Israel: Friends of the world and loved by all mankind

..and if you believe that, you can only be either naive or a Zionist.

Here's one in their litany of their military achievements they forgot to highlight.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident


USS Liberty incident
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It has been suggested that Ward Boston be merged into this article. (Discuss) Proposed since August 2013.
USS Liberty incident
Part of the Six-Day War
USS Liberty.jpg
Damaged USS Liberty one day (9 June 1967) after attack.
Date 8 June 1967
Location Mediterranean Sea near Sinai Peninsula[1]
Result See aftermath
Participants
Israel* United States*
Commanders and leaders
Captain Iftach Spector
Commander Moshe Oren Commander William L. McGonagle
Strength
2 Mirage IIIs
2 Mystères
3 motor torpedo boats 1 Technical research ship
Casualties and losses
None 34 killed
171 wounded
1 ship heavily damaged
*Both nations officially attributed the attack by Israel as being due to mistaken identification.[2]
[show] v t e
Six-Day War
The USS Liberty incident was an attack on a United States Navy technical research ship, USS Liberty, by Israeli Air Force jet fighter aircraft and Israeli Navy motor torpedo boats, on 8 June 1967, during the Six-Day War.[3] The combined air and sea attack killed 34 crew members (naval officers, seamen, two Marines, and one civilian), wounded 171 crew members, and severely damaged the ship.[4] At the time, the ship was in international waters north of the Sinai Peninsula, about 25.5 nmi (29.3 mi; 47.2 km) northwest from the Egyptian city of Arish.[1][5]

Israel apologized for the attack, saying that the USS Liberty had been attacked in error after being mistaken for an Egyptian ship.[6] Both the Israeli and U.S. governments conducted inquiries and issued reports that concluded the attack was a mistake due to Israeli confusion about the ship's identity,[2] though others, including survivors of the attack, have rejected these conclusions and maintain that the attack was deliberate.[7]

In May 1968, the Israeli government paid US$3,323,500 (US$22.5 million in 2014) as full payment to the families of the 34 men killed in the attack. In March 1969, Israel paid a further $3,566,457 in compensation to the men who had been wounded. On 18 December 1980, it agreed to pay $6 million as settlement for the final U.S. bill of $17,132,709 for material damage to the Liberty herself plus 13 years' interest.[8]

Contents [hide]
1 USS Liberty
2 Attack on the Liberty
2.1 Events leading to the attack
2.2 Visual contact
2.3 Air and sea attacks
2.4 Aftermath of the attack
3 Investigations of the attack
3.1 U.S. government investigations
3.2 Israeli government investigations
4 Ongoing controversy and unresolved questions
5 NSA tapes and recent developments
6 Details in dispute
7 References
7.1 Bibliography
8 Further reading
9 External links
9.1 U.S. government sites
9.1.1 Declassified State Department
9.1.2 Declassified National Security Agency
9.2 Sources saying attack was a mistake
9.3 Sources saying attack was deliberate
USS Liberty[edit]
Main article: USS Liberty (AGTR-5)
USS Liberty was originally the 7,725 long tons (7,849 t) (light) civilian cargo vessel Simmons Victory, a mass-produced, standard-design Victory Ship, the follow-on series to the famous Liberty Ships, which supplied the United Kingdom and Allied troops with cargo. It was acquired by the United States Navy, converted to an Auxiliary Technical Research Ship (AGTR),[9] and began its first deployment in 1965, to waters off the west coast of Africa. It carried out several more operations during the next two years.

Attack on the Liberty[edit]
Events leading to the attack[edit]
During the Six-Day War between Israel and several Arab nations, the United States of America maintained a neutral country status.[10] Several days before the war began, the USS Liberty was ordered to proceed to the eastern Mediterranean area to perform a signals intelligence collection mission in international waters near the north coast of Sinai, Egypt.[11] After the war erupted, due to concerns about her safety as she approached her patrol area, several messages were sent to Liberty to increase her allowable closest point of approach (CPA) to Egypt's and Israel's coasts from 12.5 and 6.5 nmi (14.4 and 7.5 mi; 23.2 and 12.0 km), respectively, to 20 and 15 nmi (23 and 17 mi; 37 and 28 km), and then later to 100 nmi (120 mi; 190 km) for both countries.[12] Unfortunately, due to ineffective message handling and routing, the CPA change messages were not received until after the attack.[12]

According to Israeli sources, at the start of the war on 5 June, General Yitzhak Rabin (then IDF Chief of Staff) informed Commander Ernest Carl Castle, the American Naval Attaché in Tel Aviv, that Israel would defend its coast with every means at its disposal, including sinking unidentified ships. Also, he asked the U.S. to keep its ships away from Israel's shore or at least inform Israel of their exact position.[13][14]

American sources said that no inquiry about ships in the area was made until after the Liberty attack ended. In a message sent from U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk to U.S. Ambassador Walworth Barbour, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Rusk asked for "urgent confirmation" of Israel's statement. Barbour responded: "No request for info on U.S. ships operating off Sinai was made until after Liberty incident." Further, Barbour stated: "Had Israelis made such an inquiry it would have been forwarded immediately to the chief of naval operations and other high naval commands and repeated to dept [Department of State]."[15]

With the outbreak of war, Captain William L. McGonagle of the Liberty immediately asked Vice Admiral William I. Martin at the United States Sixth Fleet headquarters to send a destroyer to accompany the Liberty and serve as its armed escort and as an auxiliary communications center. The following day, 6 June, Admiral Martin replied: "Liberty is a clearly marked United States ship in international waters, not a participant in the conflict and not a reasonable subject for attack by any nation. Request denied."[16] He promised, however, that in the unlikely event of an inadvertent attack, jet fighters from the Sixth Fleet would be overhead in ten minutes.

Meanwhile, on 6 June, at the United Nations, in response to United Arab Republic complaints that the United States was supporting Israel in the conflict, U.S. Ambassador Arthur Goldberg said to the Security Council that aircraft of the Sixth Fleet were several hundred miles from the conflict,[12] indicating that elements of the Sixth Fleet itself were far from the conflict. When the statement was made this was the case, since Liberty, now assigned to the Sixth Fleet, was in the central Mediterranean Sea, passing between Libya and Crete;[17] but she would ultimately steam to about 13 nmi (15 mi; 24 km) north of the Sinai Peninsula.[18]

On the night of 7 June Washington time, early morning on 8 June, 01:10Z or 3:10 am local time, the Pentagon issued an order to Sixth Fleet headquarters to tell the Liberty to come no closer than 100 nmi (120 mi; 190 km) to Israel, Syria, or the Sinai coast (Oren, p. 263).[19] (pages 5 and Exhibit N, page 58).

According to the Naval Court of Inquiry[20] (p. 23 ff, p. 111 ff) and National Security Agency official history,[21] the order to withdraw was not sent on the radio frequency that USS Liberty monitored for her orders until 15:25 Zulu, several hours after the attack, due to a long series of administrative and message routing problems. The Navy said a large volume of unrelated high-precedence traffic, including intelligence intercepts related to the conflict, were being handled at the time; and that this combined with a shortage of qualified Radiomen contributed to delayed sending of the withdrawal message.[20] (p. 111 ff)

Visual contact[edit]
Official testimony combined with Liberty's deck log say that throughout the morning of the attack, 8 June, the ship was overflown, at various times and locations, by Israeli Air Force (IAF) aircraft.[18] The primary aircraft type was the Nord Noratlas, in addition to two unidentified delta-wing jets at about 9:00 am Sinai time (GMT+2).[18] Liberty crewmembers say that one of the Noratlas aircraft flew so close to Liberty that noise from its propellers rattled the ship's deck plating, and that the pilots and crewmembers waved to each other.[22] It was later reported, based on information from Israel Defense Forces sources, that the over-flights were coincidental, and that the aircraft were hunting for Egyptian submarines previously spotted near the coast.[23]

At about 5:45 am Sinai time (GMT+2), a ship-sighting report was initially received at Israeli Central Coastal Command (CCC) about Liberty, identified by an aerial naval observer as "apparently a destroyer, sailing 70 miles west of Gaza."[24] The vessel's location was marked on a CCC Control Table, using a red marker, indicating an unidentified vessel.[25] At about 6:00 am, the aerial naval observer reported that the ship appeared like a U.S. Navy supply ship; the red marker was replaced with a green marker to indicate a neutral vessel, at about 9:00 am.[25] Also, at about 9:00 am, an Israeli jet fighter pilot reported that a ship 20 miles north of Arish had fired at his aircraft after he tried to identify the vessel.[25] Israeli naval command dispatched two destroyers to investigate, but they were returned to their previous positions at 9:40 am after doubts emerged during the pilot's debriefing.[25] After the naval observer's Noratlas landed and he was debriefed, the ship he saw was further identified as the USS Liberty, based on its "GTR-5" hull markings.[26] USS Liberty's marker was removed from CCC's Control Table at 11:00 am, due to its positional information being considered stale.[27]

At 11:24 am, Israeli Chief of Naval Operations received a report that Arish was being shelled from the sea.[28] An inquiry into the source of the report was ordered to determine its validity.[28] The report came from an Air Support Officer in Arish.[29] Additionally, at 11:27 am Israeli Supreme Command Head of Operations received a report stating that a ship had been shelling Arish, but the shells had fallen short.[29] (Investigative journalist James Bamford points out that Liberty had only four .50 caliber machine guns mounted on her decks and, thus, could not have shelled the coast.[30] ) The Head of Operations ordered that the report be verified, and determine whether or not Israeli Navy vessels were off the coast of Arish.[29] At 11:45 am, another report arrived at Supreme Command saying two ships were approaching the Arish coast.[29]

The shelling and ships reports were passed from Supreme Command to Fleet Operations Control Center.[29] The Chief of Naval Operations took them seriously, and at 12:05 pm torpedo boat Division 914 was ordered to patrol in the direction of Arish.[29]

Division 914, codenamed "Pagoda", was under the command of Commander Moshe Oren.[29] It consisted of three torpedo boats numbered: T-203, T-204 and T-206.[29] At 12:15 pm, Division 914 received orders to patrol a position 20 miles north of Arish.[29] As Commander Oren headed toward Arish, he was informed by Naval Operations of the reported shelling of Arish and told that IAF aircraft would be dispatched to the area after the target had been detected.[29]

Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin was concerned that the supposed Egyptian shelling was the prelude to an amphibious landing that could outflank Israeli forces. Rabin reiterated the standing order to sink any unidentified ships in the area, but advised caution, as Soviet vessels were reportedly operating nearby.[23]

At 1:41 pm, the torpedo boats detected an unknown vessel 20 miles northwest of Arish and 14 miles off the coast of Bardawil.[1][31] The ship's speed was estimated on their radars.[31] The Combat Information Center officer on T-204, Ensign Aharon Yifrah, reported to the boat's captain, Commander Moshe Oren, that the target had been detected at a range of 22 miles, that her speed had been tracked for a few minutes, after which he had determined that the target was moving westward at a speed of 30 knots. These data were forwarded to the Fleet Operations Control Center.[31]

