USS Liberty bombing (June 8, 1967) by Israel:
Michael Hoffman writes: “The Israeli account of their deliberate bombing and strafing of the US Navy ship Liberty in 1967, killing 34 American sailors and wounding 173, consists of outrageous lies and disinformation. According to the testimony of Admiral Thomas Moorer, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “the Israeli air attack lasted approximately 25 minutes, during which time unmarked Israeli aircraft dropped napalm canisters on USS Liberty’s bridge, and fired 30mm cannons and rockets into our ship, causing 821 holes, more than 100 of which were rocket-size; survivors estimate 30 or more sorties were flown over the ship by a minimum of 12 attacking Israeli planes which were jamming all five American emergency radio channels.”
Unknown to Israel, a U.S. Navy EC-121 reconnaissance plane high above the attack made audio recordings, some recently declassified, of Israeli pilots identifying the Liberty as an American ship to Israeli ground control. The pilots were ordered to attack the vessel and sink it. The Chicago Tribune (Oct. 2 2007) reported:
“An Israeli military court of inquiry later acknowledged that their naval headquarters knew at least three hours before the attack that the odd-looking ship 13 miles off the Sinai Peninsula, sprouting more than 40 antennas capable of receiving every kind of radio transmission, was ‘an electromagnetic audio-surveillance ship of the U.S. Navy,’ a floating electronic vacuum cleaner.”
There was no Congressional inquiry. The U.S. Navy’s inquiry was rushed through in a week. Surviving crew members were ordered never to mention the attack to anyone—not even family—or be ‘court-martialed, imprisoned or worse.’
To this day Israel claims their coordinated, two-hour attack on a sunny day with unlimited visibility, in calm seas was an accident. Given its size, coloring, American flag, four-foot-tall ship’s letters, plus forty antennas, including huge round ones, the Liberty has been called the most distinctive vessel in the Mediterranean. Israel claims they mistook it for a small 1920’s era Egyptian horse freighter, the El Quseir. That’s like mistaking the state ferry Columbia for a Bering Sea crabber.
Adm. Moorer: “…the torpedo boat attack involved not only the firing of torpedoes, but the machine-gunning of Liberty’s firefighters and stretcher-bearers as they struggled to save their ship and crew; the Israeli torpedo boats later returned to machine-gun at close range three of the Liberty’s life rafts that had been lowered into the water by survivors to rescue the most seriously wounded…there is compelling evidence that Israel’s attack was a deliberate attempt to destroy an American ship and kill her entire crew…That in attacking USS Liberty, Israel committed acts of murder against American servicemen and an act of war against the United States.”
Scholars who have examined the incident say Israel intended to blame the attack on Egypt in order to draw the US into a war.
