⚖️ The Day Israel Murdered 34 American Sailors, Injured 171 More, and Got Away With It

Jets, napalm, torpedoes, and machine guns ripped the USS Liberty apart. Survivors were silenced. The cover-up became a template for Gaza today.

Family, I need you to sit with this truth. The same government that drops American bombs on Palestinian children in Gaza today once used those same bombs, those same tactics, against American sailors — and Washington covered it up.

👉🏽 If you believe these truths must be told without fear or apology, I need you with me: https://www.thenorthstar.com/subscribe

Fire and Blood in the Mediterranean

They came just after lunch, on a clear summer day in the Mediterranean. The U.S. Navy intelligence ship USS Liberty was sailing slowly in international waters, off the northern coast of the Sinai Peninsula — the desert land bridge between Africa and Asia. Israel and its Arab neighbors were locked in what the world would later call the Six-Day War in June of 1967. America had declared neutrality. The Liberty was not a warship. It was a signals vessel, packed with radios and antennas to listen to communications. Its crew were sailors, not soldiers.

“International waters” means the open sea — not inside any country’s territory. A neutral ship there is supposed to be off-limits. The Liberty’s job was to listen, not to fight. In plain language, it was the U.S. military’s ears — built to hear radio traffic and help analysts understand what was happening in the region for the NSA, America’s main code-breaking and signals-intelligence agency.

And then Israel struck.

Jets dropped napalm canisters that exploded in sheets of fire across the deck. Napalm is a sticky gasoline-based gel that burns so hot it can melt through metal and human skin. Rockets tore through the hull. Torpedo boats closed in, launching five torpedoes, one of which blasted a 40-foot hole in the ship that killed more than 25 men in a single instant. Survivors crawling for cover were cut down by machine-gun fire. Firefighters trying to extinguish the flames were targeted directly. Medics carrying stretchers were riddled with bullets. Even the ship’s life rafts — deployed for the wounded — were sprayed with gunfire at point-blank range.

This was not war. This was an execution. And just as Israel bombs ambulances and aid convoys in Gaza today, they fired on their own ally’s medics and survivors in 1967. The cruelty is the same. The difference is only who was under the flag.

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A Ship That Could Not Be Mistaken

The USS Liberty was not hidden. Survivors recall at least six reconnaissance flights that circled the ship that morning. The Israeli pilots flew so low the sailors could have waved at them. The vessel’s hull markings — GTR-5 (see the picture above) and LIBERTY — were painted in giant white block letters on both sides and on the stern. Its profile was unique; only one other ship in the world had the same shape, its sister ship Belmont. The ship was moving at about five knots — a slow walking pace for a vessel — which tells you how unthreatening it was.

It was flying a massive five-by-eight-foot American flag. When that flag was shredded by shrapnel, the signalman hoisted an even larger seven-by-thirteen-foot “holiday colors” flag in the middle of the attack. The flag was visible from every angle.

Survivors never wavered in their testimony. Larry Bowen said:

“The crew would definitely say it was a deliberate attack. They knew who we were. We were flying the American flag. And when one got blown apart, the holiday colors (American flag) were raised.”

Electrician’s Mate Mickey LeMay described the first run:

“I looked to my right and a fighter jet was flying the same way we were. He wasn’t too high. We could have waved to each other he was so low. The plane was totally black and had no markings on it at all. As I turned to point to the plane that I saw, another plane, and this was the first [gun attack], came from bow to stern diagonally across us and [raked us with bullets]. I looked down and there was blood coming out of me everywhere. I looked at [the lieutenant] and he looked just like me and he had blood coming out of everywhere.”

Another survivor, Don Pageler, remembered the flags:

“Yes, we were flying our steaming colors, which I believe was a five-by-eight flag. And during the attack, that flag got so tattered that in the middle of the attack our signal man ran up our holiday colors, which was a seven-by-13 flag, which is a huge flag. Through all that they later said they did not see a flag.”

The ship could not have been mistaken for Egyptian, Syrian, or any other vessel. It was marked, flagged, and known.

