Israel Attacks USS Liberty (1967)

[BrickCop]

Anyone else see this on the History channel? I had never heard/knew about it.

During their war with Egypt/Syria/Jordan Israel repeatedly attacked in international waters, a clearly marked US ship flying an American flag! The US ship was in the area to monitor communications investigating if Soviet pilots were flying Eqyptian(?) attack jets.

Both countries covered it up. Israel called it a tragic case of mistaken identity. The problem is the surviving crewmen all say the flag was raised and that the attacking Israelis were at times only feet from the ship. Not only that before the attacks their jets did repeated flyovers of the US ship so close the pilots actually waved to the crewman!

There was speculation that they did not want anybody (including the US) to know they were going into Golan Heights despite a cease fire being called.

I know this is "ancient history" but it really ****ed me off. We should have "accidentally" retaliated.

This thread probably won't generate much traffic but I had to vent after watching it.

Anyone else see this? What do you think we should have done?

[ 06-19-2003, 04:34 PM: Message edited by: BRICKCOP ]

[n567]

Several days prior, the United States had said it had no warships within hundreds of miles of the area that U.S.S Liberty was. It could have been a case of mistaken identity, but apparently the official investigation of the vent was stifled; so the real reason is certainly open to interpritation.

[BrickCop]

I will concede anything is possible. Having said that.....

All the surviving crewman who were interviewed emphatically state the ship was flying a US flag. They also said they repeatedly tried to communicte via code (Signals?) that they were Americans. I'll believe them over Israel anytime.

The ship practically had no offensive weaponry on it. At several points the attacking gunboats were very close to the ship; it was not way off in the distance.

Israel should have tried to ascertain it's identity before they attacked considering it had all the flags/markings of an ally. Instead they seemingly chose to ignore it to advance into Syria undetected.

They didn't attack an unmanned US listening post they machine gunned and torpedoed United States sailors on their ship in international waters.

LBJ was too much of a pu$$y to do anything about it IMO.

Again I realize it was a long time ago. It's the principle of the thing.

[Niteshift]

There was no way it was mistaken identity.

The Liberty was flying a large US flag.

The Liberty didn't look anything similar to the Egyptian ship the Israelis "mistook" it for.

The Egyptian ship that Israel thought it had was in dry dock and had been there for months.

Israeli torpedo boats and helicopters strafed life rafts being put into the water. That's not proper even if it was the Egyptian ship.

The Liberty was in international waters.

Bottom line: Israel did not make a MISTAKE. They simply did it because they feared we'd overhear their plans of pre-emptive strikes etc.

[Cockney Corner]

A quick history lesson for those that don't know. Britain had responsibility for what was then the Palestine Mandate following the Second World War. We did our best to sort out that troubled situation. British servicemen, many of whom had liberated the death camps in Western Europe, then suffered suffered a campaign of terror, The bombing of the King David Hotel. The murder of two British NCO's, their bodies being left surrounded by mines. The shooting down of unarmed British aircraft. Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks invisible. Except to God alone.

[p01ic3m4n]

didn't we just blow up a japanese fishing boat?

i think it's far easier to mistake identity when you are at war. if it was easy to distinguish friend or foe, why do we still have friendly fire?

we've blown up our own clearly marked people!

[Niteshift]

Even IF that were true, that it was a mistake (which the evidence CLEARLY shows to be false)..........

How do you justify machine gunning life boats? That's a CLEAR violation of the rules of conduct.

[Watchman]

Just remember that you all are disputing "facts" put out by the government.

The Liberty was a spy ship. They obviously witnessed something that they werent suppose to know about. The fact that the crewman in the life boat were machine gunned just proves that whatever they were on to was meant not to be repeated, it sounds more like a desperate attempt to stifle the information more than anything. If the ship had been sunk and all of the crewman killed, Israel could have claimed mistaken identity and paid the US a lump sum for the mishap and then forgot about it. The info that they were trying to protect would have remained safe. The public outcry would have died down and after a few years it would have simply been known as a tragic mistake. In this case, it wasnt meant to be.

Stranger things have happened when dealing with the "intellegence" community.

"Mistake"?... Not hardly.

[BrickCop]

Watchman,

That's the problem, the government hasn't put out much of anything about this facts or otherwise.

Again I found the surviving US crewman/witnesses more credible than the Israeli's weak explanation. There are some informative sites put out by the survivors.

[CinaC]

This should be interesting when Zalman sees it! I think I've brought up the Liberty a few times in discussions with him, and he's usually quite good about destroying my arguements about why it was deliberate.

[n567]

I recall he posted a link to a rather comprehensive website that refuted the hypothesis that the attack was intentional, rather interesting site indeed.

[BrickCop]

One of the surviving crewmembers saw this thread and is in the process of registering.

He asked me to post the e-mail message he sent me but I do not know how to post it here.

www.ussliberty.com

[Chaplain Wolf]

I cant say anything about the liberty but I do have a few comments for Cockneys comments about the comment "then suffered suffered a campaign of terror"

Cockney
get your facts straight

Most British officers were on the take from the Arab countries they where using all sorts of British government military supplies to fight and bomb Israeli's Like the bombing of the Jerusalem Post building.

I will say this. The Palmach and the Haganah where by no means innocent but you cannot dare to say that the British then suffered suffered a campaign of terror, this is wrong and not factual.

I would suggest, if you are interested, to read a book called oh Jerusalem by Dominique Lapierre, Larry Collins.
this book will give you a totally non-biased look at what really happened back then and the atrocities committed by ALL parties involved
Oh jerusalem


"Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks invisible. Except to God alone."

The only response I have to say to this (without Insulting you) is read the book and get your facts straight.
Its ok for the US and the British to respond to terror attacks but not Israel? Come on that is hipocrisy.

BTW the 2 British NCO's where working for the transjordanian Governement trying to kill israeli's and where caught. Many British where also working as hired mercenaries for the arab armies.

Once again I will say GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT.

You have no idea what terror is and the idea that you can compare anything that happened to those few corrupt british. to what people went through in the Nazi Death Camps and what All victims of terror go through today is not only wrong but downright insulting

I am sorry If I come off so strong,
My granparents were holocaust survivors and I lived through terrorist attacks when i studied in jerusalem.
so it is a slight sore point.

as far as the liberty is concerned I am uneducated about it so I cannot Argue.

[ 06-20-2003, 03:18 PM: Message edited by: Chaplain Wolf ]

[John Harrigan]

RE: USS Liberty


Greetings from Oklahoma

It is difficult to say what we as a nation should have done in response to the attack on the USS Liberty, but it is becoming increasingly clear to me what action should be taken now.

IMHO, I believe that we should cut off all aid to Israel. I am not anti-semitic, I merely believe that there are Jewish as well as Palestinian extremists who do not want peace. I am tired of seeing my tax money wasted on that region. When you take into consideration that the Israelis do not treat the Palestinians any better than the Nazis treated the Jews, I think it is time for the US to cease all support of Israel and let the chips fall where they may.

Small Town Cop


Israel Attacks USS Liberty (1967)


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Author Topic: Israel Attacks USS Liberty (1967)
BRICKCOP
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Member # 1130

posted 06-19-2003 04:30 PM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anyone else see this on the History channel? I had never heard/knew about it.

During their war with Egypt/Syria/Jordan Israel repeatedly attacked in international waters, a clearly marked US ship flying an American flag! The US ship was in the area to monitor communications investigating if Soviet pilots were flying Eqyptian(?) attack jets.

Both countries covered it up. Israel called it a tragic case of mistaken identity. The problem is the surviving crewmen all say the flag was raised and that the attacking Israelis were at times only feet from the ship. Not only that before the attacks their jets did repeated flyovers of the US ship so close the pilots actually waved to the crewman!

There was speculation that they did not want anybody (including the US) to know they were going into Golan Heights despite a cease fire being called.

I know this is "ancient history" but it really ****ed me off. We should have "accidentally" retaliated.

This thread probably won't generate much traffic but I had to vent after watching it.

Anyone else see this? What do you think we should have done?

[ 06-19-2003, 04:34 PM: Message edited by: BRICKCOP ]

--------------------
"Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without resul: t".

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[Chaplain Wolf]

John Harrigan

quote:

---

When you take into consideration that the Israelis do not treat the Palestinians any better than the Nazis treated the Jews,

---

Have you ever spoken to an israeli Arab?
or to a palestinian who lived under israeli "occupation" when there was no "intifada"
Every Arab family gets the same welfare benifits, health care etc,the israeli's get. All Arab Israeli's have a right to vote, they have jobs they get the same treatment(if not better) than the israeli's get.
what other country in the world would allow the enemy to be a member of parliment?

There are 2 classifications of Arabs living in israel The "israeli arab" who has full citizenship and has the same rights as any other israeli and ther are the "Palestinian Arabs"
who live outside the green line and are under PLO
Rule"

The ones under PLO rule are the ones that suffer because the PLO does not give them anything!
Yasser Arafat is worth 40 Billion US dollars. yet his People are starving.

do you people really believe this propaganda cr@p?

once again do not compare nazi germany to the palestinians. The jews never blew up the germans buses or raped the germans women
or cut open pregnant german women and replaced the fetus' with kittens (hebron Massacre of 1929)
the palestinians did all of these things

this comparison is insulting

I also think that the US should drop support of the Israeli's This way they would not have to bow to the pressure of the US and they can wipe out all of the PLO's terrorist activity.

[ 06-20-2003, 03:45 PM: Message edited by: Chaplain Wolf ]