By Timothy Alexander Guzman - Global Research, April 23, 2021
June 8th, 1967 is a date in history that the world should recognize because it was the day that Israel attacked the USS Liberty, a US Navy spy ship during the Six-Day War. So why would a supposedly staunch US ally do such a thing against one of its most loyal servants? Was it an accident or was it a failed false-flag operation?
In this time of uncertainty, the Israelis have been planning numerous ways to stop Iran’s nuclear program but the question is how would they accomplish such a task? Israeli officials including its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who is perhaps, the most vocal of the crowd would do almost anything at this point to prevent Washington from re-entering the Joint Comprehension Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement with Iran since the Trump administration abruptly pulled out from the deal in 2017.
Tel-Aviv is getting anxious to derail Iran’s nuclear program, so would they orchestrate another false-flag operation to commit the US into a shooting war with Iran since the bonds of friendship between both countries are unbreakable? How long before Israel pushes the US into another war in the Middle East? I mean why not? They got their wish when the US invaded and occupied Iraq in 2003 since Israel and its hard-line supporters pushed Washington to declare war by the “Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction”propaganda from the Bush neocons and powerful lobbyists such as American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and of course, the Israelis themselves led by Netanyahu. That one tragic day in 1967 is relevant to today’s dangerous situation developing in the Middle East between Israel and Iran.
The USS Liberty incident occurred during the Six-day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors including Egypt, Syria, Jordan. Lebanon and even Iraq who had a minor role in the war. It began when Israel had attacked the USS Liberty, a US Navy technical research ship (or a spy ship) with its fighter jets and motor torpedo boats that had killed 34 and injured 171 crew members including marines, naval officers, seamen, and a civilian employee from National Security Agency (NSA). The US Naval ship was in international waters in the north of the Sinai Peninsula at the time. There were multiple investigations from the US and Israeli governments who both claimed that it was a mistake while the crew members who were aboard the ship say it was deliberate. So was it a mistake as claimed by both government’s or was it deliberate?
During the Six-Day War, the US had maintained its ‘neutral country status. A week before the war began, the USS Liberty was ordered to the eastern Mediterranean sea for an intelligence collection mission near the north coast of Sinai, Egypt. During the mission, the Israel Air Force (IAF) had flown over the USS Liberty claiming that they were searching for Egyptian submarines that had been previously spotted near the coast. Around 2 pm, the IAF had sent two Mirage III fighter jets to oversee the ship which they had claimed had no “distinguishable markings” or any flag on the ship. The USS Liberty was then attacked. However, right before the attack, the Mirage fighter jets codenamed Kursa had verbal exchanges between a command post weapons systems officer, air controllers and a chief air controller who reportedly questioned whether there was the possibility of a US ship in the area and around 1:57 pm, the chief air controller, Lieutenant-Colonel Shmuel Kislev gave the green light to attack the USS Liberty as the fighter jets unleashed 30-mm cannons, rockets and napalm killing and injuring scores of US crew members.
The Israeli fighter jets had purposely jammed US communications frequencies before the attack meaning that they knew it was an American naval ship.
There were also three Israeli torpedo boats as they too had launched an attack on the ship with cannons, mounted machine guns and torpedoes. One of the torpedo’s that hit the Liberty killing 25 crew members as the lower decks became flooded. The Israeli torpedo boats had also damaged the life rafts as the crew had prepared to abandon the ship. At around 3:15, two Israeli helicopters appeared with armed IDF personnel leading to the conclusion by those who were on the ship that the Israelis were there to kill the remaining survivors, but miraculously, that did not happen. Meanwhile, the ship was still under attack as the crew members reinforced their lines of communications and called for help. When the USS Saratoga and the USS America received the message, they had ordered US fighters to help protect the ship, but in a bizarre move, the mission was aborted by direct orders from Washington. Israel already knew that the US fighter jets were on their way when they picked up the transmission and immediately called off the attack. Israel’s torpedo boats and helicopters quickly returned to their base of operations.
Israel then notified Washington that they had mistakenly attacked an American ship and once again its fighter jets were recalled for a second time. There is an interesting fact to ponder regarding President Lyndon B. Johnson and his Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara who halted the rescue mission. A high-ranking official Admiral L. R. Geis, the commander of the Sixth Fleet carrier force, told Lt. Commander David Lewis of the USS Liberty that he had challenged McNamara’s orders to recall the rescue mission, but then it was reported that LBJ got on the phone and said he didn’t care if the ship sank, and that he wasn’t going to embarrass an ally. The communications officer from the Liberty in charge of the transmission has given the same testimony.
It was not until 2007 that new revelations on the Israeli attack became readily available. Citing more than two dozen US Navy veterans who survived the onslaught, The Chicago Tribune’s ‘New Revelations in Attack on American Spy ship‘ reported about the anger directed at both Israel and the US government’s NSA “that it never intercepted the communications of the attacking Israeli pilots — communications, according to those who remember seeing them, that showed the Israelis knew they were attacking an American naval vessel.” The article also suggests that there was a cover-up by both the US government and Israel . . .
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