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By Bruce S. Ticker
February 28, 2003
It was the USS Liberty controversy that introduced me to the brusque art of Israel-bashing.
More than a decade ago, at the height of the conflict during Yitzhak Shamir's tenure as prime minister, I was at a Laundromat in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, when a young and rather strange city councilman approached me. I knew him through my job as a reporter at the local newspaper in this small central Pennsylvania city.
He abruptly launched into a screed against Israel. He opened by recalling how the Israeli military attacked an American ship, the Liberty, in 1967 and then proclaimed that the Israelis were treating the Palestinians in a brutal manner.
My first problem was that I did not know how to respond. Most of what I knew about the Israeli conflict at the time could be attributed to news reports in American newspapers and on television. I did not pay detailed attention to the issue.
This was the first time I ever heard of the Liberty, so it was impossible then to confirm if he was telling the truth. In general, I was plainly confused about what transpired in Israel at that time. My natural instinct was to defend Israel, but I did not know just what I was defending.
I later learned that to this day the full truth about the attack on the Liberty, an intelligence ship off the coast of the Sinai Desert, was never discovered. The best guess so far is that the incident represented either a complete case of mistaken identity or in some measure Israel intentionally attacked the Liberty to hide something. It is mistaken to claim with any certainty that the attack was deliberate and it is mistaken to contend that the matter is closed.
Like the guy who cornered me at the Laundromat, many people still assail Israel about the incident as if it was definitely deliberate.
The very fact that these people would take this approach proves that they are using the Liberty as an excuse to bash Israel, and by extension Jews in general.
Why else criticize Israel for this if they could not possibly know enough about the incident themselves? It suggests that the Palestinian cause affords them an excuse to give indirect voice to their anti-Semitic sentiments.
If they do care about the poverty with which Palestinians must endure, their disingenuous use of the Liberty incident does not help them. All it does is antagonize people who might otherwise be willing to listen to legitimate concerns about the situation.
The Washington Post ran an article earlier this month relating the gist of what is known of the incident. The attack utilizing rockets, cannon fire and torpedoes from jet fighters and torpedo boats left 34 Americans dead and 171 injured.
As the Post story recounted, survivors said the two-hour battle "involved rocket and napalm attacks by multiple flights of Israeli jetfighters, a simultaneous torpedo attack by three Israeli navy vessels and the machine-gunning of lifeboats tossed overboard as Liberty survivors prepared to abandon their wounded ship."
Whatever Israel's intent, the episode was replete with bungled orders, missed communications, operational stupidity and inter-service rivalry on both sides, the Post reported.
Liberty survivors and some historians and scholars believe the attack was aimed at eliminating the Liberty before its electronic eavesdropping could discover events that Israel did not want to be made known. They said that subsequent investigations were far from thorough.
Richard Parker, who was political counselor of the American embassy in Cairo at the time, told the Post that he believes the attack was accidental, but he still says that a congressional investigation even now "would be very useful."
We should not have a problem with an investigation, even if it somehow proves the attack was even partly deliberate. In the long run, what will it prove? That Israel can be as vicious and devious as any nation which isn't governed by Jews? Not that any of Israel's actions in this instance should be excused.
It is perfectly legitimate for anyone - especially survivors and family members of the deceased - to demand an investigation, but it is another matter when critics of Israel employ the Liberty attack as a launching pad to bash Israel.
The critics' intended victim, a Jew who finds himself in a defensive position similar to mine years ago, could assail an American critic about Vietnam and the Indian massacres. One can assail Brits and the French on their countries' colonizing, an Italian on World War II, a German about Hitler and even Germany's bungling in the Munich Olympic murders and a Russian of Stalin's purges.
Almost forgot: One can assail an Arab or Muslim for the Arab world's 55-year war against Israel.
If they persist, I would tell these people to either give me facts or give me peace and quiet.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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