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Intercepts: “It’s American … Hit the Target”

The most damning evidence came not only from survivors, but from Israel’s own pilots. In 2001, NSA historian James Bamford revealed in Body of Secrets that the United States had recordings of Israeli communications during the attack. One pilot radioed that he could see the American flag. Ground control ordered him to continue. As survivor Larry Bowen put it: “the person on ground control told him (the Israeli pilot), ‘hit the target.’”

If you’re new to the idea of “intercepts,” here’s all it means: U.S. listening posts and aircraft recorded the attackers’ radio chatter in real time. Those recordings — much later described publicly — captured Israelis acknowledging the Liberty was American. That matters because it destroys the story of “mistaken identity.”

That order alone should have ended the debate. This was not mistaken identity. This was the deliberate targeting of an American vessel, confirmed in Israel’s own intercepted transmissions.

The attack lasted nearly two hours. Jets dropped napalm, rockets screamed into the deck, torpedo boats circled, and survivors were hunted. It was a sustained assault designed to sink the ship and kill every man aboard. Under the Geneva Conventions — the basic rules of war that protect civilians, medics, and shipwrecked survivors — firing on firefighters, medics, and life rafts is a grave breach, which is another way of saying a serious war crime. But just like today, Israel was completely impervious to international law. They think it applies to everyone, but them.

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Dean Rusk: “The Attack Was Outrageous”

Inside the U.S. government, the “mistake” story never rang true. Dean Rusk, Secretary of State under President Lyndon B. Johnson, refused to accept it. In 1991 he 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.”

But Rusk wasn’t just saying this 24 years after the attack. Just two days after the attack, Rusk sent a formal diplomatic note to Israel’s ambassador, Avraham Harman. It stated, in part:

“At the time of the attack, the U.S.S Liberty was flying the American flag, and its identification was clearly indicated in large white letters and numerals on its hull. It was broad daylight and the weather conditions were excellent. Experience demonstrates that both the flag and the identification number of the vessel were readily visible from the air.

Beginning at about 0515 hours local time on June 8, 1967, and at intervals thereafter prior to the first attack, aircraft believed to be Israeli circled the U.S.S. Liberty on a number of occasions.

Accordingly, there is every reason to believe that the U.S.S. Liberty was or should have been identified, or at least her nationality determined, prior to the attack. In these circumstances, the later military attack by Israeli aircraft on the U.S.S. Liberty is quite literally incomprehensible. As a minimum, the attack must be condemned as an act of military irresponsibility reflecting reckless disregard for human life.

The subsequent attack by Israeli torpedo boats, substantially after the vessel was or should have been identified by Israeli military forces, manifests the same reckless disregard for human life.”

The line Israel pushed — that it thought the Liberty was an Egyptian vessel — collapses under the weight of the evidence. The ship was marked. The flag was raised (twice). The intercepts show the pilots knew. Survivors testified to the machine-gunning of medics and life rafts. The Secretary of State called it “outrageous.”

This was not friendly fire. It was a calculated act of cruelty, carried out by an ally, against Americans. And like today in Gaza, the attacks were not just against soldiers or combatants, but against the wounded, the medics, and the very possibility of survival.

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Silenced by Their Own Government

For the men who survived the attack on the USS Liberty, the horror did not end when the guns fell silent. The survivors were met with another cruelty: orders to keep quiet. Crew members were told directly that if they spoke to the press, or if they said anything to embarrass Israel, they could face prison. Some testified later that they were threatened with court-martial if they told the truth.

A U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry was convened, but it was a sham. Only 14 crew members were allowed to testify out of nearly 300 on board. Every testimony that suggested Israel knew the ship was American — every mention of flags, hull markings, or intercepted communications — was redacted. Whole sections of testimony disappeared from the official record. The Court of Inquiry became not an investigation but a tool of suppression.

Survivors described this silencing as a second betrayal.

Phil Tourney, one of the crew, put it bluntly:

“The most important thing about this whole cover-up is the cover-up. It’s worse than what they did to us. America was betrayed. Treason on the high seas by our own president, LBJ.”

Think about that. The men who had watched their shipmates burned and torn apart with American-made weapons, dropped by an ally, were then threatened with jail by their own government if they dared to say Israel was responsible.

