By Rich Lowry
Tuesday, December 23, 2025
For elements of the anti-Israel right, it’s a time when
everything old is becoming new again.
So, a half-century-old theory that the Jewish state
deliberately attacked the USS Liberty during the Six-Day War has renewed
currency.
Conspiratorial-minded influencers hostile to Israel, like
Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, have promoted the notion, and it was a topic
of discussion at the recent TPUSA conference. One speaker said that the
official explanation “doesn’t feel like it’s good enough,” and floated his own
wild speculation (involving the complicity of LBJ).
The fact is that the devastating Israeli attack on the Liberty,
killing 34 and wounding 171, was a woeful case of mistaken identification. The
series of faulty judgments that led to the incident is so grievous that, taken
altogether, it is, indeed, nearly incomprehensible. Yet, when operating with
incomplete information in a shooting war, such accidents happen all the time.
The Israelis apologized immediately upon realizing their ghastly mistake and
offered restitution.
On June 8, 1967, the Sixth Fleet was keeping its distance
from the hostilities in the Six-Day War, fought between Israel and Egypt,
Syria, and Jordan. The USS Liberty, a spy ship, had come within 13
nautical miles of the Sinai coast, though. It requested a destroyer escort,
which was denied, and orders to the Liberty to withdraw about 100 miles
from the front were delayed in a communications tangle.
That morning, an ammunition dump ignited in the coastal
city of al-‘Arish in the Sinai, and the Israelis (wrongly) believed the
location had been shelled by Egyptian ships. The Israeli navy spotted the Liberty
heading toward Egypt and (wrongly) concluded it had been one of the attackers.
Two Israeli Mirage jets saw no identifying markings on the Liberty (a
later U.S. inquiry speculated that the flag might not have been visible for
lack of wind), and strafed the ship.
More Israeli jets napalmed the Liberty.
The absence of return fire puzzled the Israelis, who
paused to ensure they weren’t hitting an Israeli vessel. Assured it wasn’t one
of their own, they renewed the assault.
Still uneasy, they looked for identifying markers again.
They saw no flag, but made out Latin, not Arabic, letters on the hull. That
strongly suggested the vessel wasn’t Egyptian.
Yet, a squadron of torpedo boats determined that the Liberty’s
silhouette matched an Egyptian supply ship. A request for identification from
the Liberty received no affirmative reply.
The Liberty’s captain ordered his men not to shoot
at the torpedo boats, but one gunner briefly fired, and there were further
discharges from exploding ammunition. Believing they were taking incoming from
an Egyptian ship, the torpedo boats requested permission to fire and got
reluctant assent. A torpedo slammed into the Liberty, blowing a hole 24
feet tall by 39 feet wide and killing more than two dozen sailors.
Eventually, an Israeli torpedo boat picked up a raft from
the Liberty with U.S. naval markings, and the Israelis realized their
tragic error. They apologized instantly to U.S. naval attaché Ernest Carl
Castle, and an Israeli helicopter attempted to take him out to the Liberty
(the effort was foiled by darkness). The Israeli torpedo boats offered
assistance to the Liberty, which was rebuffed.
As Michael Oren points out in his history of the Six-Day
War, none of the common conspiracy theories make sense. There was no way that
Israel — desperate for U.S. support and wary of Soviet enmity — was going to
make an act of war against a friendly superpower. Nor did Israel need, as is
sometimes posited, to hide its gains in the Sinai from the U.S., or its plans
to hit Syria. It hadn’t executed Egyptian POWs, so that didn’t justify a
murderous cover-up, either.
Both official Israeli and U.S. investigations determined
that the attack was a friendly fire incident, but for Israel and the Jews in
the current environment, the truth is no defense.
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