Let me state a few points:
1) The editing was a mistake, no doubt about it, it should not have been editted that way.
2) The editing was done to cut things to the chase. The IDF did not wish to present the entire 5+ minutes of audio including mostly blank audio, repeated Israeli Navy statements and the female statement, for the sake of publishing the 10 seconds of anti-Semitic/anti-Western remarks.
3) There is no room to criticize the IDF for the editing. There was nothing relevant in the unedited part, just a few more warnings by the IDF and the full statement by the woman. Hence nothing that could really matter.
4) The IDF DID release the unedited part after a few hours, so again there's no room for criticism.
Conclusively, the IDF did commit a PR mistake when it has published the audio recording that was edited to include only the anti-Semitic and anti-Western remarks and a short version of the female comment, but when it seemed like people question the validity of the comments themselves due to the suspicion of editing, it has released the unedited version.
The only thing I disagree with here is that there is no room for criticism here.
Perhaps I should explain my thoughts on this.
Even though it's bull****, countries like the US and Israel receive a ****load of unjustified criticism. It seems like the rest of the world is chomping at the bit to criticize every action taken by these two countries.
As bad as it is for the US (and compared to most other countries, it's pretty bad), it's about 20 times worse for Israel (Israel gets more unjustified criticism than any other country, IMO).
This means that their margin of error in PR decisions is close to 0. Right or wrong, that's the reality. Pointing out the unfairness of that isn't going to change anything. And it isn't going to stop the unjustified criticisms.
So the only tack that these countries can take is to be
extremely careful when they make PR decisions. Some bad PR cannot be avoided. There is little that can be done about that and criticizing that would be pointless.
But in a case such as this one, where a very stupid and avoidable PR decision was made, it is absolutely justified to criticize that decision.
Whoever made that decision in the first place should not be in a position to make decisions like this in the future.
Releasing the unedited audio was
absolutely the right response. And Israel deserves credit for doing so immediately after the initial mistake was made. (Any delay would have turned a mistake into a potential PR disaster, IMO)
Sure it's unfair that this is the situation. I think anyone who hasn't already decided that everything Israel does is wrong would agree that it's totally unfair that they are held to a higher standard than pretty much every other country in the world.
But as I said, pointing out that it is unfair won't change it. It sucks, but it makes it so that any stupid and avoidable PR decision such as this one gets magnified.
And I think that in this case, the fact that I believe that any truly rational and objective observer would find the full audio to be an even
more compelling argument in favor of the legitimacy and justifications for the Israelis boarding the flotilla magnifies the error of this PR decision even more.
If this was the US, I'd be
furious. Since it's Israel, I'm just amazed at the fact that somebody who was at a level high enough to make this decision thought this was a good idea.