The Turkel Committee hearings on the Gaza flotilla reveal the mess Israel's national security apparatus is in. The flotilla crisis was created by the lack of a sufficient distinction between those responsible for "national security" and those responsible for "national defense."

National security is aimed at achieving a country's diplomatic interests, via both soft power (represented by education, economics, social justice and internal security, as well as a country's standing in the international community ) and hard power, or military might. The person responsible for striking the balance between a nation's hard and soft power is the prime minister, who can therefore be seen as holding the position of "national security minister."

The individual charged with maintaining military strength is the defense minister, who in Israel is mistakenly termed "sar bitahon," or "security minister." This misnomer stems perhaps from David Ben-Gurion, who served as both national security (read "prime" ) and defense minister, as well as the fact that in the 20th century, national security was primarily linked to military prowess.

The national security minister must make every effort to pursue national interests through soft power before wielding his country's big stick. Levi Eshkol is a good example of this, setting an example of inspired leadership over Israel Defense Forces generals on the eve of the 1967 Six-Day War.

The National Security Council was created to subordinate the staff work done by various government ministries to that of a single overarching organization. The absence of such integrated administration has sometimes led to the militarization of policy, or alternatively to the politicization of the military.

The establishment of the National Security Council should have led to a clear differentiation between the management of overall national security policy - led by the prime minister and his staff - and the tasks of the various government ministries, including the foreign affairs and defense ministries.

Thus with regard to the Turkish-sponsored flotilla, for instance, the national security minister (read: the prime minister ) should have characterized it at the outset as an existential threat to Israel's legitimacy. As a corollary, he should have defined preventing the ships from setting sail as a vital national interest and enlisted the support of government ministries and the NSC in determining a course of action and tapping various government bodies to implement it.

At the same time, it would have been appropriate to task the Defense Ministry with forcibly stopping the flotilla, while also setting limits on its actions. The objectives of the Foreign Ministry and the Information and Diaspora Ministry should have been "softening" the international outcry in the event that force was used.

Overall responsibility for the flotilla fiasco, of course, lies with the prime minister. But every individual in a position of power in the defense establishment also bears personal responsibility for the implementation.

The prime minister's responsibility was to identify the threat, define Israel's goal, shape the government's response, appoint responsible people to bolster Israel's soft power, prepare the groundwork for a military response backed by public diplomacy, and maintain ongoing supervision over the implementation, in light of the objectives he himself had set.

The minister in charge of Israel's diplomacy (that is, the foreign minister ) was responsible for drafting a plan to realize Israel's objectives by employing the state's soft power.

The defense minister was responsible for defining the IDF's mission and determining whether its plan complied with the restrictions set by the prime minister. The IDF chief of staff and those directly under him bear responsibility for planning the military mission in light of its defined objectives and restrictions, including training troops and maintaining control over them.

Israel's campaign against its delegitimization requires the country to optimize use of its soft power as an alternative to the difficulties inherent in using force. That is how a Libyan flotilla was successfully prevented from docking in Gaza last month. To this end, it is essential to expand the national defense system, isolate its weak links and strengthen those related to wielding soft power.

Changing the ministry's name in Hebrew to the Defense Ministry, as is common the world over, could be a first sign of that change.

The writer is a lecturer at Ashkelon Academic College.