Gość: Polonus
IP: 12.88.105.*
07.10.01, 07:45
8 czerwca 1967 roku, sily zbrojne Izraela dokonaly zmasowanego ataku na okret marynarki wojennej
Stanów Zjednoczonych - USS Liberty. W konsekwencji tego bezprzykladnego aktu zbrodni zginelo 34
marynarzy, a 171 odnioslo obrazenia.
Epizod ten, jeden z najczarniejszych w historii wzajemnych - "przyjacielskich" stosunków pomiedzy
USA i Izraelem, po dzien dzisiejszy stanowi swoiste tabu. Kongres Stanów Zjednoczonych nigdy nie
przeprowadzil oficjalnego sledztwa w tej sprawie.
Winni napasci na USS Liberty nigdy nie zostali pociagnieci do odpowiedzialnosci karnej. Jedynymi
osobami, jakie osadzono i nastepnie uwieziono, byli ci nieliczni piloci izraelscy, którzy odmówili
wykonania rozkazu ataku na amerykanski okret.
Sporadyczne glosy polityków, czy tez dziennikarzy, upominajacych sie o wyjasnienie tragedii USS
Liberty, spotykaja sie z zarzutami TENDENCYJNEGO ANTYSEMITYZMU !
Co sprawilo, iz Izrael postanowil zaatakowac swojego najblizszego sojusznika?
Odpowiedz na to pytanie udziela James M. Ennes, w artykule opublikowanym w magazynie
Washington Report:
Did Israel�s Armed Forces Commit One
War Crim to Hide Another?
by James M. Ennes, Jr.
May/June 1996 pgs. 28, 53
Washington Report readers know the story well. In 1967 on the
fourth day of the Six-Day War, the armed forces of Israel
attacked the American intelligence ship USS Liberty for 90
minutes in international waters in broad daylight following several
hours of close, low-level reconnaissance. Thirty-four men died,
171 were hurt, and the ship was so badly damaged that it had to
be scrapped.
The government of Israel has lied about the circumstances ever
since, telling a story markedly different from that told by American
survivors. Congress has refused to question Israel�s
demonstrably false account, even though the State Department�s
own analysis finds the Israeli story to be untrue.
Yet the most pressing question remaining from that infamy is not
whether the attack was deliberate. That was settled long ago for
most reasonable people. The question is why Israel risked its
cozy relationship with America by killing American seaman on
the high seas.
Indeed, spokesmen for Israel use that question in Israel�s
defense. Why, they ask, would Israel risk alienating its American
friends?
So why did Israel attack? Intelligence analysts and others have
long supposed that Israel attacked to prevent the ship from
reporting the impending invasion of the Golan Heights, then
imminent despite cease-fire pleas by the United States. Israel�s
defenders reject that explanation.
Recent reports in the Israeli and Egyptian press suggest another
powerful possibility.
According to eyewitness accounts by Israeli officers and
journalists, the Israeli army the army that claims to hold itself to a
higher moral standard than other armies executed as many as
1,000 Arab prisoners during the 1967 war.
Historian Gabby Bron wrote in the Yediot Ahronot in Israel that
he witnessed Israeli troops executing Egyptian prisoners on the
morning of June 8, 1967, in the Sinai town of El Arish.
Bron reported that he saw about 150 Egyptian POWs being held
at the El Arish airport where they were sitting on the ground,
densely crowded together with their hands held on the back of
their necks. Every few minutes, Bron writes, Israeli soldiers would
escort an Egyptian POW from the group to a hearing conducted
by two men in Israeli army uniforms. Then the man would be
taken away, given a spade, and forced to dig his own grave.
The USS Liberty was less than 13 miles
from El Arish.
�I watched as [one] man dug a hole for about 15 minutes,� Bron
wrote. �Afterwards, the [Israeli military] policeman told him to
throw the shovel away, and then one of them leveled an Uzi at
him and shot two short bursts, each of three or four bullets.�
Bron says he witnessed about ten such executions, until the
grave was filled. Then an Israeli colonel threatened him with a
revolver, forcing him to leave the area.
America�s most sophisticated intelligence platform, the USS
Liberty, was less than 13 miles from El Arish. We were close
enough to see the town mosque with the naked eye. With
binoculars we could make out individual buildings and might
have seen the executions if we had looked in the right place.
Could our operators have heard voice radio messages revealing
these killings? Did senior Israeli officers sanction the murders, or
did they learn of them? How would they have reacted to the
knowledge that USS Liberty was nearby and might have heard
incriminating radio traffic? Would they have been desperate
enough to attack an American ship?
The Liberty Attack Was a War Crime
The attack on the USS Liberty was itself a war crime. U.S. Navy
Commander Walter Jacobsen, a navy legal officer then doing
graduate work at George Washington University, conducted an
extensive legal analysis of the attack.
His conclusion, reported in the Winter 1986 Naval Law Review,
was that several aspects of the attack violated provisions of the
Geneva Conventions war crimes. Specifically, Commander
Jacobsen found that the attack was not legally justified, that it
constituted an act of aggression under the United Nations
Charter, that the use of unmarked aircraft, the wanton destruction
of life rafts in the water, the jamming of international radio
distress frequencies, and the failure of the torpedo boat
commanders to render immediate assistance to a disabled and
helpless enemy were all violations of international law.
U.S. Refusal to Investigate Violates Geneva
Conventions
For years, USS Liberty survivors have asked members of
Congress to investigate the circumstances of the attack,
particularly since the Israeli government repeatedly has put out a
spurious version of those circumstances. For example, we did fly
a flag. We did identify ourselves. We were in international waters.
They did not stop firing after seeing our flag as they claim, but
continued to fire for another 40 minutes. The attack was not brief
or accidental as Israel claims. We did not �attempt to hide� or
escape when detected, as Israel has charged. These things are