This silencing mirrors what we see in Gaza today. Doctors and journalists who report Israeli attacks are discredited, censored, or even killed. The Liberty survivors were the first American witnesses to feel the full weight of this machinery: where the people all around you aren’t just slaughtered by Israel, but you are expected to take it and shut the hell up about it - and maybe even deny it ever happened. It’s insanity.

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Voices That Broke Through

Not every survivor stayed quiet. Lieutenant Commander James Ennes, who had been on the bridge when the attack began, spent years gathering testimony. In 1979, he published Assault on the Liberty, a meticulously documented account that left no doubt: the attack was deliberate.

Ennes was not alone. Joe Meadors, another survivor, worked with him to create one of the first websites devoted to telling the story. Together with their shipmates, they formed the USS Liberty Veterans Association. Their position became the official stance of the men who had lived it: the attack was intentional, and the cover-up was real.

Their website states it clearly: “The Israeli forces attacked with full knowledge that this was an American ship and lied about it. Survivors have been forbidden for 40 years to tell their story under oath to the American public.”

The Association has done more than keep memory alive. It has acted. Survivors formally filed a Report of War Crimes with the U.S. government, a detailed, documented report demanding an official investigation under the Geneva Conventions. Under international law, the United States is obligated to investigate credible allegations of war crimes against its citizens. The government has never even acknowledged receiving it.

When you hear Washington leaders today say “Israel is our greatest ally,” remember this: when American sailors accused Israel of committing war crimes against them, their own government turned away and shut the file.

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Rescue Recalled, Twice

What I am about to tell you is the single fact that shocked me the most about this entire massacre.

The call for help from the USS Liberty did go out. Aircraft carrier groups in the Sixth Fleet — the USS Saratoga and the USS America — launched armed jets to defend the Liberty. In Navy logs, the rules of engagement were set: attackers were declared hostile; the rescue flights were authorized to protect the American ship. And then something happened that survivors still cannot say without trembling: the order came to turn the planes around. Not once. Twice. The jets that could have driven off the attackers, that could have cut short the slaughter, were told to go home while American sailors bled out on a burning deck.

Men on the Liberty believed, and still believe, that those recalls cost dozens of lives. It became the template for everything that followed: when Israel is the attacker, Washington blinks. If you want to understand why Gaza’s ambulances are struck today with American-made bombs while U.S. officials issue statements about “tragic incidents,” start here — with rescue flights literally told by the American government to turn away from their own.

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Crimes Against Medics, Firefighters, and Survivors

The survivors’ War Crimes Report spelled out what the attack had really looked like in the language of law. It described how Israeli aircraft and boats did not just target the ship itself, but men who were putting out fires, treating the wounded, and deploying life rafts.

To fire on firefighters and medics is to strip away the protections of humanity in war. Under the Geneva Conventions, which Israel and the United States were both bound by in 1967, medics, stretcher-bearers, and shipwrecked sailors are specifically protected. To kill them is not simply a battlefield tragedy. It is a grave breach — which international law defines as a war crime.

The report highlighted how Israeli torpedo boats approached the ship after the first waves of air attacks. They did not offer help. They opened fire on the very life rafts the crew had lowered into the sea. To destroy a life raft at sea is to declare you do not want survivors. It was an act of calculated cruelty.

This is the same pattern we see today in Gaza. Ambulances targeted by drones. Medics killed while carrying stretchers. Aid convoys bombed while delivering flour. The cruelty is not new. It was there on June 8, 1967, in the Mediterranean, when an “ally” machine-gunned American sailors trying to save their shipmates.

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The Moorer Commission: “An Act of Murder”

For decades, the survivors pushed for someone in power to listen. In 2003, their persistence finally brought results. Admiral Thomas Moorer, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — the highest-ranking military officer in the United States — convened an independent commission to review the evidence.

Moorer was not alone. He was joined by former U.S. ambassadors, high-ranking admirals, and generals. These were not fringe voices. These were the men who had once commanded America’s fleets.

Their conclusion was blunt:

• The attack was deliberate.

• It was an act of murder against U.S. servicemen.

• The survivors had been forbidden to testify before Congress.

