I ran across this story a couple weeks ago. In 1967 the Israeli navy and air attacked an American ship the Liberty. It took 2 hours and the crewman were waiving American flags trying to get them to stop. I have no knowledge of it except this story and others I have recently read.
What happened and why?
Bassicly both sides kinda look the other way when asked about this. It doens’t make sense Israel would attack an important ally for no reason.
It was either confusion in the middle of a war or a deliberate act. I fall in the camp of the first choice since there’s no good motivation for the second, IMO.
Some links describing the issue on some that support either side:
http://www.ussliberty.org/
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/ussliberty.html
Interesting report using declassified information from four years ago:
This question came up some years ago, and about that same time Michael Oren wrote an article for “New Republic” debunking a lot of what had been reported. Those threads seem to have disappeared, but I did find this article by the same writer.
I remember participating in a thread on this a long time ago. It keeps coming 'round again, and probably ought to be put in the FAQs.
The Liberty was a spy ship engaged in spying on Israel, so they said, during the 6 day war. the sailors on the Liberty were members of the Naval Security Group. The attack still could have been a mistake of some kind but it seems it was intentional, sending a message to the U.S. and anyone else perceived to be a threat against Israeli security.
So it does not seem likely to be an accident. But, would they make such a horrible attack to send a message. If the investigators were not told to find it an accident, but found it was deliberate, would that have changed American -Israeli relations.?
More to the point, the Israelis, if they did intentinally attack, knowing it was a US vessel, were likely trying to prevent the premature exposure of their attack plans on their real foes.
The attack did change the nature of bi-lateral relations, albeit only by a small degree. Had the attack been publicly declared as intentional, by either party, it would have most certainly changed relations, and not in a small, or happy, manner.
Knowing what I do of naval operations, and of the actual events preceding, during, and subsequent to the attack, come down very firmly on the side of deliberate attack, though it is plausible that it was a decision made below the level of the Israeli national command authority.
Here’s a rebuttal to the June 2007 article (editorial? letter to the editor) by Ward Boston. It’s by A. Jay Cristol, who has written a book on the Liberty incident. Apparently he and Boston are on opposite sides of the disputes and neither seems to have anything good to say about the other.
But even if it was deliberate, how does that make Israel responsible, rather than just the assholes who panicked and attacked a US ship to hide their crimes?
First of all, if Israel attacked the ship on purpose, why did it fail? Why did the jets attack with anti-infantry weapons instead of anti-ship missiles, sinking it with all hands at long distance while maintaining deniability? You can accuse the Israeli air force of many things, but not incompitence.
Second of all, what crime could have been so heinous that Israel felt forced to bomb an ally in order to hide? Killing Egyptian prisoners? Even if that did happen - and there’s no evidence to support it - there’s no reason to think that the U.S. would care all that much. Considering that the Vietnam War was raging at the time, and considering the truly horrible things U.S.-supported dictators were doing to people around the world, I doubt they’d even bother to write it down. Morality was not a prime motivator of American foreign policy at the time.
Face it: it was a friendly fire incident. It’s awful, but it happens. Considering the U.S. record with such things, I don’t think you have much cause to complain.
it wasn’t for no reason. The U.S. was spying on Israel while Israel was in the middle of a war with Egypt.
To hide what crimes?
To me the Liberty incident is very similar to the Pueblo incident, the only difference being that Israel is ostensibly our ally, though it is not clear that Israel felt that way at the time of the attack.
So? Nations spy on each others all the time. The CTs have to prove that Israel was hiding something so big that it was worth bombing an ally to keep it secret - but not big enough for the Israeli military to do the job properly.
While true, the Liberty was in position to intercept and possibly reveal time-sensative informatin that could totally ruin a planned offensive, possibly leading to a Very Bad Result for Israel. To some eyes, that’s more that sufficient reason.
And for that reason, I wouldn’t call the attack a failure - It was in fact quite successful at causing the Liberty to cease intelligence gathering activities. A mission kill is every bit as useful as a hard kill in situations like this - maybe even more useful.
Still further, do recall that there was a US carrier that had launched a relief flight towards the Liberty - Isreal knew the carrier was close (if not how close), and knew they had a limited window in which to complete their attack. After that window closed, they had to either be prepared to go toe-to-toe with a carrier strike, or knock off what they were doing, whatever the outcome.
The Liberty had been in a position to intercept communications concerning the massacre of some Egyptian prisoners by the Israelis. Or so I read long ago… don’t have time now to dig up a cite.
Pretty obviously a friendly-fire incident. Later politicized.