Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty – The full story
On the floor of the Senate the performances were more impressive. In the first five paragraphs of his statement, Senator Jacob Javits, pro-Israel right or wrong – and a heavyweight and persistent critic of the State Department – referred five times to the accidental nature of the attack. As Green noted, Javits even explained how such a mistake could occur.
“Mr. President, I must say it is a great tribute to the valour of the troops of Israel that this morning I have heard Senator after Senator say that while they were terribly dismayed and saddened by this accident, they understood how it could take place under the terrible stresses the forces of Israel have been under in these last few weeks.” (i.e. because the Zionist state was, allegedly, in danger of being exterminated).
Through its mouthpieces in Congress and elsewhere, and endorsed by the Johnson administration, Zionism’s message to the people of America was, effectively: “Because the attack was a mistake, and because Israel has apologised, let’s forget about it.”
But there must have been a sense of alarm in Zionism’s ranks when, on 19 June, the day after the Naval Board completed its inquiry, the following item appeared in Newsweek’s “Periscope” section.
“Although Israel’s apologies were officially accepted, some high Washington officials believe the Israelis knew the Liberty’s capabilities and suspect that the attack might not have been accidental. One top-level theory holds that someone in the Israeli armed forces ordered the Liberty sunk because he suspected it had taken down messages showing that Israel started the fighting.”
Except in one respect the item contained the essence of the totally shocking truth. In retrospect it can be seen that the item was in error only to the extent that the “someone”, Dayan, was not concerned by any evidence the Liberty had gathered that could prove Israel started the war. Those in Washington’s war-loop knew that. Dayan’s purpose was to prevent the spy ship giving President Johnson warning of his intention to invade Syria.
But the alarm was short-lived. Zionism had enough friends in the mainstream media, and more than enough influence of various kinds to intimidate writers and broadcasters who were not pro-Israel right or wrong, to prevent the matter of what had really happened being pursued in public.
In private the one top-level American official who initially refused to be a party to the cover-up was Secretary of State Dean Rusk. Like all of his predecessors, and because he believed it was his duty to put America’s interests first, he had to live with Zionism’s smears to the effect that he was anti-Israel. Rusk was outraged by the Johnson administration’s collusion with Israel for war. In fact he was so concerned about the damage being done to America’s interests in the Middle East by Johnson’s decision to take sides with Israel that, at a meeting in Luxembourg, he told NATO Secretary General Manlio Brosio and others in attendance some of the truth about the attack on the Liberty.
We know this from a secret telegram that was de-classified in 1983 as a result of Green’s persistence. It was sent by U.S. NATO Ambassador Harland Cleveland to Under-Secretary of State Eugene Rostow, Walt’s brother. Cleveland’s cable said: “Quite apart from Newsweek Periscope item, Secretary’s comments to Brosio and several foreign ministers at Luxembourg about Israeli foreknowledge that Liberty was a U.S. ship piqued a great deal of curiosity among NATO delegations. Would appreciate guidance as to how much of this curiosity I can satisfy, and when.”
It can be taken as read that Walt advised Eugene to do everything he could to shut his boss up.
So far as I am aware, the question nobody has attempted to answer in public is this: Who was the Israeli general who opposed Dayan’s decision to attack the Liberty and said it would amount to “pure murder“?
Despite the fact that in his own memoirs he went along with the fiction that Israeli pilots failed to identify the Liberty as a U.S. ship and that the attack was a tragic mistake, I think it was, very probably, Chief of Staff Rabin – the Israeli leader who, many years later as prime minister, was stopped from advancing the peace process with Arafat and his PLO by an assassin in gut-Zionism’s name. And I think so for a number of reasons.
Rabin was at one with Prime Minister Eshkol in believing that Israel could and should live within its pre-1967 war borders. And as we have also seen, Rabin’s own plan for military action in the summer of 1967 was for a strictly limited operation against Egypt, and only Egypt, a strategy Dayan described as “absurd.”
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