The speed of the target was significant because it indicated that the target was a combat vessel.[31] Moreover, Israeli forces had standing orders to fire on any unknown vessels sailing in the area at over 20 knots, a speed which, at the time, could only be attained by warships. The Chief of Naval Operations asked the torpedo boats to double-check their calculations. Yifrah twice recalculated and confirmed his assessment.[23][31] A few minutes later, Commander Oren reported that the target, now 17 miles from his position, was moving at a speed of 28 knots on a different heading.[32] Bamford, however, points out that the Liberty's top speed was far below 28 knots. His sources say that at the time of the attack the Liberty was following its signal-intercept mission course along the northern Sinai coast, at about 5 knots speed.[30]

The data on the ship's speed, together with its direction, indicated that it was an Egyptian destroyer fleeing toward port after shelling Arish. The torpedo boats gave chase, but did not expect to overtake their target before it reached Egypt. Commander Oren requested that the Israeli Air Force dispatch aircraft to intercept.[23][31] At 1:48 pm, the Chief of Naval Operations requested dispatch of fighter aircraft to the ship's location.[33]


Hunt-class destroyer HMS Blean. The Egyptian Navy had Hunt-class destroyers in 1967
The IAF dispatched two Mirage III fighter jets that arrived at Liberty at about 2:00 pm.[34] The formation leader, Captain Iftach Spector, attempted to identify the ship.[34] He communicated via radio to one of the torpedo boats his observation that the ship appeared like a military ship with one smokestack and one mast.[35] Also, he communicated, in effect, that the ship appeared to him like a destroyer or another type of small ship.[35] In a post-attack statement, the pilots said they saw no distinguishable markings or flag on the ship.[35]

At this point, Colonel Yeshyahu Barekat, the Chief of Air Force Intelligence, contacted US Naval attaché Castle in an attempt to ascertain whether the suspect ship was the Liberty.[citation needed] Castle reportedly professed no knowledge of the Liberty's schedule, a statement later denied by Castle.[citation needed] Also at this point, a recorded exchange took place between a command headquarters weapons systems officer, one of the air controllers, and the chief air controller questioning a possible American presence. Immediately after the exchange, at 1:57 pm, the chief air controller, Lieutenant-Colonel Shmuel Kislev, cleared the Mirages to attack.[23] [36]

Air and sea attacks[edit]
After being cleared to attack, the Mirages dove on the ship and attacked with 30-mm cannons and rockets.[37] The attack came a few minutes after the crew completed a chemical attack drill, with Captain McGonagle on the command bridge.[38] The crew was in "stand-down mode", with their helmets and life jackets removed,[23] except battle readiness "modified condition three" was set which meant that the ship's four .50 caliber machine guns were manned and ammunition ready for loading and firing.[39][40] Eight crewmen were either killed immediately or died later, and 75 were wounded.[41] Among the wounded was McGonagle, who was hit in the right thigh and arm.[42] During the attack, antennas were severed, gas drums caught fire, and the ship's flag was knocked down. McGonagle sent an urgent request for help to the Sixth Fleet, "Under attack by unidentified jet aircraft, require immediate assistance."

The Mirages left after expending their ammunition, and were replaced by two Dassault Mysteres armed with napalm bombs. The Mysteres released their payloads over the ship and strafed it with their cannons. Much of the ship's superstructure caught fire.[23][43] The Mysteres were readying to attack again when the Israeli Navy, alerted by the absence of return fire, warned Kislev that the target could be Israeli. Kislev told the pilots not to attack if there was any doubt about identification, and the Israeli Navy quickly contacted all of its vessels in the area. The Israeli Navy found that none of its vessels were under fire, and the aircraft were cleared to attack. However, Kislev was still disturbed by a lack of return fire, and requested one last attempt to identify the ship. Captain Yossi Zuk, leader of the Mystere formation, made an attempt at identification while strafing the ship. He reported seeing no flag, but saw the ship's GTR-5 marking. Kislev immediately ordered the attack stopped. Kislev guessed that the ship was American.[23]

The fact that the ship had Latin alphabet markings led Chief of Staff Rabin to fear that the ship was Soviet. Though Egyptian warships were known to disguise their identities with Western markings, they usually displayed Arabic letters and numbers only. Rabin ordered the torpedo boats to remain at a safe distance from the ship, and sent in two Hornet helicopters to search for survivors. These radio communications were recorded by Israel. The order also was recorded in the torpedo boat's log, although Commander Oren alleged not to have received it. The order to cease fire was given at 2:20 pm, 24 minutes before the torpedo boats arrived at the Liberty's position.[44] At 2:35 pm, Liberty was hit by a torpedo launched from one of the torpedo boats.[45]

During the interval, crewmen aboard the Liberty hoisted a large American flag to be clearly identified. During the early part of the air attack and before the torpedo boats were visually sighted, Liberty sent a distress message that was received by Sixth Fleet aircraft carrier USS Saratoga.[46] Aircraft carrier USS America dispatched eight aircraft. The carrier had been in the middle of strategic exercises. Vice-Admiral William I. Martin recalled the aircraft minutes later.[23]


Israeli Motor Torpedo Boats in formation, circa 1967
McGonagle testified at the naval court of inquiry that during "the latter moments of the air attack, it was noted that three high speed boats were approaching the ship from the northeast on a relative bearing of approximately 135 [degrees] at a distance of about 15 [nautical] miles. The ship at the time was still on [westward] course 283 [degrees] true, speed unknown, but believed to be in excess of five knots."[20]:38 McGonagle testified that he "believed that the time of initial sighting of the torpedo boats ... was about 1420" (2:20 pm local time), and that the "boats appeared to be in a wedge type formation with the center boat the lead point of the wedge. Estimated speed of the boats was about 27 to 30 knots [50 to 56 km/h]," and that it "appeared that they were approaching the ship in a torpedo launch attitude."[20]:38

When the torpedo boats arrived, Commander Oren could see that the ship could not be the destroyer that had supposedly shelled Arish or any ship capable of 30 knots (56 km/h) speed. Oren believed it was a slower-moving vessel that had either serviced the destroyer or evacuated enemy soldiers from the beach.[citation needed] He ordered the squadron not to attack pending better identification "although this was difficult due to the billowing clouds of smoke that enveloped the vessel; only her bow, part of her bridge and the tip of her mast could be discerned."[citation needed] At 6,000 meters, T-204 paused and signalled "AA" – "identify yourself."[citation needed] Due to damaged equipment, McGonagle could only reply with "AA" using a handheld Aldis lamp.[citation needed] Oren recalled receiving a similar response from the Ibrahim el Awal, an Egyptian destroyer captured by Israel during the Suez Crisis, and was convinced that he was facing an enemy ship.[citation needed]

He consulted an Israeli identification guide to Arab fleets and concluded the ship was the Egyptian supply ship El Quseir, based on observing its deckline, midship bridge and smokestack. The captain of boat T203 reached the same conclusion independently. The boats organized into battle formation, but did not attack.[44][47]


Liberty turns to evade Israeli torpedo boats
As the torpedo boats rapidly approached, Captain McGonagle ordered a sailor to proceed to machine gun Mount 51 and open fire.[20]:38 However, he noticed that the boats appeared to be flying an Israeli flag, and "realized that there was a possibility of the aircraft having been Israeli and the attack had been conducted in error."[20]:39 Captain McGonagle ordered the man at gun mount 51 to hold fire, but a short burst was fired at the torpedo boats before the man was able to understand the order.[20]:39 McGonagle observed that machine gun Mount 53 began firing at the center torpedo boat at about the same time gun mount 51 fired, and that its fire was "extremely effective and blanketed the area and the center torpedo boat."[20]:39 Machine gun mount 53 was located on the starboard amidships side, behind the pilot house.[20]:16 McGonagle could not see or "get to mount 53 from the starboard wing of the bridge."[20]:39 So, he "sent Mr. Lucas around the port side of the bridge, around to the skylights, to see if he could tell [Seaman] Quintero, whom [he] believed to be the gunner on Machine gun 53, to hold fire."[20]:39

Ensign Lucas "reported back in a few minutes in effect that he saw no one at mount 53."[20]:39 Lucas, who had left the command bridge during the air attack and returned to assist Captain McGonagle immediately before a torpedo hit the ship,[20]:14 believed that the gunfire sound was likely from ammunition cooking off, due to a nearby fire.[20]:16 Prior to this time, after a torpedo hit the ship, Lucas had granted a request from Quintero to fire at the torpedo boats before heat from a nearby fire chased him from gun mount 53.[20]:26,27 (McGonagle later testified, at the Court of Inquiry, that this was likely the "extremely effective" firing event he had observed.[20]:49)

After coming under fire, Commander Oren repeatedly requested permission from naval headquarters to return fire, and chief naval controller Izzy Rahav finally approved.[citation needed] Shelling by the torpedo boats killed Liberty's helmsman.[45] The torpedo boats then launched five torpedoes at the Liberty.[48] At 1235Z (2:35 local time)[45] a torpedo hit Liberty on the starboard side forward of the superstructure, creating a 40 ft (12 m) wide hole in what had been a former cargo hold converted to the ship's research spaces and killing 25 servicemen, almost all of them from the intelligence section, and wounding dozens.[23][49] It has been said the torpedo hit a major hull frame that absorbed much of the energy; crew members reported that if the torpedo had missed the frame the Liberty would have split in two. Russian linguist and U.S. Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Bryce Lockwood later commented: "I would never deny that it was God that kept the Liberty afloat!".[7] The other four torpedoes missed the ship.

The torpedo boats then closed in and strafed the ship's hull with their cannons and machine guns.[citation needed] According to some crewmen, the torpedo boats fired at damage control parties and sailors preparing life rafts for launch. (See disputed details below.) A life raft which floated from the ship was picked up by T-203 and found to bear US Navy markings. T-204 then circled the Liberty, and Oren spotted the designation GTR-5, but saw no flag.[citation needed] It took until 3:30 pm to establish the ship's identity. Shortly before the Liberty's identity was confirmed, the Saratoga launched eight aircraft armed with conventional weapons towards the Liberty. After the ship's identity was confirmed, the General Staff was notified and an apology was sent to naval attaché Castle. The aircraft approaching the Liberty were recalled to the Saratoga.[23]

Aftermath of the attack[edit]

The 6th Fleet flagship, USS Little Rock standing by the Liberty
According to transcripts of intercepted radio communications, published by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), at about 2:30 pm, near the beginning of the torpedo boat attack, two IAF helicopters were dispatched to Liberty's location. The helicopters arrived at about 3:10 pm, about 35 minutes after a torpedo hit the ship. After arriving, one of the helicopter pilots was asked, by his ground-based controller, to verify that the ship was flying an American flag. The helicopters conducted a brief search for crew members of the ship who may have fallen overboard during the air attack. No one was found. The helicopters left the ship at about 3:20 pm.

