On Monday morning May 31, 2010, the producers at Al Jazeera’s Jerusalem bureau did not stop calling me.

They wanted me to go on the air and provide Israel’s perspective on what was happening on the Mavi Marmara ship that was bound for Gaza.

I absolutely refused because I had no way of knowing what had happened on the ship, nor did any of my sources. While Israelis have a reputation for telling you to go straight when you ask for directions, whether they know the correct route or not, I have always educated my children that sometimes the smartest thing to say is “I don’t know.”

The reason no one knew what was happening was that the IDF did not tell anyone and did not seem to care that the other side was controlling the narrative. The soldiers were portrayed as the aggressors and the people on the ship as peace activists, even after they attacked and wounded the soldiers with metal poles and chairs until they lost consciousness.

The escalation ended with nine Turkish activists killed, and Israel was forced to pay more than $20 million to their families and apologize to Turkey in 2016.

Climate activist Greta Thunberg was detained by the IDF on June 9, 2025. (credit: ISRAEL FOREIGN MINISTRY)
Climate activist Greta Thunberg was detained by the IDF on June 9, 2025. (credit: ISRAEL FOREIGN MINISTRY)
Such mistakes could have easily been repeated with this week’s arrival of the Madleen boat carrying 12 activists, including high-profile Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. An Al Jazeera journalist was on board, ready to report the worst.

Had the IDF stormed the boat aggressively and harmed anyone on board while being livestreamed on the activists’ phones, the incident could have done great damage to Israel’s deteriorating international reputation. Thunberg, 22, has become a heroine to young progressives around the world, making her handling especially sensitive.

But something astonishing happened.

The IDF willingly lost a fight.

How Israel's Foreign Ministry handled the Madleen Gaza flotilla incident

THE ARMY relinquished control over how the Madleen would be handled and framed and gave it over to the Foreign Ministry, which isn’t used to winning turf wars.

Check the IDF’s X/Twitter account and WhatsApp channel in any language. You won’t find a single mention of the Madleen or anyone who was on it. The Foreign Ministry sent representatives to the IDF war room, who were in constant contact with the naval soldiers who intercepted the vessel.

The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit sent photographers who took pictures that quickly became the international narrative of what had happened. The photo of a female soldier giving a sandwich to Thunberg smiling in a frog hat went viral, making Israel look magnanimous.

The naval soldier who told the participants that their aid could be delivered through established humanitarian channels as she was being filmed for social media was also a female, to make the incident seem less threatening.

Under the leadership of Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and his team, the Madleen started being called “the selfie yacht” to paint its passengers as attention-seeking, self-centered, publicity obsessed, and more interested in a media provocation than helping anyone in Gaza.

The food they brought was mocked, as it constituted not even a single truckload, compared to the 1,200 aid trucks with 11 million meals that Israel facilitated over the past two weeks. Had the Madleen arrived three weeks ago, a better case against Israel could have been made.

Messages released by ministry officials emphasized that the Madleen “celebrities” were safe, unharmed, and in good health. The officials were also smart in what they chose not to say.

“There were thoughts to call it the Hamas Flotilla, but we knew we couldn’t persuade the world that Greta is a Hamas supporter,” a source involved behind the scenes said. “Greta doesn’t look like a terrorist. She looks confused. The world wouldn’t have bought it.”

EVEN PIERS Morgan, who made an ass of himself by shouting at British barrister and pro-Israel international law expert Natasha Hausdorff last week, parroted Israel’s line by calling Thunberg an “attention-seeking narcissist” who cared only about her ego and not any Palestinians.

The Foreign Ministry’s new war room that monitors international coverage quickly relayed the message that American media was focused on rioting in Los Angeles so efforts could be concentrated elsewhere. The war room worked all night two nights in a row, testing different messaging to see what worked and choosing not to implement part of the strategy that proved unnecessary.

It’s better to be over-prepared than under-prepared, a source involved behind the scenes said.

Sources in the IDF revealed that the Navy spokespeople prepared for Greta’s arrival for weeks. They studied what went wrong with the Marmara, and emphasized to naval commanders that the Madleen’s goal was attention, not breaching the blockade.

The soldiers who boarded the vessel were trained on how to speak to the passengers. As an extra precaution, only female soldiers spoke to female passengers and male soldiers to men. A sizable portion of the Spokesman’s Unit was up all night and ready in case something went wrong.

Israeli spokespeople briefly united, cooperating and speaking with almost only one voice to the world in a utopian moment that probably won’t be repeated any time soon. Police did not handcuff Thunberg or subject her to an interrogation to impress National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

The “almost” outsider voice – of course – refers to Defense Minister Israel Katz, who spoke with the same bluster that has doomed Israel in past international incidents. He spoke to cameras over and over again about subjecting the activists to watch the nightmare video of Hamas attacking Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023.

No one could force them to watch Israelis get murdered as punishment, and even if they saw the video, the Israel haters might have actually enjoyed it. Comedian Elon Gold has a classic joke that antisemites get excited when they go to a Holocaust museum. Attempting to reeducate and preach to the unconvertable was pointless, except for Katz’s own political gain.

Katz calling Thunberg an antisemite also did not help and was re-greta-ble. There have been past incidents that may prove that right, but name-calling is counter-productive.

It is possible the ship could have been stopped from sailing out of Sicily if Israel had better relations with Italian officials. And Egypt being part of the blockade on Gaza wasn’t mentioned anywhere.

And there was plenty of biased and dishonest reporting, as usual.

WHEN CNN spoke to Thunberg, she was not questioned about how she would navigate Gaza, an active war zone in which the Israeli army is fighting a terrorist organization that has embedded itself within the civilian infrastructure.

The Irish Times was quick to increase the scale of the Madleen, referring to it as a “charity boat,” as if a handful of activists with a token supply of aid were spearheading a major humanitarian operation.

In an X post that went viral, the media watchdog HonestReporting revealed that the BBC referred to Oct. 7 as a “massacre” with scare quotes calling it into doubt.

This article was written on Tuesday, when Thunberg was still on her way home to Sweden. It is still possible that she could say something that could make Israel look bad. Some of her boatmates were set to go to court in Israel, and that could be mishandled.

But it looks like Israel, for the most part, handled the incident well; and especially in tough times like these, any PR victory must be celebrated, including getting the better of Thunberg.

The writer is the executive director of the pro-Israel media watchdog HonestReporting. He served as chief political correspondent and analyst of The Jerusalem Post for 24 years.