USS Liberty Survivor _Again_ Survives Attack By Israel in International Waters..

[Surface]

Most revealing incident, certainly nothing new from the Pharisees, nor from the mainstream media BS blitz, but now there shouldn't be any doubt that FOX network is fully on board the "Israel First" train too, considering their overt condemnation of the victims and almost worshipful defense of yet another Israeli atrocity. Yes, we must believe that the entire world is wrong again, except Israel and Zionist controlled U.S. Government & Media. Well, certainly Beck, Palin, etc. _must_ believe so, otherwise we would have never heard of them. Certainly no "truthers" there.

The Article....

National Prayer Network

FLOTILLA ATTACK MIRRORS USS LIBERTY
By Harmony Grant Daws
17 June 10

Thanks to the internet, Israel’s terrorist attack on the Free Gaza ship, Mavi Marmara, could hardly be less publicized. Yet on June 8, 1967—43 years ago—Israeli air and sea forces attacked another ship in international waters. It was the USS Liberty, conspicuously flying its American flag in clear weather; Israel used bombs, napalm and torpedoes against it. The attack on the Liberty remains the only maritime incident involving fatalities in US history which was never investigated by Congress. The attack occurred in international waters, and reports by eyewitnesses flatly contradict the Israel-excusing narrative to which the US agreed.

This article examines stunning parallels between the Liberty attack and the recent brutal takeover of the Gaza-bound flotilla. Both attacks occurred in international waters. In both, Israel heavy-handedly silenced eyewitnesses, discredited survivors, controlled a biased investigation—after having ordered the attacks to protect an even greater crime.

Joe Meadors survived both attacks. He was aboard the Liberty in 1967 and also an activist passenger on the flotilla this June. Meadors says international waters were violated both times. The Israelis, he says, “ think they can do no wrong. Every time they speak they say they don’t break any laws, they always abide by international laws. But, they break them with impunity and the US Government is not going to hold them accountable, nobody is.”

Is such pessimism warranted? It certainly is.

Forty-three years have passed since 34 servicemen were killed by Israel in international waters. The truth seems just as sinkable today.

Silencing Witnesses, Jamming Communication Devices

During the flotilla attack, one journalist was able to broadcast 90 seconds of live coverage to Al Jazeera, and then communication was cut off, as the Israelis jammed the activists’ communication devices. This is exactly what happened on board the Liberty. Communication devices were jammed with what survivors described as a “buzzsaw sound.”

The brief video dispatched to Al Jazeera reports civilian activists attacked with live fire by the IDF even while waving the white flag of surrender—dozens injured and several killed in international waters, while bearing aid to try to break the Gaza blockade. A Brazilian filmmaker was also able to smuggle out 60 minutes of tape in her underwear. The rest of the physical evidence—cameras and film—were seized by Israel and have still not been returned.

As the news about the flotilla attack was first surfacing, Israel dominated the information flow; the eyewitness survivors were being “quietly herded to Ashdod without means of communication to the outside world.”

Similarly, when the wounded were finally being evacuated from the Liberty, they were commanded not to speak to the press about what had happened. Thirty-four US soldiers were dead and 174 were wounded—yet eyewitnesses were not able to tell what they had seen and heard.

Discrediting and Silencing Survivors

After the flotilla event and continuing today, ADL/Israel has focused on discrediting the flotilla passengers by linking them to international terrorist groups. New York officials are asking the State Department to look into the visa applications of flotilla survivors who want to share their testimony in Brooklyn. Jewish Senator Chuck Schumer—who recently said Gaza should be economically strangled until it admits Israel’s right to exist—is forcefully insinuating that the flotilla activists are linked to Al Qaeda. Thus, flotilla survivors who raise their heads are threatened with personal investigations and public slander, pressuring them to keep their mouths shut.

Survivors of the Liberty who knew Israel had purposefully attacked their vessel were also silenced. Richard Larry Weaver, a seaman aboard the Liberty, says he was visited in the hospital by a three-star admiral. The admiral asked what had happened on the Liberty; and when Weaver stated his testimony, the admiral said, “ “If you tell anyone what happened you will be put in prison and we’ll lose the key.”

