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On Line Book-Page 10
Although Minister of
Defense General Moshe Dayan was principally responsible for the
USS Liberty massacre,
then Prime Minister Levi Eshkol also shared responsibility.
Because the USS Liberty
was an intelligence monitoring vessel, it is also certain that Meier
Amit, head of Mossad
(Israeli Intelligence) in 1967, and General Yitzhak Rabin, had legal
responsibility to
ensure that Israeli aircraft did not fire upon neutral vessels in
neutral
waters. General
Mordekhai Hod, then Commander of the Israeli Air Force, and later
president of Israeli
Aircraft Industries, Ltd., also was legally responsible for the
crime
committed by his pilots,
as were the pilots themselves for carrying out obviously unlawful
orders to strafe an
unarmed neutral vassel in international water. The same criteria of
judgment rendered on the
German and Japanese war criminals of World War II would have
held these as well as
other Israeki political and military leaders individually
responsible and
accountable for their
acts of ommission and commission regarding USS Liberty massacre.
Following are details on
the massacre recounted by the distinguished former U.S.
Congressman from
Illinois, Paul Findley.
"The day of the attack
began in routine fashion, with the ship first proceeding slowly in
an
easterly direction in
the eastern Mediterranean, later following the contour of the
coastline
westerly about fifteen
miles off the Sinai Peninsula. On the mainland, Israeli forces were
winning smashing
victories in the third Arab-Israeli war in nineteen years. Israeli
Chief of
Staff Yitzhak Rabin,
announcing that the Israelis had taken the entire Sinai and broken
the
blockade on the Strait
of Tiran, declared: The Egyptians are defeated. On the eastern front
the Israelis had
overcome Jordanian forces and captured most of the West Bank.
At 6 a.m. an airplane
identified by the Liberty crew as an Israeli Noratlas circled the
ship
slowly and departed.
This procedure was repeated periodically over an eight-hour period.
At 9 a.m. a Jew appeared
at a distance, then left. At 10 a.m. two rocket-armed jets circled
the ship three times.
They were close enough for their pilots to be observed through
binoculars. The planes
were unmarked. An hour later the Israeli Noratlas returned, flying
not
more than 200 feet
directly above the Liberty and clearly marked with the Star of
David.
The ship's crew members
and the pilot waved at each other. This plane returned every few
minutes until 1 p.m.By
then, the ship had changed course and was proceeding almost due
west. At 2:00 p.m. all
hell broke loose. Three Mirage fighter planes headed straight for
the
Liberty, their rockets
taking out the forward machine guns and wrecking the ship's
antennae. The Mirages
were joined by Mystere fighters, which dropped napalm on the
bridge and deck and
repeatedly strafed the ship. The attack continued for over 20
minutes.
In all, the ship
sustained 821 holes in her sides and decks. Of these, more than 100
were
rocket size. As the
aircraft departed, three torpedo boast took over the attack firing
five
torpedoes, one of which
tore of 40-foot hole in the hull, killing 25 sailors. The ship
was in
flames, dead in the
water, listing precariously, and taking water. The crew was ordered
to
prepare to abandon ship.
As life-rafts were lowered into the water, the torpedo boats
moved closer and shot
them to pieces. One plane concentrated machine-gun fire on rafts
still on deck as crew
members there tried to extinguish the napalm fire. Petty Officer
Charles Rowley declares,
They didn't want anyone to live. Paul Findley continues: At 3:15
p.m. the last shot was
fired, leaving the vessel a combination morgue and hospital.
The
ship had no engines, no
power, no rudder. Fearing further attack, Captain Mc Gonagale,
despite severe leg
injuries, stayed at the bridge.
An Israeli helicopter,
its open bay door showing troops in battle gear and a machine gun
mounted in an open
doorway, passed close to the deck and then left. Other aircraft came
and went during the next
hour. Although U.S. air support never arrived within fifteen minutes
f the first attack and
more than an hour before the first assault ended, fighter planes
from
the USS Saratoga were in
the air ready for a rescue mission under orders to destroy or
drive off any attackers.
The carrier operation, it was prepared to respond almost instantly.
But the rescue never
occurred. Without approval by Washington, the planes could not take
aggressive action,
even to rescue a U.S. ship confirmed to be under attack. Admiral
Donald Engen, then
captain of the America, the second U.S. carrier in the vicinity,
later
explained: President
Johnson had very strict control. Even though we knew the Liberty
was
under attack, I couldn't
just go and order a rescue. The planes were hardly in the air
when
the voice of Secretary
of Defense Robert S. McNamara was heard over Sixth Fleet radios:
Tell the Sixth Fleet to
get those aircraft back immediately. They were to have no part in
destroying or driving
off the attackers.
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