At about 4 pm, two hours after the attack began, Israel informed the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv that its military forces had mistakenly attacked a U.S. Navy ship. When the ship was "confirmed to be American" the torpedo boats returned at about 4:40 pm to offer help;[50] it was refused by the Liberty. Later, Israel provided a helicopter to fly U.S. naval attaché Commander Castle to the ship.[51] (pp. 32,34)

In Washington, President Lyndon B. Johnson had received word from the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the Liberty had been torpedoed by an unknown vessel at 9:50 am eastern time. Johnson assumed that the Soviets were involved, and hotlined Moscow with news of the attack and the dispatch of jets from the Saratoga. He chose not to make any public statements and delegated this task to Phil G. Goulding, who was an Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs at a time.[52]

Soon afterward, the Israelis said that they had mistakenly attacked the ship. The Johnson administration conveyed "strong dismay" to Israeli ambassador Avraham Harman. Meanwhile, apologies were soon sent by Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, Foreign Minister Abba Eban, and chargé d'affaires Efraim Evron. Within 48 hours, Israel offered to compensate the victims and their families.[44]

Though the Liberty was severely damaged, with a 39 ft wide by 24 ft high (12 m x 7.3 m) hole and a twisted keel, her crew kept her afloat, and she was able to leave the area under her own power. The Liberty was later met by the destroyers USS Davis and USS Massey, and the cruiser USS Little Rock. Medical personnel were transferred to the Liberty, and it was escorted to Malta, where it was given interim repairs. After these were completed in July 1967, Liberty returned to the U.S. She was decommissioned in June 1968 and struck from the Naval Vessel Register. Liberty was transferred to United States Maritime Administration (MARAD) in December 1970 and sold for scrap in 1973.

From the start, the response to Israeli statements of mistaken identity ranged between frank disbelief and unquestioning acceptance within the administration in Washington. A communication to the Israeli Ambassador on 10 June, by Secretary Rusk stated, among other things: "At the time of the attack, the USS Liberty was flying the American flag and its identification was clearly indicated in large white letters and numerals on its hull. ... Experience demonstrates that both the flag and the identification number of the vessel were readily visible from the air.... Accordingly, there is every reason to believe that the USS Liberty was identified, or at least her nationality determined, by Israeli aircraft approximately one hour before the attack. ... The subsequent attack by the torpedo boats, substantially after the vessel was or should have been identified by Israeli military forces, manifests the same reckless disregard for human life."[53]


National Cryptologic Memorial. Many names are of those killed on 8 June 1967
George Lenczowski notes: "It was significant that, in contrast to his secretary of state, President Johnson fully accepted the Israeli version of the tragic incident." He notes that Johnson himself only included one small paragraph about the Liberty in his autobiography,[54] in which he accepted the Israeli explanation of "error", but also minimized the whole affair and distorted the actual number of dead and wounded, by lowering them from 34 to 10 and 171 to 100, respectively. Lenczowski further states: “It seems Johnson was more interested in avoiding a possible confrontation with the Soviet Union, ...than in restraining Israel.”[55]

McGonagle received the Medal of Honor, the highest U.S. medal, for his actions.[56][57] The Medal of Honor is generally presented by the President of the United States in the White House,[57][58] but this time it was awarded at the Washington Navy Yard by the Secretary of the Navy in an unpublicized ceremony, breaking with established tradition.[57]

Other Liberty sailors received decorations for their actions during and after the attack, but most of the award citations omitted mention of Israel as the perpetrator. In 2009, however, a Silver Star awarded to crewmember Terry Halbardier, who braved machine-gun and cannon fire to repair a damaged antenna that restored the ship's communications, in the award citation named Israel as the attacker.[59]

Investigations of the attack[edit]
U.S. government investigations[edit]

Torpedo damage to Liberty's research compartment (Starboard side)
American inquiries, memoranda, records of testimony, and various reports involving or mentioning the Liberty attack include, but are not limited to, the following:

U.S. Naval Court of Inquiry of June 1967
Joint Chief of Staff's Report of June 1967.
CIA Intelligence Memorandums of June 1967
Clark Clifford Report of July 1967
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Testimony during hearings of the 1967 Foreign Aid Authorization bill, July 1967
House Armed Services Committee Investigation of 1971
The NSA History Report of 1981
The U.S. Naval Court of Inquiry record contains testimony by fourteen Liberty crew members and five subject matter experts; exhibits of attack damage photographs, various messages and memorandums; and findings of fact. The testimony record reveals "a shallow investigation, plagued by myriad disagreements between the captain and his crew."[60] As to culpability, "It was not the responsibility of the court to rule on the culpability of the attackers, and no evidence was heard from the attacking nation", the court concluded that "available evidence combines to indicate ... (that the attack was) a case of mistaken identity." Additionally, the Court found that "heroism displayed by the Commanding Officer, officers and men of the Liberty was exceptional."

The Joint Chief of Staff's Report contains findings of fact related only to communication system failures associated with the Liberty attack. It was not concerned with matters of culpability, nor does it contain statements thereof.

The CIA Memoranda consist of two documents: one dated June 13, 1967, and the other dated June 21, 1967. The June 13 memorandum is an "account of circumstances of the attack ... compiled from all available sources." The June 21 memorandum is a point-by-point analysis of Israeli inquiry findings of fact. It concludes: "The attack was not made in malice toward the U.S. and was by mistake, but the failure of the IDF Headquarters and the attacking aircraft to identify the Liberty and the subsequent attack by torpedo boats were both incongruous and indicative of gross negligence."

The Clark Clifford Report consists of a review of "all available information on the subject" and "deals with the question of Israeli culpability", according to its transmittal memorandum. The report concludes: "The unprovoked attack on the Liberty constitutes a flagrant act of gross negligence for which the Israeli Government should be held completely responsible, and the Israeli military personnel involved should be punished."

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee Testimony contains, as an aside matter during hearings concerning a foreign aid authorization bill, questions and statements from several senators and responses from then Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, about the Liberty attack. For the most part, the senators were dismayed about the attack, as expressed by Senator Bourke B. Hickenlooper: "From what I have read I can't tolerate for one minute that this [attack] was an accident." Also, there was concern about obtaining more information about the attack, as expressed by Committee chairman J. William Fulbright: "We asked for [the attack investigation report] about two weeks ago and have not received it yet from Secretary Rusk. ... By the time we get to it we will be on some other subject." Secretary McNamara promised fast delivery of the investigation report ("... you will have it in four hours."), and concluded his remarks by saying: "I simply want to emphasize that the investigative report does not show any evidence of a conscious intent to attack a U.S. vessel."[61]

The House Armed Services Committee investigation report is titled, "Review of Department of Defense Worldwide Communications". It was not an investigation focused on the Liberty attack; although, the committee's report contains a section that describes communications flow involved with the Liberty incident.

The NSA History Report is, as its name connotes, a historical report that cited the U.S. Naval Court of Inquiry record, various military and government messages and memorandum, and personal interviews for its content. The report ends with a section entitled, "Unanswered Questions", and provides no conclusion regarding culpability.

The Liberty Veterans Association (composed of veterans from the ship) states that U.S. congressional investigations and other U.S. investigations were not actually investigations into the attack, but rather reports using evidence only from the U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry, or investigations unrelated to culpability that involved issues such as communications. In their view, the U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry is the only actual investigation on the incident to date. They say it was hastily conducted, in only 10 days, even though the court's president, Rear Admiral Isaac Kidd, said that it would take six months to conduct properly. The inquiry's terms of reference were limited to whether any shortcomings on the part of the Liberty's crew had contributed to the injuries and deaths that resulted from the attack.[62] According to the Navy Court of Inquiry's record of proceedings, four days were spent hearing testimony: two days for fourteen survivors of the attack and several U.S. Navy expert witnesses, and two partial days for two expert U.S. Navy witnesses. No testimony was heard from Israeli personnel involved.

The National Archives in College Park, Maryland includes in its files on casualties from the Liberty copies of the original telegrams the Navy sent out to family members. The telegrams called the attack accidental. The telegrams were sent out June 9, the day before the Navy Court of Inquiry convened.

Israeli government investigations[edit]
Two subsequent Israeli inquiry reports and an historical report concluded the attack was conducted because Liberty was confused with an Egyptian vessel and because of failures in communications between Israel and the U.S. The three Israeli reports were:

Fact Finding Inquiry by Colonel Ram Ron ("Ram Ron Report"—June 1967)[63]
Preliminary Inquiry (Hearing) by Examining Judge Yeshayahu Yerushalmi ("Yerushalmi Report"—July 1967)[64] (Adjudication of IDF negligence complaints.)
Historical Report "The Liberty Incident"—IDF History Department Report (1982)[65]
In the historical report, it was acknowledged that IDF naval headquarters knew at least three hours before the attack that the ship was "an electromagnetic audio-surveillance ship of the U.S. Navy" but concluded that this information had simply "gotten lost, never passed along to the ground controllers who directed the air attack nor to the crews of the three Israeli torpedo boats."

The Israeli government said that three crucial errors were made: the refreshing of the status board (removing the ship's classification as American, so that the later shift did not see it identified), the erroneous identification of the ship as an Egyptian vessel, and the lack of notification from the returning aircraft informing Israeli headquarters of markings on the front of the hull (markings that would not be found on an Egyptian ship). As a common root of these problems, Israel blamed the combination of alarm and fatigue experienced by the Israeli forces at that point of the war when pilots were severely overworked.

After conducting his own fact-finding inquiry and reviewing evidence, Judge Yerushalmi's decision was: "I have not discovered any deviation from the standard of reasonable conduct which would justify committal of anyone for trial." In other words, he found no negligence by any IDF member associated with the attack.

Ongoing controversy and unresolved questions[edit]
There are intelligence and military officials who dispute Israel's explanation.[66]

Dean Rusk, U.S. Secretary of State at the time of the incident, wrote:

I was never satisfied with the Israeli explanation. Their sustained attack to disable and sink Liberty precluded an assault by accident or some trigger-happy local commander. Through diplomatic channels we refused to accept their explanations. I didn't believe them then, and I don't believe them to this day. The attack was outrageous.[67]

Retired naval Lieutenant Commander James Ennes, a junior officer (and off-going Officer of the Deck) on Liberty's bridge at the time of the attack, authored a book titled Assault on the Liberty describing the incident during the Six Day War in June 1967 and saying, among other things, it was deliberate.[68] Ennes and Joe Meadors, also survivors of the attack, run a website about the incident.[69] Meadors states that the classification of the attack as deliberate is the official policy of the USS Liberty Veterans Association,[70] to which survivors and other former crew members belong. Other survivors run several additional websites. Citing Ennes's book, Lenczowski notes: Liberty's personnel received firm orders not to say anything to anybody about the attack, and the naval inquiry was conducted in such a way as to earn it the name of "coverup".[55]

In 2002, Captain Ward Boston, JAGC, U.S. Navy, senior counsel for the Court of Inquiry, said that the Court of Inquiry's findings were intended to cover up what was a deliberate attack by Israel on a ship it knew to be American. In 2004, in response to the publication of Jay Cristol's book The Liberty Incident, which Boston said was an "insidious attempt to whitewash the facts" he prepared and signed an affidavit in which he said that Admiral Kidd had told him that the government ordered Kidd to falsely report that the attack was a mistake, and that he and Kidd both believed the attack was deliberate.[71] On the issue Boston wrote, in part:

The evidence was clear. Both Admiral Kidd and I believed with certainty that this attack, which killed 34 American sailors and injured 172 others, was a deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew. Each evening, after hearing testimony all day, we often spoke our private thoughts concerning what we had seen and heard. I recall Admiral Kidd repeatedly referring to the Israeli forces responsible for the attack as 'murderous bastards.' It was our shared belief, based on the documentary evidence and testimony we received first hand, that the Israeli attack was planned and deliberate, and could not possibly have been an accident.

