The flotilla affair should surely be studied by journalism students for years to come. A ship with 60 journalists aboard (according to Reporters without Borders), and a huge amount of camera and communications equipment gets hijacked by a hostile power that jams all communications signals, confiscates all equipment, cuffs the journalists, and keeps them under nasty conditions for the hours and days that follow. It spreads its own version of what happened, based on doctored video and audio footage, then adds additional footage from the equipment stolen from the journalists. The journalists and other eye witnesses are not permitted to speak until leaving the country, and apparently the journalists are held longer than the activists.
Afterwards, the IDF even produce a clearly fabricated version of the initial dialogue with the Mavi Marmara (this is even different from the first version released by the IDF to Israeli Channel 10 news). See later confirmation of this here.
It appears that, as in earlier events, like the Gaza War, disinformation was used, then retracted. This tactic is effective in order to confuse critics in the early hours or days when the story is still “hot.”
Despite everything, almost all Israelis and most journals around the world accept the Israeli version that the first actions of the activists were violent, based on a small amount of film material shot by the Israelis.
Indeed, the segment of film released by the IDF appears to be uncontrovertible. However we are denied context. It does not establish whether or not the army began to use live ammunition from the beginning of the assault (as the activists say), or whether, for instance, the activists felt justified in putting up a struggle since they believed they were going to die anyway.
The accounts of the raid by journalists and eye witnesses appear to differ from that of the IDF, and the ones I have heard seem to have more in common with each other than the Israeli version. I wonder how, if an investigation of the affair is conducted, this will be handled?