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Post by Deleted on Oct 30, 2014 17:01:58 GMT -5
Just watched an interesting documentary on Al Jazeera about Israel's 1967 attack on the USS Liberty. I'd heard of the incident before but the documentarians got some stuff under FOIA and also got hold of a once-secret audio tape between the attacking Israeli planes and their control tower. Bottom line: Israel knew it was an American ship in international waters, but attacked it anyway. Jets made passes strafing the deck and dropping napalm, and Israeli torpedo boats fired five torpedoes. (In the only break the Liberty caught that day, four of the torpedoes missed.) When survivors took to lifeboats, the torpedo boats machine-gunned them, which happens to be a war crime. Thirty-four sailors were killed and another 170 were wounded. LBJ knew it was an unprovoked attack. Israel knew it was an unprovoked attack. But Israel cajoled LBJ into perpetuating the it-was-just-a-horrible-accident fiction by letting it be known that if the U.S. pressed the case, Israel would paint LBJ as being anti-Israel, and the result would be that Jewish donors would abandon the Democratic Party. In fact, when the Liberty's captain was awarded the Medal of Honor, LBJ broke with tradition and had no White House ceremony for the guy. Navy brass gave him his medal in a quiet ceremony at a naval base. At the time, LBJ was handing out awards to high school kids at the White House. Sad chapter in Israel's history. And ours. Here's a link, but I don't know if you can watch the video in the U.S.: www.aljazeera.com/programmes/specialseries/2014/10/day-israel-attacked-america-20141028144946266462.html |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 30, 2014 18:02:52 GMT -5
Israeli SOP. They are pretty adept at revisionist history, and swing the anti-Semite hammer whenever it suits.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 30, 2014 22:01:11 GMT -5
Rocky Sturman, who was the radioman on the Liberty when it was attacked, is a family friend. His statement about those events can be read herewww.ussliberty.org/rocky.htm |
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Post by mnhermit on Oct 31, 2014 7:34:48 GMT -5
Howard, that link just takes me to an empty page.
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Post by Doug on Oct 31, 2014 8:04:24 GMT -5
At the time Israel was in a war and the Liberty was in a war zone.
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Post by patrick on Oct 31, 2014 8:07:36 GMT -5
At the time Israel was in a war and the Liberty was in a war zone. No, the Liberty was in international waters. And it remained Israel's responsibility to know who it was shooting. And war zone or not, you don't get to attack just anyone anywhere during a war. And now we know that Israel knew they were attacking a non-combatant and, in fact, their supposedly most important ally. |
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Post by Doug on Oct 31, 2014 8:18:33 GMT -5
At the time Israel was in a war and the Liberty was in a war zone. No, the Liberty was in international waters. And it remained Israel's responsibility to know who it was shooting. And war zone or not, you don't get to attack just anyone anywhere during a war. And now we know that Israel knew they were attacking a non-combatant and, in fact, their supposedly most important ally. The entire eastern Med was a war zone. And in a war if you are in Indian Territory you are likely to get attacked. There are no non-combatants in war. Ruben James etc. |
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Post by coachdoc on Oct 31, 2014 8:23:53 GMT -5
Just like Islam.
I'm not anti Jew. I sure get more and more anti Israel. They are arrogant in their miltarism in the extreme and are practicing genocide against the Palestinians. Here in the US, we are pretty slipshod in who we attack as well, but not to the point of genocide. 1 point for us.
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Post by Doug on Oct 31, 2014 8:31:46 GMT -5
Just like Islam. I'm not anti Jew. I sure get more and more anti Israel. They are arrogant in their miltarism in the extreme and are practicing genocide against the Palestinians. Here in the US, we are pretty slipshod in who we attack as well, but not to the point of genocide. 1 point for us. I'd say we score fairly high on the genocide scale. How many Indian tribes don't exist. There are no non-combatants in war. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2014 14:30:40 GMT -5
Doug, while I understand your concept up to a point, it doesn't make sense in this instance. Israel knew the ship belonged to its biggest ally, the U.S., yet they attacked it anyway, tried to sink it and machine-gunned sailors if lifeboats. Israel had sent several reconnaissance aircraft to fly over the Liberty earlier that day. They confirmed it was flying the American flag and radioed the ship's hull registration number. The Israeli pilots had no question who the ship belonged to before they began their attack. This wasn't a "friendly fire" incident. It was a planned, coordinated attack on an ally's vessel while it was clearly sailing in international waters.
Imagine if, during World War II, the Royal Navy had seen a ship, confirmed that it was a U.S. Navy vessel, then attacked it anyway and tried to kill the survivors. We'd would've been up in arms over it and and demanding an explanation, not just shrugging it off as, "Oh well, it's war...."
