The Phoenix Gazette
Editorial Page Column
June 5, 1996


By Mark Genrich
The Phoenix Gazette

On June 8, 1967, Israeli air and naval forces
attacked the "USS Liberty," a research ship, in
the Mediterranean Sea.

The recent Israeli shelling of a United Nations
refugee camp in Lebanon had striking similarities
to an Israeli attack on a non-combatant American
ship sailing in international waters 29 years ago.
On June 8, 1967, Israeli air and naval forces
attacked the "USS Liberty," a technical research
ship, that was peacefully sailing off the Sinai
Peninsula in the Mediterranean Sea. The Israelis
used torpedoes, napalm and machine-gun fire to
kill 34 Americans and wound 171 others.

Just as the Israelis claimed the shelling of the
refugee camp was an accident, so too, did they
claim that the attack on the "USS Liberty" was
an accident.

There were other similarities:

1. The use of extraordinary brutality.

The April 18 shelling struck a U.N. peacekeepers'
compound in south Lebanon killing more than 100
men, women and children. Knight-Ridder Newspapers
reported that survivors were overcome by the
magnitude of the killing.

"Grown men staggered around the blood-soaked
compound, weeping uncontrollably. Wailing women
threw themselves onto the burned and mangled
corpses of relatives. As they weaved among rows of
bodies shrouded with blankets, stepping over
scattered body parts, even some battle-hardened
U.N. soldiers were in tears."

During the attack on the "USS Liberty," the
Israelis used unmarked aircraft, jammed the ship's
radios on both U.S. Navy tactical and
International Maritime Distress frequencies,
destroyed by machine-gun fire life rafts that had
been dropped over the side by crewmen preparing to
abandon the ship, and refused to offer immediate
aid upon cessation of hostilities.

2. The claim Israelis do not target innocent
non-combatants.

Reported Associated Press writer Greg Myre,
"Israel says it does not intentionally target
civilians...But the gray gunboats off the port
city of Sidon, 25 miles south of Beirut, fire day
and night at civilian cars heading south on what
is normally the country's busiest highway. Since
Friday, three cars have been destroyed after being
hit by shrapnel, and three more have skidded off
the road and crashed in high-speed attempts to
evade the Israeli fire."

According to Human Rights Watch, an organization
that tracks human-rights abuses worldwide, Israel
has displayed "indiscriminate and
disproportionate" shelling of villages in
southern Lebanon. While the human-rights report
appropriately condemns Hezbollah guerrillas for
indiscriminately firing Katyusha rockets into
Israel, it also documented Israel's manifest
violations of international law including,
"Targeting whole villages without specific
military objectives and without regard for
civilian casualties; specifically targeting the
civilian infrastructure, including power stations
and water reservoirs; deliberately creating a
refugee crisis to put pressure on the Lebanese
government; and deliberately targeting ambulances
and civilian vehicles."

A "USS Liberty" survivor, Lt. Cmdr. David Edwin
Lewis, says, "The Israelis obviously had
sufficient time to plan their armament load. There
were apparently heat-seeking missiles used to take
out the tuning coil of every antenna, there were
fragmentation bombs used to take out the parabolic
dish fore and aft. On the first strafing run
virtually all communications and all means of
survival were destroyed. If it was an accident, it
was the best prepared accident on Earth."

3. The Israelis deny the attack was deliberate.

An investigation by Maj. Gen. Franklin van Kappen,
a Dutch military adviser to the United Nations,
concluded, "While the possibility cannot be ruled
out completely, it is unlikely that the shelling
of the United Nations compound was the result of
gross technical and/or procedural errors."

The "Los Angeles Times" reported, "The most
damaging point of the report - and to Israel's
case - has been proof that Israel flew
surveillance aircraft over the camp while the
firing was going on. Contrary to repeated denials,
two Israeli helicopters and a remotely piloted
vehicle were present in the Qana area at the time
of the shelling...Israel denied this to the United
Nations and publicly until the British newspaper
"The Independent" reported the existence of an
amateur videotape showing an Israeli pilotless
reconnaissance aircraft - the kind used by
artillery spotters to perfect their aim - over
Qana during the shelling." Once aware of the
videotape, Israel changed its story.

Finally, the most recent unbiased research into
the assault on the "USS Liberty" was conducted
by Dr. John Edgar Borne at New York University.
His detailed analysis concludes that "the account
of the attack given by the Liberty men is the
correct and truthful one" and that the attack
"was deliberate and that all available evidence
points to this conclusion."

(E-mail Mark Genrich, deputy editorial page
editor, at MLGedit or MLGedit@aol.com.)

(Copyright, Phoenix Newspapers Inc.)