Cristol wrote about Boston's professional qualifications and integrity, on page 149 of his book:

Boston brought two special assets in addition to his skill as a Navy lawyer. He had been a naval aviator in World War II and therefore had insight beyond that of one qualified only in the law. Also, Kidd knew him as a man of integrity. On an earlier matter Boston had been willing to bump heads with Kidd when Boston felt it was more important to do the right thing than to curry favor with the senior who would write his fitness report.

Cristol believes that Boston is not telling the truth about Kidd's views and any pressure from the U.S. government.[72] A. Jay Cristol, who also served as an officer of the U.S. Navy's Judge Advocate General, suggests that Boston was responsible in part for the original conclusions of the Court of Inquiry, and that by later declaring that they were false he has admitted to "lying under oath." Cristol also notes that Boston's statements about pressure on Kidd were hearsay, and that Kidd was not alive to confirm or deny them. He also notes that Boston did not maintain prior to his affidavit and comments related to it that Kidd spoke of such instructions to him or to others. Finally, he provides a handwritten 1991 letter from Admiral Kidd[73] that, according to Cristol, "suggest that Ward Boston has either a faulty memory or a vivid imagination".

The Anti-Defamation League supports Cristol's opinion:

... according to his own account, Boston's evidence of a cover-up derives not from his own part in the investigation but solely on alleged conversations with Admiral Kidd, who purportedly told him he was forced to find that the attack was unintentional. Kidd died in 1999 and there is no way to verify Boston's statements. However, Cristol argues that the 'documentary record' strongly indicated that Kidd 'supported the validity of the findings of the Court of Inquiry to his dying day.'[74]

However, according to James Ennes, Admiral Kidd urged him and his group to keep pressing for an open congressional probe.[75]

The following arguments, found in official reports or other sources, were published to support that the attack was due to mistaken identity:

Accidents do occur in wartime. According to journalist Ze'ev Schiff, the day before the attack on the Liberty, Israeli aircraft had bombed an Israeli armored column south of the West Bank town of Jenin, demonstrating such mistakes do happen.[76]
The incident took place during the Six Day War when Israel was engaged in battles with two Arab countries and preparing to attack a third, creating an environment where mistakes and confusion were prevalent. For example, at 11:45, a few hours before the attack, there was a large explosion on the shores of El-Arish followed by black smoke, probably caused by the destruction of an ammunition dump by retreating Egyptian forces. The Israeli army thought the area was being bombarded, and that an unidentified ship offshore was responsible. (According to U.S. sources, Liberty was 14 nmi (16 mi; 26 km) from those shores at the time of the explosion.)
As the torpedo boats rapidly approached, Liberty opened fire on them. This was after the aerial attacks. At the inquiry, Commander McGonagle expressed that the torpedo boats appeared to be approaching in an attack formation. Thus, he sent a person to the forward machine gun to fire at them. After several shots were fired, McGonagle ordered cease fire. Then a machine gun on 03 level sounded like it was firing, but nobody was seen at the gun. McGonagle said that he felt sure the torpedo boat captains believed they were under fire from the Liberty. Ensign Lucas, the ship's gunnery officer who left the bridge shortly after the beginning of the air attack and then returned during the torpedo boat attack, testified that he gave permission for manned firing of the 03 level machine gun after the torpedo boats began firing at Liberty. Then, later when the gun was unmanned, heat from a nearby fire apparently caused machine gun rounds at the 03 level gun to explode.[20]
Admiral Shlomo Erell, former head of the Israeli Navy in 1967, states that no successful argument of benefit has been presented for Israel purposely attacking an American warship, especially considering the high cost of predictable complications that would follow after attacking a powerful ally, and the fact that Israel notified the American embassy immediately after the attack.[77]

Amidships starboard hull and superstructure attack damage
Several books and the BBC documentary USS Liberty: Dead in the Water argued that Liberty was attacked in order to prevent the U.S. from knowing about the forthcoming attack in the Golan Heights, which would violate a cease-fire to which Israel's government had agreed.[78] However, Syria did not accept the cease fire until 9 June, after the attack on Liberty.[79] Russian author Joseph Daichman, in his book "History of the Mossad" states Israel was justified in attacking the Liberty.[80] Israel knew that American radio signals were intercepted by the Soviet Union and that the Soviets would certainly inform Egypt of the fact that, by moving troops to the Golan Heights, Israel had left the Egyptian border undefended.[81]

Lenczowski notes that while the Israeli decision to "attack and destroy" the ship "may appear puzzling", the explanation seems to be found in Liberty's nature and its task to monitor communications on both sides in the war zone. He writes, "Israel clearly did not want the U.S. government to know too much about its dispositions for attacking Syria, initially planned for 8 June, but postponed for 24 hours. It should be pointed out that the attack on Liberty occurred on 8 June, whereas on 9 June at 3 am, Syria announced its acceptance of the cease-fire. Despite this, at 7 am, that is, four hours later, Israel's minister of defense, Moshe Dayan, "gave the order to go into action against Syria."[82] He further writes that timely knowledge of this decision and preparatory moves toward it "might have frustrated Israeli designs for the conquest of Syria’s Golan Heights" and, in the sense of Ennes’s accusations, provides "a plausible thesis that Israel deliberately decided to incapacitate the signals-collecting American ship and leave no one alive to tell the story of the attack."[83]

U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Barbour, had reported on the day of the Liberty attack that he "would not be surprised" by an Israeli attack on Syria, and the IDF Intelligence chief told a White House aide then in Israel that "there still remained the Syria problem and perhaps it would be necessary to give Syria a blow."[84]

The 1981 book Weapons by Russell Warren Howe says that Liberty was accompanied by the Polaris ballistic missile-armed Lafayette-class submarine USS Andrew Jackson, which filmed the entire episode through its periscope but was unable to provide assistance. According to Howe: "Two hundred feet below the ship, on a parallel course, was its 'shadow'—the Polaris strategic submarine Andrew Jackson, whose job was to take out all the Israeli long-range missile sites in the Negev if Tel Aviv decided to attack Cairo, Damascus or Baghdad. This was in order that Moscow would not have to perform this task itself and thus trigger World War Three."[85]

James Bamford, a former ABC News producer, in his 2001 book Body of Secrets,[86] says Israel deliberately attacked Liberty to prevent the discovery of what he described as war crimes, including the killing of Egyptian prisoners of war by the IDF that he alleges was taking place around the same time in the nearby town of El-Arish.[87] However according to CAMERA his claim that 400 were executed has been cast into doubt since reporters present in the town claimed that there had in fact been a large battle and this was the main cause of casualties.[88] Bamford also claimed that eyewitness Gabi Bron had claimed he saw 150 people executed by Israeli troops at El-Arish.[86] However Gabi Bron claimed to have only seen 5 people executed by Israeli troops.[89][90]

The press release for the BBC documentary film Dead in the Water states that new recorded and other evidence suggests the attack was a "daring ploy by Israel to fake an Egyptian attack" to give America a reason to enter the war against Egypt. Convinced that the attack was real, President of the United States Lyndon B. Johnson launched allegedly nuclear-armed aircraft targeted against Cairo from a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean. The aircraft were recalled only just in time, when it was clear the Liberty had not sunk and that Israel had carried out the attack. An information source for the aircraft being nuclear-armed, James Ennes, later stated:

"Although America could not send conventionally armed jets, reports still come in that four jet bombers were catapulted from the carrier America with nuclear bombs aboard. Even today there is no official confirmation of that launch and much high-level denial. A nuclear launch has been strongly denied by Secretary McNamara, Admiral Martin (now deceased), Admiral Geis (deceased), Admiral Moorer, and America’s skipper, Admiral David Engen (deceased) and others. Yet eyewitness reports persist. Clearly no such launch could have been intended for offensive purposes. Surely nuclear weapons would not have been used in defense of the USS Liberty.

"It is clear that I was mistaken about the aircraft involved, as F4s do not carry nuclear weapons. Others tell me that the aircraft that were launched carried Bullpup missiles, which might easily be mistaken for nuclear bombs. And we learned much later that the USS America was involved in a nuclear weapons loading drill at the very time the ship learned of the attack on the Liberty and that this drill is one factor that delayed America's response to our call for help. It is also possible that those were the weapons seen by our sources.

"Also confusing this issue is an oral history report from the American Embassy in Cairo, now in the LBJ Library, which notes that the Embassy received an urgent message from Washington warning that Cairo was about to be bombed by US forces, presumably in mistaken retaliation for the USS Liberty attack. That strange message was never explained or cancelled."[91]

The video also provides hearsay evidence of a covert alliance of U.S. and Israel intelligence agencies.[92]

Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a critic of the official United States Government version of events, chaired a non-governmental investigation into the attack on the USS Liberty in 2003. The committee, which included former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia James E. Akins, held Israel to be culpable and suggested several theories for Israel's possible motives, including the desire to blame Egypt and bring the U.S. into the Six Day War.[93]

NSA tapes and recent developments[edit]
Within an hour of learning that the Liberty had been torpedoed, the director of NSA, LTG Marshall S. Carter, sent a message to all intercept sites requesting a special search of all communications that might reflect the attack or reaction. No communications were available. However, one of the airborne platforms, a U.S. Navy EC-121 aircraft that flew near the attacks from 2:30 pm to 3:27 pm, Sinai time (1230 to 1327 Z), had collected voice conversations between two Israeli helicopter pilots and the control tower at Hatzor Airfield following the attack on the Liberty.[94]

On 2 July 2003, the National Security Agency released copies of the recordings made by the EC-121 and the resultant translations and summaries.[95] These revelations were elicited as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by Florida bankruptcy judge and retired naval aviator Jay Cristol. Two linguists who were aboard the EC-121 when the recordings were made, however, said separately that at least two additional tapes were made that have been excluded from the NSA releases up to and including a 8 June 2007, release.[7]

English transcripts of the released tapes indicate that Israel still spoke of hitting an Egyptian supply ship even after the attack had stopped.[96][97] After the attack, the rescue helicopters are heard relaying several urgent requests that the rescuers ask the first survivor pulled out of the water what his nationality is, and discussing whether the survivors from the attacked ship will speak Arabic.[98]

A summary report of the NSA-translated tapes[99] indicates that at 1234Z Hatzor air control began directing two Israeli Air Force helicopters to an Egyptian warship, to rescue its crew: "This ship has now been identified as Egyptian." The helicopters arrived near the ship at about 1303Z: "I see a big vessel, near it are three small vessels..." At 1308Z, Hatzor air control indicated concern about the nationality of the ship's crew: "The first matter to clarify is to find out what their nationality is." At 1310Z, one of the helicopter pilots asked the nearby torpedo boats' Division Commander about the meaning of the ship's hull number: "GTR5 is written on it. Does this mean something?" The response was: "Negative, it doesn't mean anything." At 1312Z, one of the helicopter pilots was asked by air control: "Did you clearly identify an American flag?" No answer appears in the transcript, but the air controller then says: "We request that you make another pass and check once more if this is really an American flag." Again, no response appears in the transcript. At about 1314Z, the helicopters were directed to return home.