• The Court of Inquiry was a sham.

• The cover-up was, in their words, “without precedent in American naval history.”

Think about that last phrase. Without precedent. Not Pearl Harbor. Not 9/11. Not even Vietnam. The worst cover-up in American naval history, according to the nation’s top admiral, was protecting Israel for killing American sailors.

The Commission’s findings should have ignited a firestorm. Instead, Washington yawned. The report was shelved. The press barely covered it. Survivors who had waited decades for vindication were handed silence again.

This silence is why Israel keeps killing today. If the United States would cover for the murder of its own sailors in 1967, why would Israel ever fear consequences for killing Palestinian children in 2025? The precedent was written in American blood on the Liberty’s deck.

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The Medal and the Muzzle

Captain William L. McGonagle received the Medal of Honor — the nation’s highest award — for keeping the Liberty afloat and his crew alive. Traditionally, Presidents present that medal at the White House. McGonagle’s was handed quietly at the Navy Yard, away from cameras, away from questions, away from the word Israel.

The same government that decorates a captain for valor tells his men: say nothing. Survivors describe being pulled aside at new duty stations and warned — again — that if they spoke about who attacked them, they could face prison. The message could not be clearer: you may die for your country, but you may not embarrass its favorite ally.

That is how the silence calcified. And that is how we arrive in 2025, watching bombs fall on Gaza’s hospitals while officials search for new words to avoid an old truth: when Israel is the culprit, truth itself is classified.

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Betrayal in Broad Daylight

By the end of this account, the pattern is clear: survivors silenced, testimonies redacted, evidence buried, commissions ignored. The U.S. government, from Lyndon Johnson forward, decided it was better to protect Israel’s image than to protect its own men.

That choice was not just a betrayal of the Liberty’s crew. It was a betrayal of law, of accountability, of the American people. It told Israel, and the world, that Washington’s loyalty was not to justice but to impunity.

Family, survivors of the Liberty have been shouting for more than half a century. They shouted when their ship was burning. They shouted when their government told them to shut their mouths. They shouted when they filed war crimes reports. And they shouted when America’s top admiral confirmed what they already knew: Israel deliberately attacked the USS Liberty.

And every time, they were drowned out by silence.

The same silence that lets bombs fall on Gaza’s hospitals today. The same silence that lets aid convoys be blown apart. The same silence that buries truth because it is inconvenient to power.

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The Lawyer Who Broke the Silence

Captain Ward Boston was not a sailor on the Liberty. He was the Navy lawyer assigned as senior counsel for the Court of Inquiry — the official investigation into the attack. He knew what witnesses said, what evidence was collected, and how the conclusions were written. Decades later, he broke his silence.

In 2002, Boston said plainly that the Court’s findings were a cover-up. In 2004, he signed an affidavit that destroyed whatever credibility the official report had left. In it, he declared that Admiral Isaac Kidd, who presided over the inquiry, told him directly that the Navy had been ordered to find that the attack was a mistake. Kidd and Boston both knew that was false. Both believed the attack was deliberate.

Boston wrote: “I am certain the Israelis knew they were attacking an American ship. I saw the evidence with my own eyes, and I heard the witnesses with my own ears. It was a deliberate attempt to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew.”

He went further, calling Judge A. Jay Cristol’s book The Liberty Incident — which tried to portray the attack as accidental — “an insidious attempt to whitewash the facts.” Even Cristol himself, in his book, admitted Boston was known as a man of integrity who had once risked his career to “do the right thing.” Boston’s testimony made the whitewash impossible to maintain with a straight face.

Here was the Navy’s own lawyer saying: the official report was a lie, ordered from the top.

And here too, we see Gaza’s mirror. Every time Israel bombs an apartment block today, officials say it was an “accident” or “a tragic mistake.” Every time hospitals are hit, they say there were “terrorists hiding inside.” And every time, Washington repeats the excuse. The Liberty shows us this script was written long ago.

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Israel’s Own Cables Admit It

The story that the attack was accidental collapses even further when we look at Israel’s own archives. In recent years, Israel declassified cables sent by its ambassador in Washington, Avraham Harman, to Foreign Minister Abba Eban in Tel Aviv.

