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Retired
Captain Ward Boston, a former U.S. Navy attorney who was senior
legal counsel to the military investigation of the near sinking of the U.S.S. Liberty by the Israelis,
in 1967, has finally revealed the truth in a signed affidavit:
"For
more than 30 years, I have remained silent on the topic of
the USS Liberty. I am a military man and when orders come
in from the Secretary of Defense and President of the United
States, I follow them….
"The
evidence was clear. Both [the late] Admiral
[Isaac C.] Kidd, [Jr.] and I believed with certainty that
this attack, which killed 34 American sailors and injured
172 others, was a deliberate effort to sink an American ship
and murder its entire crew. I am certain that the Israeli
pilots that undertook the attack, as well as their superiors
who had ordered the attack, were aware that the ship was American….
"I
am outraged at the efforts of the apologists for Israel in
this country to claim that this attack was a case of 'mistaken
identity.' … I know from personal conversations I had with
Admiral Kidd that 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."
At
a news conference, put on in the Rayburn House Office Building
with the help of Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan), retired Admiral
Thomas Moorer, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
thundered from his wheelchair:
"Why in the world
would our government put Israel's interest ahead of our own?"
A
good question, one that baffles patriots – and is especially relevant today.
When
Israeli war planes descended on the Liberty, which
was parked in international waters in the Mediterranean, the
crew was caught completely unawares: sailors were up on deck
sunning themselves. It was a cowardly
and vicious attack in which 34
U.S. sailors were killed, and 171 wounded. When the Israelis,
after torpedoing the ship, came back in a second assault,
they strafed the
lifeboats
as the crew tried
to clamber
aboard – a war crime. Those rafts are now on
display in an Israeli museum, according to one account,
and, as the [UK] Guardian points
out:
"No
one was ever court-martialed, reduced in rank or even reprimanded.
Israel chose instead to honor motor torpedo boat 203, which
fired the deadly torpedo at the Liberty. The ship's
wheel and bell were placed on prominent display at the naval
museum, among the maritime artifacts of which the Israeli
navy was most proud."
Ah
yes, our friends, the Israelis. It takes a special kind of
arrogance to memorialize such a wanton, brazen murder – especially
when U.S.
taxpayers paid for that memorial, as they pay for practically
everything else in Israel, from helicopter gunships and tanks
to special subsidies for religious
schools and right-wing politicians.
Apologists
for Israel defend the attack, saying it was a "mistake,"
and, alternately (and often simultaneously) pointing out that
the Liberty was spying on Israel in wartime, and so
deserved its fate. But now, thirty-five years later, the truth
has been uncovered at last. The question raised by Admiral
Moorer is surely relevant, but beyond that, another issue
arises: what else are they covering up?
The
official verdict was hardly challenged at the time –
except by the survivors
and the families
of the dead – an attitude that reflected the generally
pro-Israel bias of the American media, but there was one prominent
exception: National Review. The flagship
journal of the American conservative movement ran an article
that gave "the inside story" on the incident. Author James
Jackson Kilpatrick reported what many of the survivors were
saying at the time: that the attack was deliberate.
Now
that NR has been vindicated, do you think they'll have
a piece triumphantly pointing out that Jackson's reporting
was right? Sadly, I rather doubt it. The NR of yesteryear
was a patriotic nationalist magazine that put America first:
the NR of today is Ariel Sharon's bitch.
No, we won't be seeing so much as a note about this in the
thoroughly neocon-ized National Review any time soon.
NOTES
IN THE MARGIN
Speaking
of cover-ups, has anybody noticed that the
story about the anti-terrorist sting operation involving the
sale of surface-to-air missiles seems to have disappeared
into the ether? It was an odd item, involving a reputed arms
dealer, Hemant
Lakhani, a native of India, and one Yehuda
Abraham, of Rego Park, New York, an Orthodox Jewish gem
merchant. Mr. Abraham was charged with coordinating the financial
transactions involved. He denies knowing what was being sold
and to whom. Lakhani and a Malaysian accomplice were detained
without bond, while the 75-year-old Abraham was released on a $10
million bond. The story then dropped out of sight, except
for this
exculpatory story in which the old crook "pours out his
heart" in an interview:
"'My
wife cried because she didn't know how I would manage. It
was a dog house,' he recalled. His nightmare was eased only
when his wife, Zina, was granted permission to take him kosher
food.'"
His
wife wails:
"We
are family people, we have children and grandchildren. Whenever
we see a terrorist attack in Israel or elsewhere on television,
I always see Yehuda take out his handkerchief to wipe his
eye. Never in our life have we been to court for anything."
Yeah,
well there's always a first time – especially when you're
in the habit of financing arms transfers to terrorists who
openly express admiration for
Osama bin Laden and talk about how they're going to down
a U.S. airliner with a SAM.
Abraham's
defense, as he puts it, seems to be that he is "incapable"
of aiding and abetting terrorism precisely because of who
he is: but wouldn't that be the perfect cover?
An
Israeli connection to Islamic terrorist activity in the U.S.
has been a longstanding theme of the continuing "Israeli art students" story: Salon,
Fox News, Le
Monde, Die Zeit, and this
column have all broached the possibility. In Mr. Abraham
we have someone who is a staunch supporter of Israel, an immigrant
from Afghanistan, the head of an international gem-dealing
business with offices in Bangkok and Saudi Arabia – just the
sort of person who might be useful to the Israelis – with
a direct connection to terrorist activity.
And
I'll tell you what really worries me: the re-appearance
of those Israeli "art students" – in Canada, this time – in tandem
with the news of an unspecified "missle
threat" to planes landing
in Toronto. An El Al flight from Israel's Ben Gurion airport
to Toronto was diverted to nearby Hamilton because El Al had
information about a possible SAM attack. Question: How did
El Al get this inside information?
The
U.S. government covered up Israel's murder and maiming of
American sailors for 35 years. Are we going to have to wait
that long before we uncover the history of Israel's more recent
misdeeds?
–
Justin Raimondo
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