The NSA reported that there had been no radio intercepts of the attack made by the Liberty herself, nor had there been any radio intercepts made by the U.S. submarine USS Amberjack.

On 10 October 2003, The Jerusalem Post ran an interview with Yiftah Spector, one of the pilots who participated in the attack,[100] and thought to be the lead pilot of the first wave of aircraft. Spector said the ship was assumed to be Egyptian, stating that: "I circled it twice and it did not fire on me. My assumption was that it was likely to open fire at me and nevertheless I slowed down and I looked and there was positively no flag." The interview also contains the transcripts of the Israeli communications about the Liberty. The journalist who transcribed the tapes for that article, Arieh O'Sullivan, later confirmed that "the Israeli Air Force tapes he listened to contained blank spaces."[7]

The Liberty's survivors contradict Spector. According to subsequently declassified NSA documents: "Every official interview of numerous Liberty crewmen gave consistent evidence that indeed the Liberty was flying an American flag—and, further, the weather conditions were ideal to ensure its easy observance and identification."[101]

On 8 June 2005, the USS Liberty Veterans Association filed a "Report of War Crimes Committed Against the U.S. Military, June 8, 1967" with the Department of Defense (DoD). They say Department of Defense Directive 2311.01E requires the Department of Defense to conduct a thorough investigation of the allegations contained in their report. DoD has responded that a new investigation will not be conducted since a Navy Court of Inquiry already investigated the facts and circumstances surrounding the attack.

As of 2006, the National Security Agency (NSA) has yet to declassify "boxes and boxes" of Liberty documents. Numerous requests under both declassification directives and the Freedom of Information Act are pending in various agencies including the NSA, Central Intelligence Agency, and Defense Intelligence Agency. "On 8 June 2007, the National Security Agency released hundreds of additional declassified documents on the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, a communications interception vessel, on 8 June 1967."[102]

On 2 October 2007, The Chicago Tribune published a special report[7] into the attack, containing numerous previously unreported quotes from former military personnel with first-hand knowledge of the incident. Many of these quotes directly contradict the U.S. National Security Agency's position that it never intercepted the communications of the attacking Israeli pilots, saying that not only did transcripts of those communications exist, but also that it showed the Israelis knew they were attacking an American naval vessel.

Two diplomatic cables written by Avraham Harman, Israel's ambassador in Washington, to Abba Eban Israel's minister of foreign affairs, have been declassified by Israel and obtained from the Israel State Archive. The first cable, sent five days after the attack, informs Eban that a U.S. informant told him (Harman) that there was "clear proof that from a certain stage the pilot discovered the identity of the ship and continued the attack anyway."[103] The second cable, sent three days later, added that the White House is "very angry" because "the Americans probably have findings showing that our pilots indeed knew that the ship was American."[7]

Documents of the Israeli General Staff meetings, declassified in October 2008, show no discussion of a planned attack on an American ship.[104]

Details in dispute[edit]

The "Second Ensign" flown during the attack. Israel Defense Forces' investigative reports say their pilots and torpedo boat commander saw no flags during the attack
Many of the events surrounding the attack are the subject of controversy:

Visibility of American flag: The official Israeli reports say that the reconnaissance and fighter aircraft pilots, and the torpedo boat captains did not see any flag on Liberty. Official American reports say that the Liberty was flying her American flag before, during and after the attack; the only exception being a brief period in which one flag had been shot down and then replaced with a larger flag that measured approximately 13 ft (4.0 m) long. U.S. Naval Court of Inquiry finding number 2 states: "The calm conditions and slow speed of the ship may well have made the American flag difficult to identify." And finding number 28 states: "Flat, calm conditions and the slow five knot patrol speed of LIBERTY in forenoon when she was being looked over initially may well have produced insufficient wind for steaming colors enough to be seen by pilots".[105] The NSA History Report (page 41) states: "... every official interview of numerous Liberty crewmen gave consistent evidence that indeed the Liberty was flying an American flag—and, further, the weather conditions were ideal to ensure its easy observance and identification."
U.S. crewmen's perceptions of intent: Surviving crewmembers of the Liberty say that Israel's attack on the ship was "deliberate" and with full knowledge that the vessel was American. Israeli investigation and history reports agree that the attack was deliberate — but against what they believed was an Egyptian enemy vessel, not an American neutral vessel.
Distinctiveness of USS Liberty's appearance: One major dispute is whether the Liberty would have been immediately recognized as a different ship from the Egyptian ship El Quseir. Admiral Tom Moorer stated that the Liberty was the most identifiable ship in the U.S. Navy and in an interview with the Washington Post stated: To suggest that they [the IDF] couldn't identify the ship is ... ridiculous. Anybody who could not identify the Liberty could not tell the difference between the White House and the Washington Monument. Israel states in its inquiry and history reports that the identification as the El Quseir was made by the torpedo boats while the Liberty was enveloped in smoke and was based on "The Red Book", a guide to Arab fleets that did not include U.S. vessels.(Web site with images of both ships)
Identification markings: Liberty bore an eight-foot-high "5" and a four-foot-high "GTR" along either bow, clearly indicating her hull (or "pendant") number (AGTR-5), and had 18-inch (460 mm)-high letters spelling the vessel's name across the stern. These markings were not cursive Arabic script but in the Latin alphabet. Israeli pilots say initially they were primarily concerned with ensuring the ship was a non-Israeli warship and that they ended the air attack when they noticed the Latin alphabet markings.[106]
Ship's identification known during attack: A James Bamford book,[107] published in 2001, said that secret NSA intercepts recorded by an American EC-121 reconnaissance aircraft indicate that Israeli pilots had full knowledge they were attacking a U.S. vessel.[108] This 2001 proposition has played a significant role in the ongoing controversies about the incident, and continues to be widely cited. The tapes were later released by the National Security Agency in 2003 as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by Judge and author A. Jay Cristol. However, instead of the EC-121 attack tapes requested by the FOIA request, the tapes released contained post-attack communications of Israeli helicopter pilots, their ground controller, and someone on one of the torpedo boats. The helicopters were sent to the attack site to provide assistance after the air attack. The helicopter pilots noticed an American flag flying from the ship almost immediately upon their arrival at the attack site[109] and informed their controller. See other sources for a link to the NSA website with complete transcripts. The NSA Website denies that there are any U.S. recordings of the attack itself; although, this is disputed by several intelligence specialists who say they read the original transcripts.[citation needed]
Effort for identification: The American crew says the attacking aircraft did not make identification runs over Liberty, but rather began to strafe immediately. Israel says several identification passes were made. The Naval Court of Enquiry, based on the Israeli timeline of events, found "One may infer from the fact that within a period of approximately 15 minutes, the request was transmitted (for aircraft to be dispatched), received, a command decision made, aircraft dispatched, and the attack launched, that no significant time was expended in an effort to identify the ship from the air before the attack was launched."[110]
Speed of the vessel: According to Israeli accounts, the torpedo boat made (admittedly erroneous) measurements that indicated the ship was steaming at 30 kn (35 mph; 56 km/h). Israeli naval doctrine at the time required that a ship traveling at that speed must be presumed to be a warship. A second boat calculated Liberty's speed to be 28 kn (32 mph; 52 km/h). The maximum sustained speed of Liberty was only 17.5 kn (20.1 mph; 32.4 km/h), 21 kn (24 mph; 39 km/h) being attainable by overriding the engine governors. According to Body of Secrets, by James Bamford, Liberty crewmen (including the Officer-of-the-Deck) and the Court of Enquiry findings the ship was steaming at 5 kn (5.8 mph; 9.3 km/h) at the time of the attack.