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Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2014 15:29:38 GMT -5
Howard, that link just takes me to an empty page. Odd. I just clicked on the link in this thread, and it took me right to the page with his photo and statement. Can you see anything at this link? |
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Post by Doug on Oct 31, 2014 18:48:03 GMT -5
Doug, while I understand your concept up to a point, it doesn't make sense in this instance. Israel knew the ship belonged to its biggest ally, the U.S., yet they attacked it anyway, tried to sink it and machine-gunned sailors if lifeboats. Israel had sent several reconnaissance aircraft to fly over the Liberty earlier that day. They confirmed it was flying the American flag and radioed the ship's hull registration number. The Israeli pilots had no question who the ship belonged to before they began their attack. This wasn't a "friendly fire" incident. It was a planned, coordinated attack on an ally's vessel while it was clearly sailing in international waters. Imagine if, during World War II, the Royal Navy had seen a ship, confirmed that it was a U.S. Navy vessel, then attacked it anyway and tried to kill the survivors. We'd would've been up in arms over it and and demanding an explanation, not just shrugging it off as, "Oh well, it's war...." 1. if you are the pilot and are told to attack you attack no matter what false flag they may be carrying. Disobeying an order in a war gets you in front of a firing squad. 2. if you play around in indian country you run the risk of getting killed. 3. if your country and every one of it's inhabitants is being attacked by a force more than 10 times the size of your army who plans to kill everyone in your country you don't mess around you shoot anything that moves. The Liberty had no business being there. In fact we have no business having war ships in the Med at all even today. We have no business having troops of any kind in the middle east. That is nothing but imperialism as has been our whole foreign policy since 1945. |
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Post by patrick on Oct 31, 2014 22:18:13 GMT -5
I just watched this on AJ America. Its a devastating documentary. Israel knew exactly who that ship belonged to and what it was doing there and that's why they attacked. They knew that the Liberty could intercept their radio broadcasts and, thought they had promised LBJ repeatedly that they would not start the war, the Liberty caught the evidence that it was Israel that attacked first. Furthermore, they intended from the start that they would grab more land, especially the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem, but they wanted to hide that from the Americans whom they had told the opposite. Utterly cynical.
But the cynicism is matched on the other side. LBJ was furious, but he knew that Israel was planning on smearing him with a "blood libel" if he made an issue of the attack. And in Vietnam, the N Vietnamese were using Soviet surface to air missiles to great effect in shooting down American pilots. So the Israelis gave an intact captured Soviet anti-missile site to the Americans so that counter-measures could be taken. In return, they got more than just silence, the US replenished their arms used in the war.
This is why I watch AJ AMerica. You will never see this on a US channel.
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Post by Doug on Oct 31, 2014 23:20:19 GMT -5
Yep that's what war is. There are NO rules. If you go to war with rules you lose and you die.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2014 6:20:32 GMT -5
Yep that's what war is. There are NO rules. If you go to war with rules you lose and you die. I'm sure most of the people convicted and executed for war crimes would beg to differ about the "no-rules-in-war" thing. |
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Post by Doug on Nov 1, 2014 6:56:10 GMT -5
Yep that's what war is. There are NO rules. If you go to war with rules you lose and you die. I'm sure most of the people convicted and executed for war crimes would beg to differ about the "no-rules-in-war" thing. Every notice that they are all on the losing side.  |
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Post by brucemacneill on Nov 1, 2014 7:06:33 GMT -5
I believe there is one rule and it is that the winner gets to make the rules.
I was otherwise busy with a different war when this incident happened and missed it. Spent some time yesterday reading up on it and I can't tell who's right as to what happened. The available hard evidence, recordings and transcripts of testimony at the time, indicates Israel didn't know it was a U.S. ship but there are alleged eye witnesses later claiming that the "Real" evidence has been withheld. Don't know who to believe but at this time, to quote a famous secretary of state, "What difference does it make?". If Israel didn't trust LBJ, they were in good company.
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Post by patrick on Nov 1, 2014 7:18:57 GMT -5
That's what is so devastating about this documentary, they have the Israeli radio tapes of the Israeli pilots reporting that the ship is American and give its hull number. Many of the crew are still alive and say that they were being observed all day by Israeli recon aircraft who buzzed the ship. They were flying what one called the "holiday" colors, which is a HUGE American flag. There was a 5-10 knot breeze, so the flag was flying and easily visible for miles on the open ocean on a clear day.
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Post by brucemacneill on Nov 1, 2014 8:04:21 GMT -5
"But when dealing with conspiracy theories, especially ones you aren’t quite qualified to prove, one must always consider other possibilities, if only to allow them to reinforce your nutty beliefs."
Appropriate.
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Post by mnhermit on Nov 1, 2014 9:18:36 GMT -5
Howard, that link just takes me to an empty page. Odd. I just clicked on the link in this thread, and it took me right to the page with his photo and statement. Can you see anything at this link?Thanks Howard, that link worked for me |
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