Strikes And Signals On The Seven Seas
By Amir Oren
When Yosef Hershkovitz emigrated from Romania to Palestine, in the mid-1920’s, he settled in the backwater town of Haifa and made a living out of operating a horse-and-cart business distributing heating oil to residents of the sleepy mountainous neighborhoods, Jews and Arabs alike. He became a familiar figure around town, with important connections among the British officials who made Haifa a crucial port and refinery terminal thriving off the pipeline drawing petroleum from Iraq. As a harbour agent in World War II and afterwards, Hershkovitz turned out to be an experienced hand at maritime affairs, eventually starting to acquire vessels in the newly-established State of Israel.
Out of this modest rags-to-riches beginning was born a shipping empire, which diversified into several other indusries and financial fields. It was captained by two of Hershkovitz’s three sons, who changed their name to Ofer – Sammy and Yuli. The third son, David, who like his brothers started his military service in the Navy, was not interested in money-making and became a police Major General.
Due to Israel’s delicate position as subjected to the Arab boycott, the Ofers decided to move their headquarters abroad. They chose London. Shipping, and especially the oil tanker business, has many international layers. A vessel can be owned by a certain company registered in one country but controlled by a second one’s interest, operated by yet a third one under a fourth one’s flag and manned by crews from all over the world. Assigning a national identity to a ship is pointless – unless someone insists on making a point.
Eyal Ofer, old Hershkovitz’ grandson, is usually described as Israel’s richest man, a multi-Billionaire. When the Ofer brothers split their empire, he became the leading member of the dynasty’s London operations. His Zodiac Maritime Office runs at least 144 tankers, container and other cargo ships. Mercer Street, hit on July 29 while en route from Tanzania to Oman, is one of them.
It is indicative of the reality of global merchant mariners that the two fatalities on this drone attack were a British and a Romanian. Zodiac operates its fleet under either British, Panamian or Liberian flags. Its manning agents are based in Romania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia and Turkey. One can hardly say that the Liberian-flagged, multi-national crewed ship owned by a Japanese company and operated by a British one was even remotely “Israeli”.
In the Iranian-Israeli confrontation, however, this fact is less important than perception. Once someone or something has been tagged as “Israeli”, even if six degrees from reality, it becomes a factor in a much larger game of targets and proxies. It also enables the party on the defensive, being constantly and painfully hit, to save some face and claim – or whisper, as it is all undeclared – that it may be down but not out.
Israel’s “Campaign Between Wars” against Iran, focusing on Hezbollah’s efforts to acquire precision-guided missiles through Syria, whether by sea, air or ground transportation and blocking efforts by the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force and its collaborators to attack objectives in the Golan Heights – as distinct from the Nuclear front – was based on the concept of edging to the threshold of full-scale conflict but stopping at the brink. An important component of this delicate drive with feet both on gas and brake was to keep silent. But several Israeli officials could not resist the temptation to brag about the IDF and Intelligence Community’s ability to penetrate and strike with impunity. The Iranian have responded by broadening the front.
The problem is two-fold, philosophically and operationally. Israel has officially set out to protect not only all Israelis, but also Jews throughout the world, when they are attacked because of this religious and ethnic identity. If an American Jew or a Japanese-British-Liberian ship with some tenuous connection to Israel is deemed a legitimate target, regardless of whether it is in retaliation for an earlier action and on order to deter future ones, a reassessment is in order.
After 1967, the Palestinian organisations started attacking Israeli envoys, delegations, airplanes and ships in Europe, Asia, Africa and Both North and Latin America. The Iran-Hezbollah nexus followed suit. Israel had to invest enormous assets in money and manpower to defend from these attacks. It also went on the offensive, using the IDF and Mossad for a series of assassinations.
It is impractical, and indeed impossible, to protect all 144-odd Zodiac Maritime operated ships, and countless others with some Israeli dimension, from overhead attack. Armed security guards can be and are stationed on board many vessels plying dangerous seas or choke points infested by pirates and patrolled by international task forces ready to rescue the attacked. But ability of both Iran and the Houties in Yemen to launch drones on surveillance and strike missions against slow moving, large (close to 200 on 30 meter) identifiable targets, either intended to sink them or just to signal and spare the crew, brings this exchange of Naval blows to another level.
Israeli decision makers would now have to consider their options. One is to divert precious resources from other lines of effort to Iranian actions in the southern Arabian peninsula. Israel has obviously not been negligent in keeping an eye on the Red Sea and beyond, but the lack of early warning in the Mercer Street and other incidents means that more should be done. If Houti leaders are implicated in the bloody offering given to the tanker, they will probably put their own lives at risk – if Israel dares open, or broaden, a Yemenite front.
The other route is to opt for s de-facto maritime ceasefire. Israel would never totally give up its freedom of action, but will save its strikes for the most crucial threats riding the waves towards the Mediterranean.
It will probably be a mix of both, rather than an either-or proposition. And following the end of Binyamin Netanyahu’s term of office, with his confidant and politically user-friendly Yossi Cohen as Mossad chief, senior officials in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv may triumph over the temptation to take credit for what was meant to remain clandestine.
In game theory, if not in practical political terms, there is yet another option, reminiscent of President Kennedy’s decision during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis – to ignore Chairman Khrushchev’s one of two messages, the belligerent one, and respond only to the negotiable signal in the second.
Israel can decide to ignore the Mercer Street murder altogether and leave it to the British, the Liberians, the Japanese. It can assume that the Iranians were looking for a target which domestically would be portrayed as having to do with Israel, but would not force Israel to respond, because in substance rather than in appearance the vessel was anything but Israeli.