49 Years On, Still No "Explanation" for USS Liberty Attack

We will be commemorating Israel’s 1967 attack on the USS Liberty on June 8. The attack by the Israel Defense Forces—commonly considered our long-time ally—killed 34 American servicemen and wounded another 171. This attack has frequently been dismissed as an accident and demands for an investigation have been ignored.

Reverdy S. Fishel, an associate member of the USS Liberty Veterans Association, revisits this altercation in a gripping recount of the events that transpired 49 years ago. He disproves the “marker explanation” put forth in 1984 by two Israeli military writers, Hirsh Goodman and Ze’ev Schiff, and shows that Israel’s attack was not accidental. Read more about Fishel’s account of the USS Liberty incident in our latest June/July 2016 issue.

As Congress continues to deny the incident and refuses to investigate the attack, it is our moral duty this June 8th to remember the injustices done on this fateful day, 49 years ago. While there is a dearth of official explanations, there are many accounts that have since been released that catalogue the story as told by the crew that was aboard the USS Liberty. This includes Justice for Liberty: An All American Documentary (2015), James Scott’s account of the attack titled The Attack on the Liberty (2010), James Ennes’s paperback titled Assault on Liberty (2007), Liberty Injustices: A Survivor’s Account of American Bigotry by Ernest Gallo – the first three of which are available at the Middle East Books Bookstore.