1985, there's no expectation that an investigation won't reveal exactly what happened. Especially when there are other plausible explanations that don't involve Israel sending a drone 2000km with all of the risks that entails.
Yes. Enough, at least, for people to look the other way. Not at all uncommon - Russia's "Little Green Men" in Crimea, as an example. It doesn't matter if everyone knows who did it if you can go "nuh uh wasn't us!" and have allies go "good enough for us!"
Israel does this fairly regularly, like when they initially lied about what happened when they killed 15 medics recently, not counting on a phone with video being found in the mass grave. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/world/middleeast/gaza-isr...
> Modern forensics are quite impressive, and drones/missiles/etc don't just go away when they detonate.
Drones are not tough to procure commercially, or build from widely-available components. Especially at the nation-state level. The video footage looks more like a series of small FPV drones, not Hellfires from a Predator style thing.
> Especially when there are other plausible explanations that don't involve Israel sending a drone 2000km with all of the risks that entails.
You don't do that. Ukraine has been launching short-range FPV drones off their remote controlled jet skis for a while now. Launch 'em from a nearby cargo ship, or shore, or any number of other options.