Investigation by Biased Parties

The investigation of the U.S.S. Liberty was conducted by the US Navy, which forbade eyewitnesses from reporting their testimony. “Within three weeks, the Navy put out a 700-page report, exonerating the Israelis, claiming the attack had been accidental and that the Israelis had pulled back as soon as they realized their mistake. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara suggested the whole affair should be forgotten. ‘These errors do occur,’ McNamara concluded.”

The attack on the Liberty remains the only maritime incident in US history, involving fatalities, which was never investigated by Congress. The Liberty Veterans Association, composed of survivors, says the inquiry didn’t even examine Israeli culpability but only focused on American miscommunications. No Israelis were questioned. All known survivors agree the attack was deliberate. But then, as today, the USA colluded with Israel to cover up the attacks and slaying of American citizens.

A Turkish-American was killed during the raid of the flotilla yet is receiving no justice from his country -- just the opposite: A senator has called for the arrest and prosecution of any Americans on board the vessels! The “inquiry” into the flotilla attack will be as much a sham as the Navy’s 700-page report on the U.S.S. Liberty. The US has agreed that an independent Israeli committee should look into the attack! The Jewish Forward admits there will be no real investigation of the Israeli military’s attack on the flotilla; only policy decisions will be examined. There will be a virtual “firewall” between the inquiry and the military.

“The panel will not be able to investigate firsthand the events on the ship and will not be able to judge between the two contradicting narratives — the Israeli storyline that depicts an encounter between lightly armed commandos and bloodthirsty terrorists, and the Turkish one that talks of peace activists on their way to a humanitarian relief mission brutally attacked by the Israeli navy. Furthermore, preferring an Israeli committee to an international panel means that investigators would likely have little to no access to the activists who were on board the ships.”

Violence Protects an Even Greater Crime

It is certain that Israel attacked the Liberty to cover up even more sinister crimes. In 1995, two shallow mass graves of Egyptian soldiers were discovered outside the Sinai city of El Arish; they were prisoners of war slaughtered by the Israeli army. James Bamford, in his 2001 Body of Secrets, suggests the Liberty, an intelligence ship, may have been attacked to prevent its discovery of these slaughters, to which Israeli veterans have admitted. A retired Israeli general personally admitted to murdering 49 surrendered and unarmed Egyptian POWs with submachine gunfire during the 1967 war.

George Ball, Undersecretary of State under Johnson and Kennedy, authored a 1992 book, The Passionate Attachment: America’s Involvement with Israel, 1947 to the Present. Ball’s book presents his conviction that the Liberty was attacked to prevent it from interfering with Israel’s plan to violate any ceasefire until it had completely seized the Golan Heights.

Ball reports, “Yet the ultimate lesson of the Liberty attack had far more effect on policy in Israel than in America. Israel’s leaders concluded that nothing they might do would offend the Americans to the point of reprisal. If America’s leaders did not have the courage to punish Israel for the blatant murder of American citizens, it seemed clear that their American friends would let them get away with almost anything.”

This has certainly been proven true in 2010. While the world gasps in horror, the United States stands with Israel’s “right to self-defense,” regardless of the cost in innocent life and the violation of international law.

Just as the Liberty was attacked to protect even greater crimes, so the Gaza-bound flotillas were attacked to prevent their interference with the continued blockade of Gaza—an atrocity that keeps 1.5 million people crowded into an open air prison. An Israeli Arab MK has told the European Parliament that Israeli leaders should be tried at The Hague for their crimes; in preventing medical supplies and medicine into Gaza, Israel has caused at least 700 Palestinian deaths at its border crossings, he said.

Incredibly, pro-Israel America, particularly Christian conservatives, will not face the truth about these even darker realities.

History has shown that if we ignore dark realities in the present, darker ones are sure to come.



Rev. Ted Pike is director of the National Prayer Network, a Christian/conservative watchdog organization.

Aaron and Harmony Daws are staff researchers and writers for the National Prayer Network.