Five days after the attack, Harman wrote that a U.S. informant had told him there was “clear proof that from a certain stage the pilot discovered the identity of the ship and continued the attack anyway.”

Three days later, Harman warned again that “the Americans probably have findings showing that our pilots indeed knew that the ship was American.” He reported that the White House was “very angry.”

Think about that. Israel’s own ambassador admitted privately that U.S. intelligence had proof the attack was deliberate. Israel knew Washington knew. The outrage inside the White House was real. But instead of acting on it, President Johnson buried it.

The cables are devastating because they strip away the last defense. Israel did not only know it was shooting at an American ship. Its own ambassador admitted as much to his superiors.

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Inside the White House

So why was nothing done? The answer lives inside the Oval Office.

Dean Rusk, Secretary of State, condemned the attack as “outrageous” and never accepted Israel’s excuse. Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense, privately acknowledged the cover-up. But the man who had the final word was Lyndon Baines Johnson.

The Sixth Fleet launched rescue aircraft from the USS Saratoga and USS America as soon as the Liberty’s distress calls were heard. Twice, the planes were recalled. Survivors believe those recalls cost dozens of lives. Admiral Lawrence Geis, commander of the carrier division, later told Liberty’s officers that he had protested the recall. Johnson himself, he said, had overruled the rescue.

The reason, according to Geis: Johnson did not want to embarrass Israel.

A President of the United States allowed 34 Americans to die, and 171 to be wounded, rather than risk political fallout with Tel Aviv.

This is why survivors use the word betrayal. Their commander-in-chief abandoned them under fire to protect the reputation of the country that was killing them.

The echoes today are unmistakable. When Israel drops a bomb on a convoy of humanitarian aid in Gaza, the United States shields it diplomatically. When Israel destroys a hospital, Washington vetoes accountability at the United Nations. When Israel kills journalists, Washington calls it “unclear” or “tragic.” In 1967, it was American sailors. In 2025, it is Palestinian children. The principle is the same: Israel is protected, even when Americans bleed.

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Intercepts That Could Not Be Ignored

If there was still any doubt, the intercepts ended it.

In 2001, NSA historian James Bamford revealed in Body of Secrets that the United States had recordings of Israeli pilots during the attack. Those intercepts captured a pilot radioing that he could see the American flag. The order from ground control came back: hit the target.

Survivor Larry Bowen confirmed the essence of it years later: “The person on ground control told him (the Israeli pilot), ‘hit the target.’”

Intercepts are simple to understand. U.S. listening posts and aircraft recorded the attackers’ radio chatter in real time. Those tapes captured Israelis acknowledging the Liberty was American. That is intent. That is knowledge. That is deliberation.

In a court of law, it would be damning. In the court of public opinion, it should have been the end of the debate. But politics overruled evidence.

Inside the White House, Johnson and his advisors were “very angry,” as the Israeli cables admitted. But anger was not action. The tapes were classified, the cables buried, the public kept in the dark.

And so the narrative of “mistaken identity” lived on — even though the evidence was overwhelming that it was a lie.

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The Pattern of Denial

When you line it all up — Boston’s affidavit, Israel’s own cables, Rusk’s fury, McNamara’s knowledge, Johnson’s recall of rescue planes, and the NSA intercepts — the pattern is undeniable.

• The men who investigated knew it was deliberate.

• Israel’s own ambassador knew it was deliberate.

• America’s top diplomat said it was “outrageous.”

• The defense secretary knew it was a cover-up.

• The President of the United States recalled rescue aircraft and chose silence.

• The pilots themselves said they saw the flag and were ordered to fire anyway.

This is not a fog-of-war tragedy. This was a deliberate assault on an American ship, followed by a deliberate betrayal by its own government.

The pattern of denial is the same one we see in Gaza. Israel commits the act. Israel denies it. Washington covers it. Victims are silenced. The truth surfaces decades later, after it has already been buried under excuses.

The Liberty’s men were silenced in 1967. Gaza’s victims are silenced in 2025. The machinery of denial has not changed.

