June 8th, 1967 - Israel betrays America in an act of war

[rambone]

44 years ago, America's "ally" viciously attacked an unarmed American research ship, sailing in international waters and in broad daylight. The treacherous Israelis bombarded the U.S.S. Liberty for 2 hours with torpedoes, napalm, machine guns, and aircraft. The ship managed to survive with a giant hole in its hull and after taking serious casualties.

The Israelis even machine-gunned people in lifeboats and those trying to fight fires on the ship.



Statement by survivor John Hrankowski

We had been surveilled all morning and part of the afternoon by Israeli forces. They knew who we were. We heard them reporting over radio who we were and how we were sailing and where we were sailing. They saw the flag and everything else. We were in international waters.

At 2:00 the action started when we had just completed a general quarters drill. I had just come out or the engine room to get some fresh air when the firing started. That's when I took my shrapnel hit, nothing fantastic but pieces of shrapnel. I went back to the boiler room and prepared to start lighting off number one boiler to get steam to get out of there.

This persisted for probably 25 or 35 minutes with the aircraft rocketing us and hitting us with everything they had--napalm and cannon fire--and after that there was a comparatively small lull. We heard that they were getting hit all over the place and we could see the torpedo boats moving in and firing torpedoes at us, and then one hit and put a 40 foot hole in the side of the ship and knocked all power off.

By that time the ship's interior was blackened, you couldn't see anything except with battle lanterns. We were still in the process of lighting off the boiler and trying to head the ship out to see. The ship was listing and we got the word to prepare to abandon ship. We were ordered by Lieutenant Golden who was in charge in the engine room to exit, and the last one out of there was myself, and I had to cut off the boilers' fuel supply. I was the last one.

We got outside at the main battle dressing station where a lot of injuries were. We were just about to go topside when we heard a lot of shots and canon fire and machine gun fire. Evidently they were trying to pick off people who were fighting fires and trying to put life rafts in the water. They were picking these people off with machine guns. We were told, I didn't see them, but we were told that they were shooting up the life rafts that were in the water, so needless to say they weren't going to take survivors at all.

And so we headed back to our spaces and did not abandon ship. We stayed with it. And it continued probably for another 40 minutes with them shooting and finally after seeing that the ship was not going to sink they grabbed one of the life rafts and they exited the scene. And through that, the helicopters had come over loaded with Israeli troops. This lasted almost two hours and finally we got the ship turned around and boilers lit off and headed out to sea.

We also heard that nine minutes into the attack we had reached a message to the Sixth Fleet and they were on their way with aircraft to help us. Little did we know until afterwards that three sets of aircraft were turned back.

​

 

[NYFelon]

um, this did happen dead smack in the middle of the 6 day war.

 

[RyanV]

A little before my time but, wow, I've never even heard of this.

 

[NYFelon]

Most haven't.

 

[Lucas156]

Whats your point?

 

[Kutnupe14]

This is new to me.... I'm mos def going to look into it.

 

[Jack Ryan]

USS Liberty incident - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Attack on the Liberty
[edit] Events leading to the attack

During the Six-Day War between Israel and several Arab nations, the United States of America maintained a neutral country status.[10] Shortly before the war began, the USS Liberty was ordered to proceed to the eastern Mediterranean to perform an electronic intelligence collection mission.[11] After the war erupted, due to concerns about her safety as she approached her patrol area, several messages were sent to Liberty to increase her allowable closest point of approach (CPA) to Egypt's and Israel's coasts from 12.5 nmi (14.4 mi; 23.2 km) and 6.5 nmi (7.5 mi; 12.0 km), respectively, to 20 nmi (23 mi; 37 km) and 15 nmi (17 mi; 28 km), and then later to 100 nmi (120 mi; 190 km) for both countries.[12] Unfortunately, due to ineffective message handling and routing, the CPA change messages were not received until after the attack.[12]
According to Israeli sources, at the start of the war on June 5, General Yitzhak Rabin (then IDF Chief of Staff) informed Commander Ernest Carl Castle, the American Naval Attaché in Tel Aviv, that Israel would defend its coast with every means at its disposal, including sinking unidentified ships. Also, he asked the U.S. to keep its ships away from the shore or at least inform Israel of their exact position.[13][14] With the Liberty in international waters and gathering intelligence, the United States did not provide any information about its location.

