The Timeline between Rabin's assassination and Bibi's election

The Timeline from Rabin's Assassination to Bibi's election

The Tragic Incident of the USS Liberty

Mark Midbon >

June 1997

Although thirty years have passed since Israeli forces attacked the USS Liberty, the importance of this tragic incident is increasing. As survivors of the Liberty retired from the US Navy, they went on the Worldwide Web to tell their grim story. On the Web they found Americans skeptical of foreign entanglements and ready to believe that Israeli forces knowingly attacked an American ship.

But the research of a British Army officer shows that Israeli ships and planes attacked out of ignorance. Edgar O'Ballance was given unrestricted access to Israeli officers after the Six Day War so that he could produce a complete chronicle of the 1967 victory. In the resulting book he gave an account of the USS Liberty incident that contradicts the official Israeli version. While embarrassing in some ways, the O'Ballance version exonerates Israelis from the charge of knowingly killing American sailors.

O'Ballance learned that Israelis had good reason to believe that the Liberty was only pretending to be an American ship and was flying the US flag as a disguise. After spotting the Liberty, the Israeli Navy had gone straight to the US Naval Attache based at the American embassy. The US Naval Attache had assured the Israeli Navy that there were no American ships operating where the Liberty was spotted.

Unfortunately the Israeli government told a different story after the attack: that the USS Liberty had not flown a US flag. This claim was easily disproved by surviving crewmen and other witnesses. Because the O'Ballance version of events is relatively unknown in the US, many Americans assume that the Israeli government lied to cover up murder.

I find the O'Ballance version convincing because it fits well with certain events leading up to the Six Day War. These events explain why the US Naval Attache knew nothing about the movement of the USS Liberty to the eastern Mediterranean and why the Israeli government gave out a false story.

In 1965, under the direction of President Lyndon Johnson and General Maxwell Taylor, the US Army provided the Israeli Army with a tactical computer model. This model allowed the Israeli Army to train in the Negev Desert while "seeing" the topography of the Sinai. For two years the Israeli Army used this model to train for breaking through the three-tiered Egyptian defenses in the Sinai.

As the time came near for the Israeli Army to attack the Sinai, the US Army wanted to monitor the success of the computer model. The US Joint Chiefs of Staff ordered the USS Liberty, an intelligence-gathering ship, to sail from Spain and cruise international waters just north of the Sinai. This maneuver had nothing to do with US naval actions, and the US Naval Attache in Israel was left in ignorance.

I explain these events in an article for Computers and Society that is now available on the Web. Click here for the article.

The Israeli and American governments probably assumed that the incident of the USS Liberty would be forgotten. The opposite has happened. Now they face a dilemma. If they tell the truth, Israeli actions in 1967 will look less like self defense and more like aggression. If they do not tell the truth, then a growing number of Americans will believe that Israelis killed American sailors on purpose, with full knowledge of their actions.

About Mark Midbon

Mark Midbon was educated at the University of Wisconsin and Rutgers University. He has worked as a computer programmer and systems analyst for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, the University of Wisconsin, and Arizona State University. "My historical interests always lead me to the 1960s, when computers began to change the world. 'Who Made Israel's Computer Models for the 1967 War?' is one of three articles I've written about the 1960s for "Computers and Society." Write to him c/o midbon@doit.wisc.edu