{"id":137840,"date":"2022-10-05T14:46:26","date_gmt":"2022-10-05T18:46:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=137840"},"modified":"2022-10-05T14:47:03","modified_gmt":"2022-10-05T18:47:03","slug":"israel-is-really-dangerous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=137840","title":{"rendered":"

Israel is really dangerous<\/h1>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi: Israel is really dangerous<\/strong><\/h1>\n

<\/p>\n

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\u2026by\u00a0Jonas E. Alexis, VT Editor<\/a>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Philip Giraldi wrote an interesting article a few years ago saying some damning things about Israel and the Turkish government. He said that \u201cFormer National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was recently compelled to register as an agent of Turkey after he received $530,000 in payments to support Ankara\u2019s view regarding those it believed to be behind last year\u2019s coup.\u201d<\/strong><\/a>[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

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OK. Flynn is a bad guy. But what about Israel? Giraldi had nothing good to say:\u00a0 \u201cIronically, the most powerful and effective foreign-government lobby in Washington is so dominant that it has been able to avoid registering for the past 55 years. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) was last confronted by FARA when its predecessor organization the American Zionist Council was pressured by John F. Kennedy\u2019s Justice Department in 1962 and 1963.<\/p>\n

\u201cKennedy\u2019s death stopped that effort\u2014and ended White House attempts to hold Israel accountable for the development of its secret nuclear weapons program (which depended on nuclear material removed illegally from the United States with the connivance of a company located in Pennsylvania called NUMEC).\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

It can be argued that Israel has its\u00a0fingerprint on Kennedy\u2019s death<\/a>. Israel, Giraldi moved on to say, continues to suck the monetary blood of America:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe power of the Israel Lobby and of AIPAC is not cost free for the American public. The current $3 billion plus that Israel, with a thriving first world economy, receives in military assistance is on top of the $130 billion that it has received since 1949.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cProtecting Israel in international organizations like the United Nations has sometimes marginalized the U.S. in such bodies and the lobby\u2019s influence over American foreign policy has often been noted. In 2010 General David Petraeus stated that Israeli policies were putting American military personnel in the Middle East in danger. He quickly recanted, however.\u201d<\/strong>[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

This is no small matter. And what have Israeli officials been doing with all that money? Have they used it in a way that protected America? No. In fact, they have historically and diabolically used America\u2019s own weapons and money to bomb American soldiers and ships. Remember the USS Liberty?<\/p>\n

In June 8, 1967, during the Six Day War, Israel bombed the USS Liberty, killing thirty-four American soldiers and wounding hundreds of others. Israel attacked the United States Navy Technical Research ship USS Liberty because they had hoped to blame their own enemies and force the United States into war. Once caught, the Israelis declared that the attack was a mistake, arguing that they could not positively identify the vessel. But the evidence stacked up against them.[4]<\/a>\u00a0John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard called the event a \u201ctragic attack\u201d in history.[5]<\/a><\/p>\n

Bryce Lockwood, \u201ca Marine staff sergeant, Russian-language expert, recipient of the Silver Star for heroism, ordained Baptist minister,\u201d was aboard the USS Liberty.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor Lockwood and many other survivors, the anger is mixed with incredulity: that Israel would attack an important ally, then attribute the attack to a case of mistaken identity by Israeli pilots who had confused the U.S. Navy\u2019s most distinctive ship with an Egyptian horse-cavalry transport that was half its size and had a dissimilar profile.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd they\u2019re also incredulous that, for years, their own government would reject their calls for a thorough investigation. \u2018They tried to lie their way out of it!\u2019 Lockwood shouts. \u2018I don\u2019t believe that for a minute! You just don\u2019t shoot at a ship at sea without identifying it, making sure of your target!\u2019 Four decades later, many of the more than two dozen Liberty survivors located and interviewed by the Tribune cannot talk about the attack without shouting or weeping.\u201d[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

United States officials largely accepted the claims that the attack was an accident. Yet Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Admiral Thomas Moorer saw no evidence for this whatsoever; documents show that the Israelis knew exactly who they were attacking. James Bamford writes,<\/p>\n

