Groups working for change are met with many types of responses. Most attention has been given to reactions of overt repression or support for movements and campaigns. However, there exist a range of other pacifying responses, such as ignoring, placating, devaluing, disrupting and misinforming. These subtler forms of obstructions pose a different type of challenge and require different types of counter-strategies than violent repression. 

This article introduces a framework focusing on four different types of responses – 1. Validating, 2. Discrediting and attacking, 3. Manipulative and 4. Non-interfering. This model can be applied to analyse responses to all types of nonviolent campaigns from opponents and so-called third parties. The Freedom Flotilla to Gaza in 2011 serves as a case study to present the model and to analyse how the Israeli government and its supporters successfully disrupted and contained this flotilla with much more subtle means than the 2010 flotilla where nine activists were killed.