The 1967 USS Liberty Incident

Israel apologists today gloat about an attack they spent decades covering up

The facts about Israel's attack on the USS Liberty during the 1967 June War are beyond dispute.

Israel on 8 June 1967 knew it was attacking a US naval vessel, which was flying the US flag and doing so in excellent weather conditions with unimpeded visibility.

Israel attacked the USS Liberty not only deliberately but repeatedly, targeting it with fighter aircraft and torpedo boats that hit the ship with napalm, cannon fire, and torpedos. The attack killed 34 crew members and wounded 171, and severely damaged the ship.

Claims that the attack was a case of mistaken identity, or that Israel mistakenly believed the USS Liberty was an Egyptian navy vessel utilising US marking to conceal itself, have been repeatedly and definitively debunked.

The USS Liberty was a naval espionage vessel, sailing north of the Sinai Peninsula that had just been occupied by Israeli forces. Its mission was to monitor military communications by the various belligerents during the June War.

There are various theories as to why Israel took the decision to attack the USS Liberty. One is that Israel feared the ship was learning that Israel was summarily executing Egyptian prisoners-of-war, as it had also done on a significant scale during its 1956 invasion of Egypt. While Israel in 1967 did indeed again engage in the summary execution of Egyptian POWs, this seems an insufficiently compelling motivation to attack a US naval vessel.

Another explanation is that Israel hoped to persuade the US that its warship had actually been attacked by the Egyptians, and to thus draw the US into the war. Given that the Egyptian air force had been knocked out of service during the first hours of the war, and that Israel in 1967 had no need for direct US support, this has all the hallmarks of a conspiracy theory unsupported by serious evidence.

Closer to the mark is the theory that Israel sought to prevent the USS Liberty from learning that Israel intended to invade Syria the following day despite having accepted a ceasefire, and was concerned that Washington would order Israel to call off the invasion. Yet, given the Johnson administration's enthusiastic support for Israel's military and associated geopolitical achievements during the June War, this also seems unlikely.

The most plausible scenario is that the USS Liberty was collecting Israeli military communications which confirmed that Israel was preparing to invade Syria and seize the Golan Heights the following day, and that Israel's leaders feared that the ship's communication of its findings would be intercepted by the Soviet Union and subsequently relayed by Moscow to the Syrians.

It is today widely acknowledged that the Johnson administration knew the Israeli attack was deliberate, yet ordered a cover-up so that US opinion would not turn against the emerging US-Israeli alliance.

In 1967 Israeli diplomacy and hasbara were at the top of their game. Its leaders did not shy away from making heartfelt apologies, publicly accepting full responsibility, and concocting elaborate investigations to cover up their criminal behaviour towards a key ally.

Israel, which won the 1967 War on the strength of French rather than US weaponry but was about to lose this key Western arms supplier because it initiated the war despite warnings not to do so from President Charles de Gaulle, understood it was on the cusp of cementing a strategic alliance with the United States. It thus ensured that its penchant for arrogance in foreign relations and for condemning friends who are only 99.9 per cent supportive did not get in the way of a historic opportunity.

That was then, this is now.

Below is a specimen, posted on Twitter on 5 September, of the best Israeli propaganda has to offer in 2025 regarding the Israeli attack on a US naval vessel that killed dozens of US servicemen. Decades of contrition to enable a cover-up has given way to gloating, mocking, and self-glorification, an opportunity to celebrate Israel superiority and impunity.

In a nutshell, it was entirely the fault of the USS Liberty crew, they asked for it, and they got what they deserved.