The Link: http://www.truthtellers.org/alerts/FLotillaAttackMirrorsUSSLiberty.htm

[Gypsybiker45]

Ill agree the Liberty was attacked in a treacherous attack. This guy is grasping, The Liberty was a "Listening ship" It monitored electronic communications, the slaughter at El Arish was inland by ground troops, the USS Liberty couldnt have possibly been able to know about any of its details at that time, The writer of this article speaks as the Liberty has 2000 technology instead of late 1960s. there were no close satellite pictures relayed to her or anything like that, the only thing they could have possibly known about the massacre would have been some intercepted radio messages if there were any. I also find great offense comparing the Liberty attack to this storming on the flotilla, not even close.This whole aarticle diminishes the honor of those Navy sailors lost. If the IDF would have attacked that ship with the savagery the Liberty suffered ,Turkey would have declared war.

[Surface]

see link... http://www.truthtellers.org/alerts/pikerebutsadlflotilla.htm

PIKE REBUTS ADL'S FLOTILLA AD
By Rev. Ted Pike
24 June 10

The Anti-Defamation League continues to provide PR for Israel, doing its best to make sure America, unlike the rest of the world, does not become overtly critical of Israel's attack on the "Free Gaza" flotilla. Here is their recent ad in the New York Times [click on link above to see said ad], followed by my responses.

Response to Sections 1-3:

The IHH is not on the U.S. or European terrorist lists. As Mid-East specialist Marsha B. Cohen points out, "Israel is the only country in the world to ban the IHH as a terrorist organization." In her article "Terror smear against IHH springs from a familiar source," she asserts that Israel's accusations against IHH, Turkish organizer of the flotilla, and its Turkish passengers is based on "paltry evidence." Such accusation, she says, does not describe reality but Israel's need to play the "terrorist card," making the whole flotilla guilty by association. Israel's obfuscation, however, hypocritically masks an ominous reality about itself (mondoweis.com, June 4).

In the spring of 1948, Israel showed itself the ultimate terrorist organization. Palestine was about to be divided into Jewish and Palestinian states under the partition plan of the United Nations. Partition was unacceptable to Israel, as it has always been. To keep it from happening, Jewish Irgun terrorists, under the authority of future prime minister Menachem Begin, attacked the sleeping town of Deir Yassin, west of Jerusalem. They murdered and butchered more than 100 men, women, and children, filling a well with dozens of their bodies. Irgun forces then drove trucks mounted with loudspeakers throughout Judea warning all Palestinians that, unless they fled their businesses, farms, and homes into other countries, they would also be slaughtered.

The Arab armies that "invaded" Palestine at this time during the misnamed "Israeli War of Independence" did so primarily in response to the massacre at Deir Yassin and many similar acts of terror which the Zionists unleashed throughout Palestine. The Zionists were intent on killing or driving all Arabs out of Palestine so that Israel could begin nationhood Arab-free. Few nations embody the term "ethnic cleansing" as does Israel.

The fact that Israel only succeeded in expelling about half is directly a result of armed intervention from Jordan and Syria. Nevertheless, the slaughter at Deir Yassin began an Israeli policy to frustrate any more two-state solutions and harass remaining Palestinians toward one goal: final expulsion. The present tide of illegal Jewish settlements, devouring Arab ownership of Palestine, is a manifestation of this objective.

Israel 's campaign of terror was so effective that Begin, in his book The Revolt, boasts that even Arab generals who had come to the Palestinians' aid became convinced that the Zionists were so ferocious they would indeed slaughter all remaining Arabs in Israel. As a result, Arab leaders encouraged the Palestinians to flee to safer lands until the war was over; 800,000 heeded their advice. They did so with Zionist forces at their heels. Most had nothing but the clothes on their bodies. They were driven from their ancestral lands at gunpoint. The Zionists killed many outright, threatening the rest that if they came back for anything they would be shot. Many Palestinians were looted by the Israelis en route; and the houses, businesses, and farms of the Palestinians in 12 cities and large towns plus 526 small towns and villages were seized and occupied between 1948 and 1967 and remain so today.

The wound resulting from this mass theft and dislocation has caused many fanatical, even terrorist Islamic elements to crusade for a return of Palestinian lands. Yet that does not cancel the fact that many more concerned and nonviolent activists worldwide now understand the root cause for Palestinian dissatisfaction and work toward justice for them. Yes, the predominantly Muslim activists occupying the Free Gaza flotilla may have wanted ; they were willing to die in order to defend the Mavi Marmara from the Israeli attack and abuse they knew had already occurred on the other vessels. They were willing to die to bring justice as well as Israeli-banned concrete, building materials, medicines, etc. to the beleaguered Gazans. They may have sympathized with Hamas. Yet, such sympathy does not impugn the many aboard the five ships from 20 nations who agreed on the general altruistic purpose of bringing hope to the Gazans, suffering their fourth year of cruel and vindictive, collective punishment from Israel.

