1229 U.S.S. Liberty Attack

Using today’s standards of censorship, obfuscation, and outright misinformation, it’s difficult to tell if history is true, but knowing that the winners write the history, and that narratives must be maintained at all cost, sometimes allows you to discern the truth for yourself. One of the most provocative myths is the Jewish conquest of Palestine, turning it into Israel. It seems any straying from the “facts” leads to being called a “Holocaust denier,” and persecution by the Jewish Defense League. One such story could aptly be called “Liberty denier.” Israel initiated the 1967 War with its Arab neighbors for their own nationalistic reasons. To insure their sneak attack would remain secret, the Israeli air force tried to sink a U.S. navy spy ship in the Mediterranean, the U.S.S. Liberty, that could have given the alarm since the Americans weren’t on-board with the invasion. The first wave of planes tried to take out the ship’s communications and was mostly successful, destroying all but 1 of the antennas, but that was enough for the Liberty to send out a distress call. Therefore, to complete the cover-up, the ship was attacked with the intention of sinking it. Israel's influence on the U.S. was so total that when a U.S. aircraft carrier that heard the SOS went to save the Liberty, the president of Israel called the U.S. president, Lyndon Johnson, and asked him to order back the carrier: amazingly, he did. Luckily, the captain of the ship ignored the order and saved the Liberty so we have the story today.