Israelis killing
Americans is okay In Washington
By Philip Giraldi
June 17, 2022:
Information Clearing House
-- "UNZ" --
Anyone who has
spent any time in Washington and who has
been reasonably engaged in watching the
fiasco playing out there might agree that
the most powerful foreign lobby is that of
Israel, backed up as it is by a vast
domestic network that exists to protect and
nourish the Jewish state. Indeed, it is the
domestic element of the lobby that gives it
strength, supported as it is by
extravagantly well-funded think tanks and a
media that is Jewish dominated when it comes
to developments in the Middle East. The
power of what I prefer to call the Jewish
lobby is also manifest down to state and
local levels, where efforts to peacefully
boycott Israel due to its war crimes and
crimes against humanity have been punished
and even criminalized in more than thirty
states. In several states, including
Virginia, special trade arrangements are
designed to benefit Israeli companies at the
expense of local residents and taxpayers.
Given all of that, it
should be no surprise that Israel
consistently gets a pass on its aberrant
behavior, even when it acts directly against
US interests or kills Americans. Recall, for
example, how when General David Petraeus
rashly observed in 2010 that Israeli
intransigence in advancing its own interests
complicated relations with Arab states and
could cost American lives in the Middle
East, he was quickly forced to recant. And
more recently an Israeli sniper murdered
Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu
Akleh without any consequences coming from
the Joe Biden White House or from the Tony
Blinken-led State Department. Biden has
declared himself a Zionist and Blinken is
Jewish.
But one of the most
horrific Israeli outrages directed against
Americans remains little known and hidden
from view by the media and the political
elite. Last week, on Wednesday June 8th
there was a
commemorative gathering at Arlington
National Cemetery in Virginia that was
unreported in the mainstream media. It was
the annual day of remembrance for the
dwindling group of survivors of the USS
Liberty, which was attacked by Israel
fifty-five years ago. The moving service
included the ringing of a ship’s bell for
each one of the thirty-four American
sailors, Marines and civilians that were
killed in the deliberate false flag attack
that sought to sink the intelligence
gathering ship and kill all its crew. The
surviving crewmembers as well as friends and
supporters come together annually, bound by
their commitment to keeping alive the story
of the Liberty in hopes that
someday the United States government will
have the courage to acknowledge what
actually happened on that fateful day.
In truth the attack
more than half a century ago on the USS
Liberty by Israeli warplanes and
torpedo boats on June 8, 1967, has virtually
faded from memory, with a younger generation
completely unaware that a United States
naval vessel was once deliberately attacked
and nearly sunk by America’s “greatest
friend and ally” Israel. The attack was
followed by a cover-up that demonstrated
clearly that at least one president of the
United States even back fifty-five years ago
valued his relationship with the state of
Israel above his loyalty to his own country.
It was in truth the
worst attack ever carried out on a US Naval
vessel in peace time. In addition to the
death toll, 171 more of the crew were
wounded in the two-hour assault, which was
clearly intended to destroy the intelligence
gathering ship operating in international
waters collecting information on the ongoing
Six Day War between Israel and its Arab
neighbors. The Israelis, whose planes had
their Star of David markings covered up,
attacked the ship repeatedly from the air
and with gunboats from the sea. They sought
to sink the ship, blaming Egypt, so the
United States would respond by attacking
Israel’s Arab enemies.
A Liberty survivor
Joe Meadors
recalls how “No Member of Congress has
ever attended our annual memorial service at
Arlington National Cemetery on the
anniversary of the attack. We are condemned
as ‘anti-Semitic’ and ‘bigots’ simply
because we have been asking that the attack
on the USS Liberty be treated the
same as every other attack on a US Navy ship
since the end of WWII. All we have is
ourselves. Not Congress. Not the Navy. Not
the DoD. Just ourselves. We need a place
where we are welcome. We need our reunions.”
Indeed, the
incredible courage and determination of the
surviving crew was the only thing that kept
the Liberty from sinking. The
ship’s commanding officer Captain William
McGonagle was awarded a Congressional Medal
of Honor for his heroic role in keeping the
ship afloat, though a cowardly and venal
President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who may
have connived with the Israelis to attack
the ship, broke with tradition and refused
to hold the medal ceremony in the White
House, also declining to award it
personally, delegating that task to the
Secretary of the Navy in a closed to the
public presentation held only reluctantly at
the Washington Navy Yard. The additional
medals given to other crew members in the
aftermath of the attack made the USS
Liberty the most decorated ship in the
history of the United States Navy.
The cover-up of the
attack began immediately, to include
concealing the White House’s actual recall
of fighter planes launched by the Sixth
Fleet to assist the under-attack Liberty.
The Liberty crew was subsequently
sworn to secrecy over the incident, as were
the Naval dockyard workers in Malta and even
the men of the USS Davis, which had
assisted the badly damaged Liberty
to port. A hastily convened and conducted
court of inquiry headed by Admiral John
McCain acted under orders from Washington to
declare the attack a case of mistaken
identity. The inquiry’s senior legal counsel
Captain Ward Boston, who subsequently
declared the attack to be a “deliberate
effort to sink an American ship and murder
its entire crew,” also described how
“President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of
Defense Robert McNamara ordered him to
conclude that the attack was a case of
‘mistaken identity’ despite overwhelming
evidence to the contrary.” The court’s
findings were rewritten and sections
relating to Israeli war crimes, to include
the machine gunning of life rafts, were
excised. Following in his father’s
footsteps, Senator John McCain of Arizona
subsequently used his position on the Senate
Armed Services Committee to effectively
block any reconvening of a board of inquiry
to reexamine the evidence. Most of the
documents relating to the Liberty
incident have never been released to the
public in spite of the 55 years that have
passed since the attack took place.