Commander W.L. McGonagle in his damaged cabin after the attack
Motive: James Bamford, among others, says one possible motive was to prevent the United States from eavesdropping on Israeli military activities and monitoring the events taking place in nearby Gaza.[108] In a study of the incident concluding that there was insufficient evidence to support either accidental or deliberate attack, Colonel Peyton E. Smith wrote of the possibility that "The attack was most likely deliberate for reasons far too sensitive to be disclosed by the US (or) Israeli government and that the truth may never be known".[111] Author and former crew member James M. Ennes theorized, in the epilogue of his book Assault on the Liberty, that the motive was to prevent the ship's crew from monitoring radio traffic that might reveal Israel being the aggressor in its impending invasion of Syria, which the White House opposed. According to the Anti Defamation League "the argument that Israel knowingly attacked an American ship has always lacked a convincing motive".[112]
Israeli aircraft markings: The USS Liberty Veterans Association says that the attacking Israeli aircraft were not marked,[70] but a crewmember recalls watching a Jewish officer cry on seeing the blue Star of David on their fuselages.[7] The torpedo boats that attacked Liberty did fly the flag of Israel.[45]
Jamming: During U.S. Naval Court of Inquiry testimony, Wayne L. Smith, Radioman Chief, testified: "... We did have [radio frequency] jamming in my estimation. I was unable to determine this exactly, but every time it seems when an attack was made on us, or a strafing run, it was preceded by, anywhere from 25 to 30 seconds, carrier on our HICOM circuit, and I had ascertained to check this by calling the transmitter room and they said that they had not keyed the transmitter. This prevailed during the attack and quite a bit after the attack, intermittently." In a U.S. Navy message dated 11 July 1967, sent by Rear Admiral Kidd (senior member of Naval Court of Inquiry) via the Naval Communications Unit, Naples, Italy to Commander in Chief U.S. Navy Europe and Chief Naval Operations, Rear Admiral Kidd stated, in part: "Liberty reported apparent discriminate jamming on certain CW and voice circuits just before and during each aircraft's individual attack. Effect was to scare mischief out of those below who heard it start, because they knew a rocket or bomb would soon follow." None of the Israeli Defense Forces' investigations or reports confirm or deny radio frequency jamming was performed during or following the attack.
Visual communications: Joe Meadors, the signalman on bridge, states that "Immediately prior to the torpedo attack, he was on the Signal Bridge repeatedly sending 'USS Liberty U.S. Navy Ship' by flashing light to the torpedo boats." The Israeli boats say they sent the signal "AA" (general call) for which the formal reply would be TTTT later followed by both vessels sending identification codes. Commander Moshe Oren says he thought Liberty signaled AA in reply, which was the same reply he received from the Egyptian destroyer Ibrahim el Awal eleven years earlier. Oren then consulted "The Red Book" (identification of Arabian navies) noting that the only match for the "old tub" with one funnel and two masts was the El Quseir. Meadors says he never sent "AA".[113]
Israeli ships' actions after the torpedo hit: Officers and men of Liberty say that after the torpedo attack and the abandon ship order, motor torpedo boats strafed the ship's topside with automatic gunfire preventing men from escaping from below, and either machine-gunned or confiscated the empty life rafts that had been set afloat.[114][115] The IDF says that Liberty was not fired upon after the torpedo attack and that a rescue raft was fished from the water while searching for survivors.[116]
Israeli offers of help: The Liberty's captain, several of the Libertys' crewmen and the Israelis stated that help was offered, but at different times. The Liberty's Deck Log, signed by the captain, has an entry at 15:03 stating: "One MTB returned to the ship and signalled, 'Do you need help.' Commanding officer directed that 'Negative' be sent in reply." The captain testified before the Court of Inquiry, on page 40 of recorded testimony: "One of the boats signaled by flashing light, in English, 'do you require assistance?' We had no means to communicate with the boat by light but hoisted code lima india. The signal intended to convey the fact that the ship was maneuvering with difficulty and that they should keep clear.". Ensign David G. Lucas, First Lieutenant and Gunnery Officer testified in the Court of Inquiry on page 17 that: "another patrol craft approached us from the starboard side and did manage to get clear of the smoke. The signalman took the message, 'do you need help?'". Harold Jessie Thompson, Chief Communications Technician testified in the court of inquiry on page 88 that: "When they were about 500 yards off, the torpedo boat turned astern and came up on the stern on the starboard side and flashed, 'do you need help?'". James Ennes, in his book about the attack, on pages 102 and 103, acknowledges the Israelis offered help, says it occurred at 16:30, and the offer was rejected. The Israel Defense Forces's History Report about the attack on page 19, and the Ram Ron report on page 9 both say that help was offered at 16:40 and the offer was rejected.
U.S. rescue attempts: At least two rescue attempts were launched from U.S. aircraft carriers nearby but were recalled, according to the Liberty's senior Naval Security Group officer, Lieutenant Commander David Lewis. Lewis made an audio recording and later wrote about a meeting 6th Fleet Rear Admiral Lawrence Geis requested in his cabins: "He told me that since I was the senior Liberty survivor on board he wanted to tell me in confidence what had actually transpired. He told me that upon receipt of our SOS, aircraft were launched to come to our assistance and then Washington was notified. He said that the Secretary of Defense (Robert McNamara) had ordered that the aircraft be returned to the carrier, which was done. RADM Geis then said that he speculated that Washington may have suspected that the aircraft carried nuclear weapons so he put together another flight of conventional aircraft that had no capability of carrying nuclear weapons. These he launched to assist us and again notified Washington of his actions. Again McNamara ordered the aircraft recalled. He requested confirmation of the order being unable to believe that Washington would let us sink. This time President Johnson ordered the recall with the comment that he did not care if every man drowned and the ship sank, but that he would not embarrass his allies. This is, to the best of my ability, what I recall transpiring 30 years ago."

Prepping for job interview

1. I have three interviews lined up in the next week, more if make it to the next round.
2. These are the first ones I've had since 2012. In the interim, there has been a lot of to and fro on the rocking chair, but essentially the landing now is to still remain as a careerist and a salaryman in the short term, though the idea is to find something that gives a lot more satisfaction and contentment.
3. Philosophically, the idea is not revulsive. We find interest and meaning in anything that we do. Creating a high performance team, enabling high performance, and getting high impact results provide a bit of serotonin and dopamine dash. Churning out paperwork and manipulating responses not so.
4. Basics of prepping - essentially will need to flush out expectations from target, maintain interest / attraction to get to next stage, demonstrate ability to think and to provide solutions, prepare elevator pitch. Not my best at interviews - but really the trick is to have the comfort that people are getting to know what you can do, and in a show and tell, the mental state of trying to close a sale is probably the best state to be in.
5. Basically the question to be answered is - Why Me? and the answer damn well not be "that's because I know the people who can do the job!"
6. Tone and tact is important - this is a high level position and the ability to put myself in the same mental state would be crucial. Ask strategic questions, don't get drawn or dragged down too much into miniscule issues. Provide strategic solutions - focusing on bottom line.

Dysfunctional personalities that make the world interesting

Wonderful article on someone who doesn't care for skeptics, but is confident enough in the "truth" of the world that he lives in, and the world that he can create. That truth is a personal belief. And at the end of the day, it is that personal belief that will be tested, if not in this life, than in the hereafter. That personal belief is the one that has to be forged in fears, tears, blood, hope, vision, failure and success of one's own dogma and value sets. To reiterate, that has to be tested, before tested in your own interactions with others, with yourself. Nice quote in the article about Elon Musk finding peace in himself if the project takes too long, if he becomes infirm before SpaceX achieves success.

For me, making peace with myself is my aim now. It's not about recalibrating any more. It is about what I can live with, and what I cannot live without.

http://aeon.co/magazine/technology/the-elon-musk-interview-on-mars/

Maser Energy, Smart Grid in Malaysia

Came across this link earlier today - and it was a dated BFM grille interview with Masers Energy CEO / Chairman. Not sure how to rate the session, as Chum(?) the interviewer posed all sorts of questions with all the associated layers of sub-text - i.e. transparent bidding, experience, possible collusion etc - all the sort of questions a cynical mind would raise. To his credit (or to another cynical mind, can probably attribute naivety?), DS Suhaimi straight-batted the questions and answered in his most honest and open way possible.

Link to the interview here: http://www.bfm.my/breakfast-grille-suhaimi-abdul-rahman-masers.html

DS can be forgiven if he probably was preparing for easy, straight and narrow questions on why PLC, and not preexisting wireless LTE, 4G, xG standards, which could rightly be attributed to the cost-efficiency requirements given the potential ubiquity of component and sensor deployment throughout the internet of things. Too many other questions can be raised as to how that aspect, with the attendant issues of still-developing tech and issues related to confluence over the long term, will impact on carbon-free or even carbon-mitigation effects. Putting on my public citizen hat, investors i.e. govt and/or TNB, need to read the PPM Risk section very carefully. TNB may have had a closer look at the issues within the DNMS project that was kicked off way back in 2006(?).

I do wish Masers the best of luck. Nothing better to shut up the doubters and detractors by making sure this works.

Sick of this market-driven world? You should be - by George Monbiot, The Guardian UK

George has commentated on the market economy, green and sustainable world and makes a lot of sense unhindered from the everyday poison of the world. This one below is an epic read. Difficult to contest his points.


Sick of this market-driven world? You should be
George Monbiot

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/05/neoliberalism-mental-health-rich-poverty-economy

To be at peace with a troubled world: this is not a reasonable aim. It can be achieved only through a disavowal of what surrounds you. To be at peace with yourself within a troubled world: that, by contrast, is an honourable aspiration. This column is for those who feel at odds with life. It calls on you not to be ashamed.

I was prompted to write it by a remarkable book, just published in English, by a Belgian professor of psychoanalysis, Paul Verhaeghe. What About Me? The Struggle for Identity in a Market-Based Society is one of those books that, by making connections between apparently distinct phenomena, permits sudden new insights into what is happening to us and why.

We are social animals, Verhaeghe argues, and our identities are shaped by the norms and values we absorb from other people. Every society defines and shapes its own normality – and its own abnormality – according to dominant narratives, and seeks either to make people comply or to exclude them if they don’t.

Today the dominant narrative is that of market fundamentalism, widely known in Europe as neoliberalism. The story it tells is that the market can resolve almost all social, economic and political problems. The less the state regulates and taxes us, the better off we will be. Public services should be privatised, public spending should be cut, and business should be freed from social control. In countries such as the UK and the US, this story has shaped our norms and values for around 35 years: since Thatcher and Reagan came to power. It is rapidly colonising the rest of the world.

Verhaeghe points out that neoliberalism draws on the ancient Greek idea that our ethics are innate (and governed by a state of nature it calls the market) and on the Christian idea that humankind is inherently selfish and acquisitive. Rather than seeking to suppress these characteristics, neoliberalism celebrates them: it claims that unrestricted competition, driven by self-interest, leads to innovation and economic growth, enhancing the welfare of all.

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At the heart of this story is the notion of merit. Untrammelled competition rewards people who have talent, work hard, and innovate. It breaks down hierarchies and creates a world of opportunity and mobility.

The reality is rather different. Even at the beginning of the process, when markets are first deregulated, we do not start with equal opportunities. Some people are a long way down the track before the starting gun is fired. This is how the Russian oligarchs managed to acquire such wealth when the Soviet Union broke up. They weren’t, on the whole, the most talented, hardworking or innovative people, but those with the fewest scruples, the most thugs, and the best contacts – often in the KGB.

Even when outcomes are based on talent and hard work, they don’t stay that way for long. Once the first generation of liberated entrepreneurs has made its money, the initial meritocracy is replaced by a new elite, which insulates its children from competition by inheritance and the best education money can buy. Where market fundamentalism has been most fiercely applied – in countries like the US and UK – social mobility has greatly declined.

If neoliberalism was anything other than a self-serving con, whose gurus and thinktanks were financed from the beginning by some of the world’s richest people (the US multimillionaires Coors, Olin, Scaife, Pew and others), its apostles would have demanded, as a precondition for a society based on merit, that no one should start life with the unfair advantage of inherited wealth or economically determined education. But they never believed in their own doctrine. Enterprise, as a result, quickly gave way to rent.

All this is ignored, and success or failure in the market economy are ascribed solely to the efforts of the individual. The rich are the new righteous; the poor are the new deviants, who have failed both economically and morally and are now classified as social parasites.

The market was meant to emancipate us, offering autonomy and freedom. Instead it has delivered atomisation and loneliness.

The workplace has been overwhelmed by a mad, Kafkaesque infrastructure of assessments, monitoring, measuring, surveillance and audits, centrally directed and rigidly planned, whose purpose is to reward the winners and punish the losers. It destroys autonomy, enterprise, innovation and loyalty, and breeds frustration, envy and fear. Through a magnificent paradox, it has led to the revival of a grand old Soviet tradition known in Russian as tufta. It means falsification of statistics to meet the diktats of unaccountable power.

The same forces afflict those who can’t find work. They must now contend, alongside the other humiliations of unemployment, with a whole new level of snooping and monitoring. All this, Verhaeghe points out, is fundamental to the neoliberal model, which everywhere insists on comparison, evaluation and quantification. We find ourselves technically free but powerless. Whether in work or out of work, we must live by the same rules or perish. All the major political parties promote them, so we have no political power either. In the name of autonomy and freedom we have ended up controlled by a grinding, faceless bureaucracy.

