not a matter of colorblindness. Most ground attack strikes are conducted at about 5000 feet. At that altitude, you are NOT going to be making out a flag designed to be seen from ground level, especially in a strike envelope attitude. Used to do ground and artillery strikes as a profession you know. Saying goes, 'everything looks hostile from 5 angels' is a warning to ground pounders not to get overly enthusiastic about calling in danger close air taskings. The USAF is particularly notorious for our inability to distinguish friendly from non.
But this isnt about that. i 100% believe that the initial attack was indeed a case of mistaken identity. The FAULT however lies in that once the error was made known, Israeli communications were too incompetent, and the chain of action to loose, to do anything about it. In the US military, every sortie 'action' is a separate engagementt. An A-10 or whatever has to ask for reauthorization for each weapons release or pass as directed. Apparently the Israelis operate by a 'dog pile' methodology wherein once an attack is begun, its impossible to call the motherfuckers off because they have free pass to deploy munitions whenever and however they see fit. So one jet performs a sortie, realizes he may have fucked up, but has not command ability to call off other units from attacking that same target. its fucking retarded and pretty much what i expect from the IDF given how cavalier their military tends to be run. They give their guys super wide berth to fuck shit up and dont tend to prosecute for them so its an institutional bias against restraint.
This is an aerial view of the NN shipyard here in virginia. this is about 2,000 feet up. That Carrier in the background? one of the largest ships in the USN? can you see its flag? Now imagine your on a terminal attack going 350kts. trying to identify a ship half as big. Your identify/engage window in this shot is about 2 seconds. and you've been told by GCI no allied ships are in the area.