There has been
one independent investigation into the
Liberty affair headed by former
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Admiral Thomas Moorer, but it had no legal
standing. Its report was headed “Findings of
the Independent Commission of Inquiry into
the Israeli Attack on the USS Liberty,
the Recall of Military Rescue Support
Aircraft while the Ship was Under Attack,
and the Subsequent Cover-up by the United
States Government, CAPITOL HILL, WASHINGTON,
D.C., OCTOBER 22, 2003.” It concluded that
“That there is compelling evidence that
Israel’s attack was a deliberate attempt to
destroy an American ship and kill her entire
crew; evidence of such intent is supported
by statements from Secretary of State Dean
Rusk, Undersecretary of State George Ball,
former CIA director Richard Helms, former
NSA directors Lieutenant General William
Odom, USA (Ret.), Admiral Bobby Ray Inman,
USN (Ret.), and Marshal Carter; former NSA
deputy directors Oliver Kirby and Major
General John Morrison, USAF (Ret.); and
former Ambassador Dwight Porter, U.S.
Ambassador to Lebanon in 1967…”
More recently, the
claim by apologists for the Jewish state
that Israel acted in error or due to the fog
of war,
has been debunked by previously
suppressed National Security Agency
intercepts that included an Israeli pilot
calling his flight controller and stating,
in alarm, that they were about to attack
what was clearly an American ship. The
controller ordered him to continue his
attack.
The faux
court of inquiry and the medals awarded in
secret were only the first steps in the
cover-up, which has persisted to this day,
orchestrated by politicians and a media that
seem to place Israel’s interests ahead of
those of the United States. Liberty
survivors have been finding it difficult
even to make their case in public. In early
April 2016 a billboard that read “Help the
USS Liberty Survivors – Attacked by
Israel”
was taken down in New Bedford
Massachusetts. The billboard had been placed
by the Honor Liberty Vets Organization and,
as is normal practice, was paid for through
a contractual arrangement that would require
the billboard company to post the image for
a fixed length of time. It was one of a
number of billboards placed in different
states. Inevitably, Israel’s well connected
friends began to complain. One Jewish
businessman threatened to take his business
elsewhere, so the advertising company
obligingly removed the billboard two weeks
early.
After fifty-five
years, the dwindling number of survivors of
the Liberty are not looking for
punishment or revenge. When asked, they will
tell you that they only ask for
accountability, that an impartial inquiry
into the attack be convened and that the
true story of what took place finally be
revealed to the public.
That Congress is deaf
to the pleas of the Liberty crew
should surprise no one as the nation’s
legislative body has been for years, as Pat
Buchanan once put it, “Israeli occupied
territory.” The Jewish Lobby’s ability to
force Congress and even the presidency to
submit to its will has been spelled out in
some detail by critics, first by Paul
Findley in
They Dare to Speak Out, later by John
Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in
The Israel Lobby and in Alison Weir’s
Against Our Better Judgment and most
recently in Kirk Beattie’s excellent
Congress and the Shaping of the Middle East.
Congressional
willingness to protect Israel even when it
is killing Americans is remarkable, but it
is symptom of the legislative body’s
inclination to go to bat for Israel
reflexively, even when it is damaging to US
interests and to the rights that American
citizens are supposed to enjoy. To cite only
one example of how ambitious politicians
rally around to protect Israel, Florida
Governor Ron DeSantis is a former Navy
officer who once served as a congressman for
a district in Florida where several
Liberty survivors were living. They
recount how repeated attempts to meet with
DeSantis to discuss a possible official
inquiry were rejected, with the Congressman
refusing to meet them. Even the veterans’
organization the American Legion walks in
fear of Israel. It has
refused to allow the USS Liberty
Veterans Association to have a
table or booth at its annual convention and
has even banned any participation by the
group at its meetings in perpetuity!
So, the treatment of
the USS Liberty should surprise no
one in a country whose governing class has
been for decades doing the bidding of the
powerful lobby of a tiny client state that
has been nothing but trouble and expense for
the United States of America. Will it ever
end? As the Israel/Jewish Lobby currently
controls the relevant parts of the federal
government and much of the media, change is
not likely to happen overnight, but there
are some positive signs that the public is
regarding Israel less favorably. As Israel
is countering that trend by supporting
legislation at federal and state levels
declaring any group that criticizes Israel
to be anti-Semitic, recounting the USS
Liberty story could fall under that
description and be declared a “hate crime”
complete with civil and criminal penalties.
One has to hope that the American people
will finally wake up to realize that they
are tired of the entire farce and decide to
wash their hands of the Israel contrived
narrative relating to the Middle East. Just
imagine picking up the morning newspaper and
not reading a front-page story about the
warnings and threats coming from an Israeli
Prime Minister or from Israeli mouthpieces
named Biden, Schumer and Pelosi. That would
be a quite remarkable development.
Philip M. Giraldi,
Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council
for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax
deductible educational foundation (Federal
ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more
interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the
Middle East. Website is
councilforthenationalinterest.org,
address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA
20134 and its email is
inform@cnionline.org.