These shifts have been accompanied, Verhaeghe writes, by a spectacular rise in certain psychiatric conditions: self-harm, eating disorders, depression and personality disorders.

Of the personality disorders, the most common are performance anxiety and social phobia: both of which reflect a fear of other people, who are perceived as both evaluators and competitors – the only roles for society that market fundamentalism admits. Depression and loneliness plague us.

The infantilising diktats of the workplace destroy our self-respect. Those who end up at the bottom of the pile are assailed by guilt and shame. The self-attribution fallacy cuts both ways: just as we congratulate ourselves for our success, we blame ourselves for our failure, even if we have little to do with it.

So, if you don’t fit in, if you feel at odds with the world, if your identity is troubled and frayed, if you feel lost and ashamed – it could be because you have retained the human values you were supposed to have discarded. You are a deviant. Be proud.

Twitter: @georgemonbiot.

Operation Badr- Gaza Under Attack!

The tragedy in Gaza lingers. The sub-human animals in the ranks of the Zionist-Israelis scent blood, while the world is distracted by Ukraine-Russian separatists, opportunity to undermine Putin, downing of 3 (THREE!) passenger planes in a week and the repercussions, Commonwealth Games (Games! at a time of sorrow..). They want to send out a message that their capacity to do as they wish is unfettered, no more chest-beating statements from Obama urging them to stop settlements, John Kerry is giving ceasefire conditions in which the IDG will be allowed to search for tunnels and destroy them, presumably while doing so arresting Hamas "militants" and deferring their killings, as the IDF is "moral-bound" and "adheres to international laws on warfare".. Tony Blair is walking around gathering support for Israel.. and how totally consistent for the sub-humans to step up their violence on the night of 27th Ramadhan. Can just anticipate the sub-humans step down their violence on Eid because of humanitarian reasons as their job is done.

Such depressing developments. May Allah destroy the arrogance of this species and deal with them in the Hereafter, and He is the All-Seeing, the One providing the Recompense that the Zionint-Israelis are fearful of, but are walking towards at their own accord. Amin.

From: the Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/24/gaza-hamas-fighters-military-bases-guerrilla-war-civilians-israel-idf



In Gaza, Hamas fighters are among civilians. There is nowhere else for them to go
Lines are blurred when a guerrilla war is fought in as dense a place as Gaza but the IDF's HQ is also surrounded by civilians
A Palestinian medic holds two children hurt in an Israeli strike on a UN school in Beit Hanoun, Gaza
A Palestinian medic holds two children wounded in an Israeli strike on a UN school in Beit Hanoun, Gaza. The attack killed at least 15 people. Photograph: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP
Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem
Thursday 24 July 2014 20.55 BST

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Israel's accusation that Hamas is using civilians as human shields has grown increasingly strident as the war in Gaza worsens.

The charge is laid relentlessly by political and military leaders and media commentators, repeated in conversations by members of the public and echoed in the comments of foreign politicians and diplomats. On the other side of the conflict, the accusation is vigorously denied by Hamas and others in Gaza.

The truth is lost amid the propaganda battle being waged alongside the shells, bombs, guns and rockets. What is certain is that the picture is more complicated than either side claims.

Deliberately placing non-combatants in and around targets to deter enemy attack – the definition of human shields – is illegal under international law.

The Geneva conventions state: "The presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favour or impede military operations. The parties to the conflict shall not direct the movement of the civilian population or individual civilians in order to attempt to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield military operations."

International law also bans the use of medical units or prisoners of war to deter enemy attack.

However, even if Hamas were violating the law on this matter, it would not legally justify Israel's bombing of areas where civilians are known to be.

"Any violation of these prohibitions shall not release the parties to the conflict from their legal obligations with respect to the civilian population and civilians, including the obligation to take the precautionary measures," the conventions say.

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Israel claims Hamas routinely uses hospitals, mosques, schools and private homes to launch rockets at Israel, store weapons, hide command and control centres, shelter military personnel, and conceal tunnel shafts. This is their justification for targeting such places, despite the legal requirement to ensure its attacks are proportional, distinguish between military and civilian objects, and avoid civilian casualties.

Israel says it gives due notice of attack – by phone, text messages, leaflet drops and "warning missiles" – to give civilians the chance to leave.

A typical statement from the Israel Defence Forces, issued in the past few days, says: "While the IDF does everything that it can to avoid civilian casualties, Hamas deliberately puts Palestinian civilian lives in danger. Hamas hides weapons and missile launchers in densely populated areas. Instead of keeping its citizens out of harm's way, Hamas encourages and even forces Gazans to join its violent resistance against Israel. It sends men, women and children directly into the line of fire to be used as human shields for terrorists."

On Wednesday, the IDF released a series of maps purporting to show Hamas military sites close to – but not in – schools, hospitals, mosques and residential buildings. It also released video, which it said showed militants using an ambulance to flee after coming under attack by IDF troops, and said the grounds and vicinity of al-Wafa hospital in Gaza City had been "repeatedly utilised by Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad as a command centre, rocket-launching site, and a post enabling terrorists to open fire at soldiers".

Israel has repeatedly targeted the rehabilitation hospital during the course of the conflict, finally destroying the heavily damaged and, by then, empty building on Wednesday.

But the hospital's director rejected the Israeli assertion that the hospital had been used for military purposes by Hamas or other militant groups. In a statement, Basman Alashi said: "Israel has targeted our hospital based on false and misleading claims. They are targeting medical facilities, the wounded, the sick and our children, all over the Gaza Strip. They want us to know that nowhere is safe."

He added: "I hope things calm down as soon as possible. It's painful to see what's happening and that the hospital has become a target for military attacks."

The UN's discovery of arms caches in two of its schools in the past week has given Israel's assertions credence. "UNRWA [the UN agency for Palestinian refugees] immediately informed all relevant parties and issued a statement strongly condemning the abuse of its premises," said a spokesman, Chris Gunness. The UN agency UNRWA's shelters have been shelled on four occasions in recent days, despite officials giving precise coordinates to the IDF.

Israel also claimed that Hamas had forced civilians to remain in the Gaza City neighbourhood of Shujai'iya after the IDF warned them to evacuate ahead of its assault on Sunday. Civilians were being "held as hostages", said Peter Lerner, an IDF military spokesman.

These claims have not been backed up by independent reporting from international journalists covering the war from Gaza. Instead, dispatches from the ground have presented complex reasons why some residents did not evacuate from Shujai'iya and other areas targeted by the IDF. Many said nowhere in Gaza was safe, so they saw little point in abandoning their homes.

Others cited worries about not knowing the identities of people who would be their new neighbours; they could be evacuating a familiar neighbourhood for one that was a militant stronghold and others were simply too terrified to go out on the streets. Many media reports said there was no evidence of coercion by Hamas.

In fact, tens of thousands of people have fled their homes for what they hope is a safer place. UNRWA reports that more than 140,000 people have sought shelter in its properties; churches and mosques have been overwhelmed by displaced civilians; the grounds of the Shifa hospital in Gaza City have begun to resemble a makeshift refugee camp. These families are in fear of their lives, but they overwhelmingly cite Israeli bombing and shelling as the cause, rather than threats from Hamas.

Gaza is one of the most overcrowded places on earth. Almost two million people are crammed into a strip of land just 25 miles long and between three and a half and seven miles wide – roughly the same size as the Isle of Wight. In general there are few opportunities to leave; and in the midst of a conflict such as this, there is no exit.

The current war is not being fought on a conventional battlefield. Israel is pounding Gaza from the air, and its troops are increasingly fighting battles against a guerrilla army in densely populated urban areas – which constitute much of the Gaza Strip. As Israeli tanks and troops push further into the towns and cities, it is increasingly likely that Hamas will launch attacks from positions close to civilian buildings.

The separation between "civilian" and "military" in Gaza is much more blurred than with a conventional army – both physically and in the Gazan psyche. Hamas and other militants are embedded in the population. Their fighters are not quartered in military barracks, but sleep at night in their family homes. While it is not difficult to find antipathy to Hamas on the streets of Gaza in quiet times, most people defend their "right to resist" – and under such sustained military attack, support for Hamas rises.

Israel, meanwhile, does not have an unblemished record in the use of human shields. In 2010, two soldiers were convicted in an IDF military court of using an 11-year-old Palestinian boy as a human shield in its 2008-09 operation in Gaza. The pair ordered the child to search bags they suspected of being booby-trapped.

It was the first conviction of what is known within the IDF as the "neighbour procedure" – forcing civilians to assist troops in military operations. Investigations by news organisations and human rights groups have suggested the IDF has used Palestinians as human shields in operations in both Gaza and the West Bank.

Meanwhile, in response to Israel's assertions that Hamas situates its military centres in civilian areas, some have pointed out that the IDF's headquarters, the Kiriya, is in central Tel Aviv, surrounded by a hospital, blocks of flats, shopping centres and offices.

From the Guardian: Inside the Gaza tunnels

Flinflan thought you might be interested in this link from the Guardian: Inside the Gaza tunnels

They were one of Israel's key targets during its three-week assault on Gaza. But the relentless air strikes failed to destroy the hundreds of tunnels running under the border to Egypt. Rory McCarthy goes underground to watch the everyday smuggling of boxes of women's underwear, car parts and even goats

In pictures: Gaza's labyrinth lifeline

Rory McCarthy

Tuesday 10 February 2009

The Guardian

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/feb/10/gaza-tunnels-israel

----

Barely a few paces from the Egyptian border stands a large white tent, fashioned from plastic sheeting and pockmarked with jagged shrapnel holes. Inside, as in the hundreds of identical tents dotted to the left and right, is a scene of energy and illicit industriousness: a dozen Palestinian smugglers sweating to overcome the punitive economic blockade on Gaza. A stone's throw away on the opposite side of the border is an Egyptian police post, with relaxed uniformed officers standing on the roof. They gaze down without a hint of concern.

One unanswered question of Israel's three-week war in Gaza is why the air strikes, artillery shells, tank fire, bulldozing and detonations that caused such devastation and loss of life across the territory did so little damage to the hundreds of smuggling tunnels under Gaza's southern border with Egypt. Those tunnels, which bring in food, clothes, machinery as well as weapons and ammunition, were supposed to be one of Israel's key targets. On the final day of the conflict alone, the Israeli military said it had hit 100 tunnels. Gazans in the border town of Rafah spoke of night after night of enormous air strikes that shook cracks into the walls of their houses and shattered their windows.

But while the sandy border is marked with many large craters, the damage caused to the tunnels was, in many cases, repaired within days. Already some are operating again and new tunnels are being dug under the close eye of Hamas officials, who walk from one tent to the next clutching their walkie-talkies.

The smugglers believe their tunnels were simply too deep to be badly damaged, even by the heavy 500lb or one-tonne bombs dropped by Israeli F-16s. In most cases, the serious damage was only to the entrances to the tunnels, which were soon uncovered again by the Palestinians using bulldozers and then rebuilt. It may be that the focus of the Israeli attacks was on the weapons tunnels, which are closely guarded by Hamas and other armed groups and not open to public view.