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Johnson’s Calculus: Protect Israel, Silence America

The truth about the USS Liberty was never in doubt for the men on board. It was never in doubt for Dean Rusk, or for Ward Boston, or for the U.S. intelligence officers who heard the intercepts. But it was treated as a “political problem” by Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Why? Johnson was in the middle of the Cold War. Israel was Washington’s forward partner in the Middle East. To acknowledge that Israel had deliberately attacked an American ship and murdered American sailors would have meant rupturing the alliance. Johnson chose to smother the truth.

He did not call Congress to demand hearings. He did not allow survivors to testify openly. He recalled rescue planes, twice, while his men were under fire. He accepted token reparations from Israel and called it done. In Johnson’s calculus, protecting Israel’s reputation was more important than protecting the lives — and the honor — of his own sailors.

That choice reverberates in 2025. When hospitals in Gaza are bombed, when aid convoys are struck, when entire families are wiped out by American-made bombs, U.S. officials describe them as “tragic mistakes” and move on. Just as they did with the Liberty.

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Reparations as Hush Money

Israel eventually paid $6.7 million to the families of the dead and wounded, and another $6 million for the ship itself. But reparations are not justice. Reparations do not erase intent. Survivors called it what it was: hush money.

No Israeli officer was ever disciplined. No American official ever lost their post. The men who gave the order to fire on American flags, on medics, on life rafts, faced no consequences. The money was Washington’s way of buying silence — the same way Israel today buys silence by offering aid packages even as it bombs Gaza into rubble.

Captain William L. McGonagle, who had fought through his wounds to keep the Liberty afloat, received the Medal of Honor. It should have been placed around his neck at the White House, by the President himself. Instead, it was awarded in a hushed ceremony at the Washington Navy Yard, handed over by the Secretary of the Navy. President Johnson refused to appear. Why? Because he did not want to answer questions about why Israel had attacked.

Imagine that. America’s highest military honor, handed out like an administrative errand — because the truth was too dangerous to speak aloud. Survivors call it “the medal and the muzzle.” They were decorated for their courage, and at the same time gagged for their honesty.

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The Precedent of Impunity

The Liberty was not only a tragedy. It was a turning point. It proved to Israel that it could commit atrocities against Americans themselves, and Washington would still shield it. The lesson was clear: there is no line that cannot be crossed.

This is the precedent we are living with today. In Gaza, Israel bombs hospitals and blames the victims. It fires on ambulances and calls it security. It starves children and calls it strategy. And the United States, just as in 1967, provides the cover.

The Liberty taught Israel that there would be no accountability. And once a nation knows that, it is unleashed. It can bomb civilians in Lebanon, assassinate leaders in Iran, sterilize Ethiopian Jewish women without their consent, and mow down Palestinian protesters with live fire — all with Washington’s weapons, Washington’s money, and Washington’s silence.

Every American needs to understand this: the Liberty was not just a story about a ship. It was the story of how an ally learned that American lives were negotiable, and Palestinian lives disposable. The blood that stained that deck in 1967 runs straight through Gaza’s rubble in 2025.

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The Reckoning

The USS Liberty was attacked deliberately. Its survivors were silenced deliberately. Its investigation was whitewashed deliberately. And the President of the United States chose, deliberately, to protect the attacker rather than his own men.

Family, this is the root of the crisis we are living through today. The silence around the Liberty birthed the silence around Gaza. The cover-up in 1967 became the template for every cover-up since. If a U.S. President would bury the murder of his own sailors to protect Israel, what hope have Palestinians ever had for justice?

The survivors of the Liberty said it themselves: they were betrayed. So too are the people of Gaza betrayed today. Betrayed by bombs made in America, fired with American approval, protected by American silence.

The reckoning is overdue. Either law applies to everyone, or law applies to no one. Either lives are sacred, or lives are expendable. Either America stops shielding Israel, or America’s own people remain complicit in crimes that stain every generation.

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👉🏽 Family, the Liberty’s survivors fought for decades to tell the truth. I am fighting today to connect their truth to Gaza’s truth. If you believe this work matters, if you believe silence is betrayal, then I need you to stand with me: https://www.thenorthstar.com/subscribe

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Love and appreciate each of you.
Your friend and brother,
Shaun

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