 

[NYFelon]

USS Liberty incident - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Attack on the Liberty
[edit] Events leading to the attack

those are the specifics, yes. Like I said, it was on [I believe] day 3 of the 6 day war. I'm definitely of the opinion that it was not an intentional attack on a U.S. vessel.

 

[ihateiraq]

i feel like this was israel showing their butt hurt over that fact that we wouldnt officially take their side in their war.

 

[NYFelon]

Also a possibility. No one but those directly involved in the decision to attack will ever know for a fact either way.

 

[TheDude]

those are the specifics, yes. Like I said, it was on [I believe] day 3 of the 6 day war. I'm definitely of the opinion that it was not an intentional attack on a U.S. vessel.

This definatley sounds like one of those "stories with a side story" type deals.

 

[M67]

I thought I knew histroy pretty well, but I've never heard of this before either

 

[ihateiraq]

Also a possibility. No one but those directly involved in the decision to attack will ever know for a fact either way.

nope. its just something to keep in the back of our minds.

 

[Redemption]

The only bad thing about the Arabs in Israel's fight with all of the other Arab countries over there is that they can't all lose.

 

[NYFelon]

nope. its just something to keep in the back of our minds.

Agreed. No matter what, a country's primary purpose is to protect it's citizens at all costs. Yesterday's ally can easily become today's enemy. See: USSR during WWII.

 

[UncleMike]

44 years ago, America's "ally" viciously attacked an unarmed American research ship, sailing in international waters and in broad daylight. The treacherous Israelis bombarded the U.S.S. Liberty for 2 hours with torpedoes, napalm, machine guns, and aircraft. The ship managed to survive with a giant hole in its hull and after taking serious casualties.

The Israelis even machine-gunned people in lifeboats and those trying to fight fires on the ship.

IMO someone is trying to stir up some anti Israeli sentiments!
Maybe we should be pissed at the British too.
After all the British claim to be our allies now but two hundred and one short years ago they invaded our country and tried to enslave us.

 

[CarmelHP]

My problem with the allegation that the attack was deliberate is this: "what did the Israelis have to gain?" Raising the ire of the U.S. so that they now had two superpowers to fight off (the Sovs were supporting the Arabs)? Making sure that the U.S. wouldn't block U.N. sanctions against Israel? Making sure that the 1st world countries would abandon them? Doesn't make sense for Israel's survival.

 

[88GT]

nope. its just something to keep in the back of our minds.

For what? Not arguing, but there's little value in holding this one on the back burner "just in case." One incident does not make a trend, and to my knowledge, Israel has not once demonstrated such behaviors against the U.S. again. I cannot speak to the intent or purpose of the attack, and frankly I don't care. History's value is in the context, not the event, and in the totality of the circumstances from beginning to end, not in one point in time. If anybody is showing their arse lately, it would be us, and throwing them under the bus in the midst of the largest periods of unrest in recent history, almost all of whom are the sworn enemy of Israel. I won't even mention handing Egypt to the Muslim Brotherhood.

IMO someone is trying to stir up some anti Israeli sentiments!
Maybe we should be pissed at the British too.
After all the British claim to be our allies now but two hundred and one short years ago they invaded our country and tried to enslave us.

There is definitely something amiss in the universe. We are in agreement for a second time.

 

[Kirk Freeman]

Israel, unlike Justice David, still believes in the right of resistance.

 

[TheDude]

Keep in mind that were all assuming that the U.S. ship was innocent and doing nothing wrong. Im the first guy wanting to retaliate in defense of our servicemen & women but not naive to think the U.S. is the lily white knights in shining armor.