Remember the Liberty

In light of Israel's most recent act of terror in international waters, this seems like an opportune moment to remember the USS Liberty, a state of the art naval vessel intentionally, wantonly and without provocation attacked by Israel on the 8th of June, 1967. Israel's laughable defense was that it had mistaken the ship for an out of service Egyptian Horse Carrier. Here's a picture of the Liberty before the attack and the Egyptian boat - can you tell which is which? It's pretty apparent to anyone over the age of 8 with a modicum of intelligence that one boat is a naval vessel and the other one is a clunker. Israel's attack on an ally ship is inexplicable unless it intended to try to foist the blame for the attack onto Egypt, thus drawing the U.S. into "the 6 day war" with Egypt.

One might be inclined to disregard all evidence to the contrary and naively conclude that the attack was indeed a case of mistaken identity, but for the fact that Israel has never abandoned its efforts to surreptitiously draw the United States into Israeli-Arab conflicts. Preceding the USS Liberty disaster was the Lavon Affair a/k/a Operation Susannah, a well documented anti-American disaster for Israel in which it was discovered that Israel was running a spy ring in Egypt whose mission was to blow up U.S. and British targets in order alienate the U.S. and Britain from Egypt.

Then, there's the murder of the marines in Beirut. Much was said about President Obama's speech in recalling the tragedy:

"On the anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, we remember today the 241 American Marines, soldiers, and sailors who lost their lives 26 years ago as the result of a horrific terrorist attack that destroyed the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. The military personnel serving in Beirut were there to bring peace and stability to Lebanon after years of internal strife and conflict. The murder of our soldiers, sailors, and Marines on this day on 1983 remains a senseless tragedy....In remembering this terrible day of loss, we are at the same time hopeful that a new government in Lebanon will soon be formed. We look forward to working with a Lebanese government that works actively to promote stability in the region and prosperity for its people."

"A horrific terrorist attack" - but whose horrific terrorist attack. Certainly the President has access to all intelligence information to fill in the answer, but here again the truth may be another casualty of our great bond with Israel. Rather than raising a false flag Israel refused to share the intelligence it had that such an attack was impending, including details of the make and model of the vehicle to be used.

Then, there were those fabulous dancing Israeli's on 9/11. Who could forget the reports that a group of 5 "Arabs" in a white van were dancing and celebrating as they filmed American Airlines Flight 11 crash into the North Tower at the World Trade Center. According to arresting Officer Scott DeCarlo's police report, one of the passengers told him, 'We are Israeli. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are the problem. The men ranged in age from 22 to 27. The driver was Sivan Kurzberg. The other passengers included his brother, Paul Kurzberg, Yaron Shmuel, Oded Ellner and Omer Marmari. The men, who all said they worked for Urban Moving, were taken to this new Jersey State Police Station and questioned by the FBI. ABC News' John Miller, now of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, reported that after the five men were taken to jail, the entire case was transferred out of FBI's criminal division and into its foreign counterintelligence section, which is responsible for espionage cases because the FBI believed Urban Moving may have provided a cover for agents of Israeli intelligence. After being held all five Mossad agents were deported to Israel.

One has to wonder what, if anything, the U.S. receives in return for its close ties to Israel, unless of course, this is simply: keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer.