Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty – The full story
Prime Minister Eshkol lied after the war because he had no choice. He could not say, “I lost control of events of my side to those who were determined to create the Greater Israel of Zionism’s mad dream.”
And the logic that drove the lie so far as Dayan was concerned can be summarised as follows: the bigger the lie, and the greater the authority with which it was told, the smaller the chance of Israel being branded where it mattered most – in the Security Council – as the aggressor.
Why, really, was it so important that Israel not be branded as the aggressor when it was?
Aggressors are not allowed to keep the territory they take by force. They have to withdraw from it unconditionally. That is the requirement of international law and also a fundamental principle which the UN is committed to uphold, as, for example, President Eisenhower did when Israel invaded Egypt in 1956. That is on the one hand.
On the other is the generally accepted view that when a state is attacked, is the victim of aggression, and then goes to war in self-defence and ends up occupying some or even all of the aggressor’s territory, the occupier has the right, in negotiations, to attach conditions to its withdrawal.
The point?
If in 1967 Israel had been branded as the aggressor, as it should have been, the Johnson administration would have had the choice of:
- taking the lead in demanding that Israel withdraw unconditionally, which would have required the Johnson administration to confront Zionism; or
- admitting that the U.S. had taken sides and was irrevocably committed to Zionism right or wrong – whatever the consequences for America’s own longer term best interests. In this case the world would have known, before 1967 had run its course, that the U.S could not be an honest and therefore an effective broker of peace in the Middle East.
In the process of taking sides with Zionism’s child, the Johnson administration not only gave Israel’s hawks the green light for war with Egypt, and not only used its diplomatic clout first to delay a Security Council demand for a cease-fire and then to block calls for an unconditional Israeli withdrawal. The Johnson administration assisted the IDF’s war machine by providing aerial reconnaissance in the form of some very special U.S. aircraft, the American pilots to fly them and the necessary technical support on the ground.
So far as I am aware the only published account of U.S. participation in the war on Israel’s side is in Stephen Green’s book. He stated that his principal source for the story was somebody who claimed to have been involved in the still Top Secret mission from start to finish. Though he had to protect the identity of his deep-throat and therefore did not name him, Green said he had “verified the story circumstantially” by checking “Air Force unit histories, commanders’ names, technical details and so forth.” He also noted that while he was seeking to confirm the story through contacts with other individuals who might have participated in the operation and senior officials in the Pentagon, White House and State Department, Air Force intelligence contacted several members of the units involved “reminding them of their obligations to maintain silence on any previous intelligence missions in which they had been involved.” (The main reason for Green’s satisfaction that the story was true was, he said, that “certain of the details provided by the source would have been very difficult to learn other than by participation in such a mission in Israel.”)
Assuming Green’s clinically detailed account to be correct – an assumption I make without reservation and not least because of the confirmation in principle I obtained from very high-level Israeli and American sources of my own – the American military contribution to the IDF’s war effort was spearheaded by planes and pilots of the 38th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron of the 26th Tactical Reconnaissance Wing, U.S. Air Force. The 38th was based in Ramstein, West Germany. Its participating planes (four) were flown from there to the U.S. air base at Moron in Spain where they were joined, before flying to Israel on 4 June, by supporting elements from the 17th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron of the 66th Tactical Reconnaissance Wing based at Upper Heyford near Oxford in England. At an Israeli air base in the Negev, the 38th’s planes were painted over with a white Star of David on a blue background and new tail numbers corresponding to actual inventory numbers in the Israeli Air Force.
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