A shipload of medicine riled up the Israeli government enough. The discovery that the activists on board the Estelle included carrier pigeons, which were prepared to deliver photographic evidence of Israeli attacks on the passengers, has them downright livid.

“Everyone knows these flotillas are meant as a provocation only,” noted one Israeli military commander. When Israel attacks a ship containing medicine for the Gaza Strip, it routinely seizes all cameras and jams all communications to prevent any unapproved footage of the violence after the Mavi Marmara incident.

They can seize all the cameras, they can block all the transmissions off the ship, but can they catch all the pigeons with memory cards strapped to their legs from finding their way to the global media and delivering images?

They’ll surely try, as for the Israeli government the “information war” related to its attacks on aid ships is the centerpiece of the whole operation. It is not clear from the reports, however, whether all the pigeons were captured by the military or if some of them may have gotten away with images of taser use on board, as was hinted at by some of the activists on the ship.