Remembering the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty

On June 8 1967, during the Six Day War, also known as the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, an American surveillance ship, the U.S.S. Liberty, was attacked and nearly sunk by Israeli forces. This attack was discovered later to have been a black flag operation carried out by the White House in order to use as a pretext for the United States to enter the war on the behalf of Israel. This would have allowed the United States to attack Egypt, prevent Israel from using a nuclear weapon, and take control of the Suez Canal, a vital transit point for oil from the Persian Gulf region essential for the US economy. While the reasons for the actual attack of the ship may never be verified, there is no doubt that the ship was attacked by Israeli forces.

The Six Day War or the 1967 Arab-Israeli War was a proxy battle by agents of the larger Cold War battle between the Unites States and the Soviet Union. Understanding the geo-political situation of the time, it is very likely that the United States may have been ready to sacrifice one of its own warships and the sailors onboard that vessel, in order to justify its entry into the conflict. Other analysts like Noam Chomsky,believe that the Israeli attack on the U.S. spy ship Liberty was motivated by concern that the U.S. might detect the planned attack on Syria by Israeli forces.

Yet another theory, James Bamford, a former ABC News producer, in his 2001 book Body of Secrets,proposes the motive for a deliberate attack was to prevent the discovery of a massacre by the IDF of Egyptian prisoners of war that was supposedly taking place at the same time in the nearby town of El-Arish.In 1995, mass graves of Egyptian soldiers were discovered outside of El-Arish, and IDF veterans have admitted that unarmed civilians and prisoners of war were murdered in the 1967 War.

Analyzing the geo-political situation at the time of the attack, it appears that the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty was most likely a black flag operation carried out between the leaders of the Johnson administration and the Israeli government. This thesis is supported by the author of the book Assault on the Liberty, available on Amazon.com, who was an officer on the bridge when the attack started and subsequently spent many years researching and documenting the account of the attack and the cover-up that followed.

The combined air and sea attack by Israeli forces resulted in 34 crewmembers being killed, 170 crewmembers wounded, and leaving the ship severely damaged. Many of the deaths from the attack were from Israeli aircraft attacking

While all the sailors and men serving on the ship will forever remember that day, on the 43rd anniversary of the Israeli attack, it was no surprise that the media in America did not commemorate the anniversary.