\u201cBy 10:55 A.M., senior Israeli officials knew for certain that they had an American electronic spy in their midst. Not only was the ship clearly visible to the foes at El Arish, it had been positively identified by Israeli naval headquarters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before the incident, U.S. Commander Pinchas Pinchasy \u201csent a report to the acting chief of naval operations at Israeli navy headquarters in Haifa. The report said that the ship cruising slowly off El Arish was \u2018an electromagnetic audio-surveillance ship of the U.S. Navy, named Liberty, whose marking was GTR-5. Not only did the ship have \u2018GTR-5 painted broadly on both sides of its bow and stern, it also had its name painted in large, bold, black letters: \u2018USS Liberty.\u2019\u201d146 Everyone aboard the ship believed that the Israelis knew what they were doing.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt 2:09, the American aircraft carrier USS Saratoga, operating near Crete, acknowledged Liberty\u2019s cry for help. \u2018I am standing by for further traffic,\u2019 it signaled. After taking out the gun mounts, the Israeli fighter pilots turned their attention to the antennas, to sever the Liberty\u2019s vocal cords and deafen it so it could not call for help or pick up any more revealing intercepts. \u2018It was as though they knew their exact locations,\u2019 said Senior Chief Stan White.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cLieutenant Commander Dave Lewis, in charge of the NSA operation in the ship, agreed. \u2018It appears to me that every tuning section of every HF antenna had a hole in it,\u2019 he said. \u2018It took a lot of planning to get heat-seeking missiles aboard to take out our entire communications in the first minute of the attack\u2026\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cAs the Israelis continued their slaughter, neither they nor the Liberty crew had any idea that witnesses were present high above. Until now. According to information, interviews, and documents obtained for Body of Secrets, for nearly thirty-five years NSA has hidden the fact that one of its planes was overhead at the time of the incident, eavesdropping on what was going on below.\u201d<\/strong>[7]<\/a><\/p>\n

Haaretz<\/em>\u00a0reported that \u201cthe Israel Air Force warplanes and Israel Navy warships that attacked the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967, at the height of the Six-Day War, were aware that the vessel was an American spy ship\u2026The report stated that the U.S. National Security Agency\u2014to which the intelligence gathering ship belonged\u2014was able to intercept IAF communications according to which, at some stage, the pilots identified the ship as American but were nonetheless instructed to push ahead with the attack.\u201d[8]<\/a><\/p>\n

Some of these transcripts are in the U.S. government archives and prove that the Israelis knew exactly what they were doing.<\/p>\n

\u201cOliver Kirby, the NSA\u2019s deputy director for operations at the time of the Liberty attack, is quoted by the Tribune as confirming the existence of the transcripts, saying he personally read them. \u2018They said, \u201cWe\u2019ve got him in the zero,\u201d Kirby was quoted as saying, \u2018whatever that meant\u2014I guess the sights or something.\u2019 And then one of them said, \u201cCan you see the flag?\u201d They said \u201cYes, it\u2019s U.S., it\u2019s U.S..\u201d They said it several times, so there wasn\u2019t any doubt in anybody\u2019s mind that they knew it.\u2019\u201d[9]<\/a><\/p>\n

Kirby went so far as to say that the attack was \u201csomething that\u2019s bothered me all my life. I\u2019m willing to swear on a stack of Bibles that we knew they knew.\u201d[10]<\/a><\/p>\n

Yet in light of all of these facts, \u201cthe U.S. government, anxious to spare Israel\u2019s reputation and preserve its alliance with the U.S., closed the case with what even some of its participants now say was a hasty and seriously flawed investigation.\u201d[11]<\/a>\u00a0Bamford notes, \u201cDespite the overwhelming evidence that Israel had attacked the ship and killed the American servicemen deliberately, the Johnson administration and Congress covered up the entire incident.<\/p>\n

Johnson was planning to run for president the following year and needed the support of pro-Israel voters.\u201d[12]<\/a>\u00a0Q. \u201cTony\u201d Hart, who was a First Class Petty Officer stationed in Morocco at the time of the attack, declared after much reflection on the incident, \u201cPresident Johnson is not going to go to war or embarrass an American ally over a few sailors.\u201d[13]<\/a><\/p>\n

Haaretz<\/em>\u00a0brought the whole Zionist house down last month by publishing an archival document proving beyond any shadow of a doubt that Israel was exclusively behind the attack on the USS Liberty.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the document, which is also on the official CIA website, an anonymous source is quoted as saying: \u2018They said that [then-Israeli Defense Minister Moshe] Dayan personally ordered the attack on the ship, and that one of his generals adamantly opposed the action and said, \u2018This is pure murder.\u2019\u201d[14]<\/a><\/p>\n

There was more to the attack than meets the eye:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe new book quotes a story reported by former U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Dwight Porter, who recounted a conversation between an Israeli pilot and the Israel Air Force war room, which was allegedly picked up by an NSA aircraft and inadvertently cabled to CIA offices around the world:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIsraeli pilot to IDF war room: This is an American ship. Do you still want us to attack?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIDF war room to Israeli pilot: Yes, follow orders.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIsraeli pilot to IDF war room: But sir, it\u2019s an American ship \u2013 I can see the flag!<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIDF war room to Israeli pilot: Never mind; hit it.\u201d<\/strong>[15]<\/a><\/p>\n

So, should Israel be treated as America\u2019s ally? Shouldn\u2019t be viewed as an enemy to the United States and arguably much of the world? You be the judge.<\/p>\n

First published in August 2017.<\/em><\/p>\n