Inside the large white tent is a wooden coat rack from which hang the jackets and spare clothes of a dozen men or more. To the right is an electrical circuit board with five sockets. From the back, the wires run out of the tent, across the sand dunes and directly into the public electricity supply of the municipality of Rafah. From the front, a cord runs out to power a winch. Outside, a large black plastic water butt with a tap provides the thirsty workers with fresh drinking water - again, courtesy of the municipality. All of this is registered and paid for. Smuggling in Gaza is a semi-official business.

The focus of activity is the tunnel's well: a 15m deep shaft lined on its four sides by planks of wood. Three metal beams are positioned pyramid-shape over the well and support the electric winch, whose cable runs down the shaft to the sandy floor below. There, two men crouch low and operate two more winches that run horizontally 300m to the south along the tunnel, stretching out of Gaza and into Egypt. One of the winches draws in the goods from the Egyptian side, a train of boxes and sacks sliding over the sand on plastic containers. The second winch sends back the empty containers for reloading.

It took about eight weeks to dig this tunnel; a team of men worked long days underground using a pneumatic drill to dig out the soil, which they then carried out in large, plastic containers and dumped nearby. By the time it was finished, the tunnel was tall enough for a man to stand with his head bowed, and nearly a metre wide along its full length. The tunnel walls are bare soil with regular wooden supports to prevent collapse - although it still remains a dangerous business. Around 40 Palestinian tunnellers were killed last year in cave-ins.

It is midday and the work is constant. Every 30 seconds one of the men below shouts "Raise" and a man sitting over the mouth of the well switches on the winch and pulls up another sack. So far this morning, they have contained: dry, yellow chickenfeed; spare parts for cars; a box of coat hooks; microwaves; kerosene cookers; packets of rather dowdy women's underwear; and now several large, 5.5kW generators.

Notably absent are drugs and alcohol, which are forbidden by Hamas; cigarettes, which are heavily taxed by Hamas; and anything even resembling weaponry or military material, which come in through more discreet tunnels far from the public eye that may or may not have been more seriously damaged by the war.

"Without these tunnels, everything would stop in Gaza," says one of the workers, who gave his name only as Abu Zeid, 22. "And they say we are terrorists. Where are the terrorists here? The world knows very well what's going on, but they don't want us to live. If they opened the crossings, why would we need to do this business?"

Since Israel pulled its soldiers and settlers out of Gaza in mid-2005, it has imposed an ever-tighter economic blockade on what it calls the "hostile entity". For the past year and a half, that has meant closures of the crossings: banning all exports and prohibiting all imports, save for a limited list of humanitarian goods. Even the UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon called it "collective punishment" - illegal under international law. It has left more than 80% of Gazans reliant on aid.

The policy was designed to weaken Hamas and convince the Palestinians they had made a mistake when, in 2006 - in what was widely acknowledged as one of the most free and fair elections in the Arab world - they voted in strength for the Islamists. Egypt has also kept its border crossing at Rafah largely closed. "It's politics, dirty politics," says Abu Zeid.

Most of the workers in this tunnel were once employed as daily labourers within Israel, but Palestinians have long been refused such jobs. Now in Gaza there is barely any work available. Some at this tunnel are former policemen once employed by Hamas's bitter rival, Fatah; others are farmers whose livelihoods collapsed with the ban on exports. "There is nothing for us except the tunnels," says another worker.

"I have a house, and land and money but I want to go abroad," says Abu Eyash, 28, a tunneller who once spent four years in an Israeli jail for his connections with Fatah. "I'm not satisfied here. There's always war and never any security."

These men may not earn much from the tunnels, but others do. The tunnel cost around £100,000 to build and the owners say they earned that back within the first two months. The original owners of the land are given a 10% commission and Egyptian security officials on the other side earn healthy bribes. As his staff worked, one of the owners took out a thick fold of dollar bills, from which he was to send the equivalent of £13,000 to the Egyptians, enough to provide protection for the tunnel for around 10 days until the next payment was due.

In the last two weeks since the end of its war in Gaza, Israel has launched several more air strikes against the tunnels after militants from small, non-Hamas groups fired rockets and mortars into southern Israel. This tunnel was one of those hit, although the workers said the damage would take only a few days to repair.

Not everyone celebrates the tunnel industry. A short walk back from this tent is the home of Mohammad Abu Saud, 40, who is spending the day covering his broken windows with plastic sheeting and wondering how he is ever going to repair the massive cracks in his walls caused by the bombing of the tunnels. "I don't earn any benefit from the tunnels and I'm suffering because of them - you can see the cracks here and the windows gone, as well as the fact that the prices in the market have risen a lot," he says.

"I think the tunnels are delaying a solution," says his brother Ala'a, 35. "If there were no tunnels, there would be such a heavy price that it would force Hamas to sit and find a solution and the only solution is to reopen the crossings. I'm not even asking them to liberate Palestine, just open the crossings."

Around half an hour's drive north from the border are the recently destroyed remains of what, a month ago, was one of the largest food-processing factory compounds in the Gaza strip, owned by the wealthy al-Wadeya brothers. Yaser al-Wadeya has a PhD in industrial engineering from Cleveland State University and little sympathy for Hamas. He estimates the damage caused by the Israeli military to his biscuit, ice-cream, snacks and dessert factories is worth around £15m. Even if he had the money for repairs, Israel's restrictions mean he would not be able to import new machinery.

Even before the war, Al-Wadeya directed some of his Israeli suppliers to give up waiting for the Israeli crossings to open and ship their products to Egypt, then for them to be smuggled under the border into Gaza. "The main reason for all of this is to destroy the economic infrastructure of the weak Palestinian economy," he says. "They want to make sure that we will never have a state in Palestine."

Israel's military said it was conducting "post-operation investigations" into accounts of civilian casualties and property damage, but added that it "does not target civilians or civilian infrastructure, including factories, unless it is being used by the Hamas for terrorist purposes".

However, Palestinians, including al-Wadeya, disagree and argue that much of the bombing during this war was aimed directly at civilian infrastructure. Among the other targets hit were the largest cement factory in Gaza, the largest flour mill, the only parliament building, a major sewage project and the leading private school, not to mention the 21,000 homes and more than 200 factories completely or partially destroyed.

Al-Wadeya argues that Israel has allowed the commercial tunnel economy to function as part of a broader campaign to break Gaza's economic and political links with Israel and to force it towards a dependent relationship with Egypt. "During the occupation, from the beginning until now, our whole relationship is with Israel. You can't just break it and move towards Egypt," he says.

Some senior Israelis have spoken publicly in recent years of their desire to hand over responsibility for Gaza to Egypt, and to keep most of the Jewish settlements on the occupied West Bank while handing the remaining Palestinian cantons over to Jordanian control. Ironically, Hamas, with its insistence on opening the Rafah crossing with Egypt to give access to the rest of the Islamic world, appears at times to be pushing for the same future for Gaza.

The Islamists appear not to have grasped the full extent of the devastation suffered in Gaza, or the people's frustration. Shortly after the war, a Hamas official arrived at the rubble of the factory and offered £3,500 towards its repair. "I told him to get the hell out of here," says Al-Wadeya. "What would that buy? Not even new locks for the doors.

"I really believe that if we stay where we are with Hamas and Fatah and this political issue, we will never do anything in Gaza. It will become like Somalia or Sudan," he says. "We need two peaceful states, Palestine and Israel, living together. Without this we will be at war for the next century."

Going underground: a history of wartime tunnel systems

Afghanistan Tora Bora

Financed by the CIA and created by the mujahideen during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the Tora Bora complex contains miles of tunnels, bunkers and fortified caves. Close to the White Mountain range near the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, the complex is where Osama bin Laden is believed to have hidden with 1,000 Taliban fighters. The caves and passages apparently have ventilation and power systems running on electric generators.

Gibraltar The galleries

Inside the Rock of Gibraltar is a honeycomb of tunnels known as the galleries. The first passages were built during the great siege in 1779-1783, when Spanish troops attacked the Rock. Soldiers from the garrison dug through the stone to a promontory on the north face, which allowed them to fire on the Spanish below. In total, 304m of halls, passages and openings were created. More tunnels were added during the second world war when the British feared Gibraltar would be attacked. The tunnel system was expanded and the rock became a keystone in the defence of shipping routes to the Mediterranean.

Bosnia Sarajevo tunnel

In 1993, citizens in Sarajevo began constructing a 1.5m high, 800m long underground passage. Their city was under siege from Serbian forces and the tunnel led to the UN-designated neutral area of Sarajevo airport. Bosnian volunteers worked in eight-hour shifts using picks and shovels to create a way for food, aid and weapons to come into the city, and people to escape. The tunnel was most famously used to transport the former Bosnian president Alija Izetbegovic in his wheelchair out of the city.

Vietnam Cu Chi and Vinh Moc tunnels

During the Vietnam war American soldiers came up against the Viet Cong's Cu Chi tunnels. This huge system of underground passages stretched from the Cambodian border in the west to the outskirts of Saigon, running below the jungles of Vietnam. Used to mount surprise attacks against US troops, the tiny tunnels led to subterranean rooms, some of which were big enough to be used as hospitals, arms stores and even theatres. The first passages were built during the 1948 war of independence with France to link villages. Later, the Viet Cong painstakingly expanded them by hand until they covered 250km. To attack the tunnels, the US created a volunteer force made up of soldiers small enough to fit down the passages. After negotiating hidden traps of sharpened bamboo spikes, they had to fight their enemy in the tunnels. The complex has now become a war memorial park.

Under the former demilitarised zone that ran between the communist north and capitalist south, lie the Vinh Moc tunnels. They were built to shelter people from the intense bombing of the area and included wells, kitchens, rooms for each family and spaces for healthcare. Around 60 families lived in them - and as many as 17 children were born inside.

Jersey War tunnels

Created during the German occupation of the island in the second world war, these tunnels were built by more than 5,000 slave labourers brought to Jersey. Many of the Russians, Poles, Frenchmen and Spaniards died of malnutrition or disease. Originally constructed as an ammunition store and artillery barracks, the tunnels were later converted to a casualty clearing station as D-Day drew nearer.

Poland Stalag Luft III

Immortalised in the film the Great Escape, Tom, Dick and Harry were the tunnels created by the prisoners of the Stalag Luft III camp in Poland. Work on the tunnels began in 1942 and during the night of March 24, 1944, 76 inmates managed to escape down a 101m tunnel. All but three of the men were recaptured; the Gestapo shot 50 and returned the remainder to captivity.

France Catacombs

Organised in a section of Paris's vast network of subterranean tunnels, the catacombs were a tourist attraction in the early 19th century. This cemetery covers a portion of Paris' former mines near the Left Bank's Place Denfert-Rochereau. During the second world war, both Parisian members of the French resistance and German soldiers used the tunnels.
Homa Khaleeli

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