James Scott, Larry Bowen, and Phil Tourney: most pundits won’t recognize those names. They are veterans who survived Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967. They testified before the New Hampshire General Court on January 14, 2024. They wanted answers as to why their government did not help them and how they ended up in the deadly crossfire of two Israeli jet fighters during the Six-Day War.
If you don’t know about the USS Liberty incident, you are not alone. It was a tragic event, one of too many, in which American soldiers were killed by friendly fire. Today, the USS Liberty incident is crudely used to demonize Israel and defame the United States government and military leadership. Online commentators on the (woke) right have been playing up the event, looking for any means to wound the Jewish State and justify Palestinian atrocities against Israel. Candace Owens was the latest commentator to sully her already tarnished reputation, bringing on one of the veterans to emphasize the incident.
So, what happened?
Captain William McGonagle was piloting the USS Liberty off the coast of Abidjan, Ivory Coast. He received commands to chart a course for the Mediterranean to collect intelligence in the region. En route, the Six-Day War erupted. Israel attacked the surrounding Arab states, which had plotted another attempt to annihilate the Jewish state. The US Navy sent five communiques to the Liberty to withdraw, but the ship never got the message.
On June 8, 1967, shortly after decimating the Egyptian Air Force, two Israeli jets spied the USS Liberty near the warzone coastline of Egypt. Even though the ship had an American flag on it, the Israelis believed that it must be an Egyptian ship, the El Quseir, because the United States government had made private and public assurances that they had no major presence in the Mediterranean.
In the early afternoon, the Israelis began strafing the Liberty. The barrage lasted fourteen minutes. Thirty-seven men were killed and 171 were wounded. Captain McGonagle did his best to protect his men and fight back. Unfortunately, the Liberty was a retrofitted cargo ship. The two guns on deck could stop enemies from boarding the ship, but were ill-equipped to defend against aircraft.
McGonagle initially announced, “Abandon ship!” and the sailors released lifeboats, but then they belayed the order when the strafing ceased. Three Israeli destroyers came to the attack site, and they saw the lifeboats. They realized that they had been attacking an American ship—a huge and reckless blunder.
When he received word of this horrible blunder, Avraham Harman, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, ordered Prime Minister Levi Eshkol to apologize for this terrible incident, pay reparations, and hold any Israeli leadership accountable. Following a formal inquiry by the US Navy, Israel formally apologized for the incident and paid a total of $13 million in reparations to the sailors and their families. The entire crew received Purple Hearts for bravery under fire. A period of diplomatic stasis emerged between the United States and Israel, formally resolved twenty years later.
James Scott’s son detailed the incident in his book The Attack on the Liberty. For all his painstaking detail, he repeatedly asks, “How could the Israelis have confused the ship with the El Quseir?” While “just asking questions” is a chronic habit among anti-Zionists, James Scott Jr. appears to do so out of genuine skepticism. But questioning without seeking answers merely sows incriminating doubt.
Robert Novak believed that the Israelis deliberately attacked the USS Liberty. Pundits from the Mises Institute have joined the conspiracy bandwagon. But what evidence do they have? Eleven United States commissions, three by the Israelis, and now a recent admission from the United States Navy of a cover-up—one would think that the general punditry class would give this tragedy a rest. Yet recent anti-Zionist audiences clamor for more, inflamed following the October 7 atrocities.
Well, did Israel deliberately plot an attack on an American ship? A powerful debate between veteran Phil Tourney and independent journalist Cam Higby sheds some light. Right away, Higby reminded the public that Captain McGonagle, in his testimony before the US Naval Court of Inquiry, asserted that the attack resulted from mistaken identity. Lloyd Painter, another veteran survivor, established the same thing. McGonagle never wavered from this assertion, despite justifiably faulting Israel’s recklessness.
Higby questions Tourney: “Would Israeli jets use napalm bombs to sink an ironclad American ship?” Napalm won’t get the job done. Why would the Israelis attack the Liberty with unmarked planes, then approach the ship with marked destroyers? The veterans claim that the Israelis jammed their communications. Only someone on board could have jammed the ship’s sound phones! All the circumstantial evidence points out that the Israelis did not think it was an American ship and that they suddenly targeted the vessel.
Why would the Israelis want to drag the United States into a larger war anyway, as anti-Zionists often allege, when within hours Egypt would surrender and Israel would triumph in the Six-Day War? If Tourney and his crew believe that Captain McGonagle’s testimony is “not worth the paper it’s printed on,” why did they post the testimony on their website—only to later remove it?
Tourney later argued that the Israelis were colluding with President Johnson to enact the “Greater Israel” project of taking over the Middle East. Conspiracy theory, much? What Tourney did not disclose during the hearing in New Hampshire, but frequently posts on his social media, is his profound anti-Semitism, blaming the Jews for all the evils of the world, not just the USS Liberty incident.
Because the USS Liberty veterans believe that the United States government is still holding out on sensitive information, they have asked President Trump to declassify everything. Michael Oren, the former Israeli ambassador to the United States, has also called for full transparency. President Trump should release all classified records related to the USS Liberty incident. Let’s end the unconscionable exploitation of our veterans’ suffering to demonize one country and defame our own. We deserve better.