Response to Section 4:

The primary cargo aboard the flotilla was precisely what Israel bans into Gaza: concrete, steel, building materials, and some medical supplies. Israel claims such might be used to build Hamas bunkers and further terrorism. Leaders of the flotilla knew that, while Israel might deliver some of the flotilla's cargo, it would only deliver what it considers "humanitarian" aid, which does not include the above. The flotilla was determined to deliver its proscribed cargo. As such, the flotilla was not "provocative" in its determination to make sure these materials, vital to rebuilding Gaza's shattered infrastructure, got through.

Response to Section 5:

As smuggled footage by filmmaker/passenger Iara Lee extensively documents, Israel's attack boats bombarded passengers of the Marmara with a number of projectiles including hard rubber paintball pellets and undoubtedly tear gas canisters, capable of killing a person if it hits him directly. Recent testimony confirms similar assault.

"Ercan Kayrak, one of the doctors who was aboard the Mavi Marmara said he and his colleagues began tending the wounded -- including three Israeli soldiers -- during the course of the Israeli raid. "We completed the treatment under hygienic conditions. Then I got out on the deck to deliver the three Israeli soldiers we had treated. They shot me in the chest and in the shoulder. If a friend had not pulled me back inside, I too would have died…We acted humanely, but Israel fired bullets at humanity," the doctor said." (todayszaman.com)

Marsha Cohen cites Bulent Yildirim, head of IHH, who survived Israel's attack on the Marmara. She says, "BBC reported that the activists, speaking on their return home, said that in addition to the nine deaths caused by shots fired by the IDF, the Israeli commandos had also administered electric shocks and beaten passengers during their assault on the Mavi Marmara… He [Yildirim] described how a doctor and a journalist were both shot at close range, and said another activist was shot as he was surrendering. "I took off my shirt and waved it, as a white flag. We thought they would stop after seeing the white flag, but they continued killing people... They lie when they say they were given permission to use real bullets after the 35th minute. They threw in gas bombs, which injured our friends. Only two of the initially fired bullets were rubber. The others were nail-like bullets. Our friend Cevdet was martyred. He is a member of the press. He was only taking pictures as the Israelis fired on us. They smashed his brain into pieces from exactly one meter away."

Testimony continues to mount confirming that live fire from Israel by air and sea caused many gunshot wounds and casualties, resulting in at least 91 gunshot wounds to 67 passengers, including 33 in the nine dead Turks.

Response to Section 6:

Hamas is a cantankerous terrorist organization that routinely opposes its best interest and the people of Gaza. It does not accurately reflect the compassionate idealism of most members of the flotilla and the world communities' attempt to lift Israel's illegal blockade and bring an end to the suffering of such terribly wronged human beings.

CONCLUSION

Although many evangelical leaders are now aware that ADL is a formidable enemy of Christian values, freedom, and civilization, incredibly, they recommend ADL's flotilla propaganda to their tens of millions of followers.

A year and a half ago ADL and its sister Jewish attack group, the Southern Poverty Law Center, recommended in their MIAC advisory to the Missouri state police that a large segment of humanity be considered "terrorist threats." To whom did this refer? The Taliban? Hamas? Or IHH? No, it was every type of Christian conservative, including Tea Partiers, militia groups, pro-life activists, Ron Paul supporters, veterans, etc.

These are the very evangelicals who now unquestioningly accept every word ADL is telling them.





Footnote :
The complete, exhaustive record of Israel's terrorist expulsion of the Palestinians is contained in "The Encyclopedia of the Palestine Problem," edited by Palestinian Christian barrister and diplomat Dr. Issa Nakhleh. This two-volume work, totaling about 1,800 pages, is available online at www.palestine-encyclopedia.com, in most university libraries, or by ordering from Intercontinental Books, P.O. Box 756, Grand Central Station, New York, NY 10163-0756.



Rev. Ted Pike is director of the National Prayer Network, a Christian/conservative watchdog organization.