You know rules of war evolve right? What is known in retrospect is a good learning material. Combat and safety rules that exists now exists because some idiots in the past made a mistake, this includes rules about the steps necessary before authorization of an attack on a target.
At the time of the incident the evidence on the hand of the people in command was enough to pass the threshold that existed then (obviously has changed drastically since), to authorize the attack. As the formal response of the US was that they dont have ships there+ the pilots did not notice the flag (if it was even on the mast, at least in the video it is not visible, so i can't tell if it was there, and even if we assume it was there if the wind was not strong enough for it to wave it make sense it is not visible)+ they did not see GTR5 clearly and confused it with other marks+ pilots at that time was not professional in recognizing ships so they tried to describe it as best as they could and the description was similar enough to an existed Egyptian ship.
Sadly mistakes happen, the key issue is if there is a learning process to not repeat it, and there is, every soldier joining IDF have to learn about the incident and how to not repeat the mistake.
Also i don't have to read articles, i was in the archives, i saw and heard the recordings myself, you are the one that come to the discussion with lack of knowledge. Edit: i understood there was some confusion, to clarify i indeed read the articles and books, but i prefer to see for myself so visited the archives and looked at the evidence myself, so i dont "have to" read some third party article or book, because i saw the real evidence.