NationStates Jolt Archive

Known fact, that the IDF forces killed 1,000 prisoners of war, 14 U.N peacekeepers, and 34 U.S sailors in 1967 on June 8th.

10.02.95 Time magazine article


OPENING GRAVE WOUNDS

EVIDENCE OF ISRAELI ATROCITIES DURING THE 1967 WAR WITH EGYPT THREATENS THE COUNTRIES' FRAGILE TIES
FREDERICK PAINTON REPORTED BY AMANY RADWAN/CAIRO AND ERIC SILVER/JERUSALEM


Despite a historic peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, the heritage of two wars in two decades still leaves unexpected and bitter traces. Last week new disclosures that Israeli soldiers massacred Egyptian pows during the 1967 war added to a growing wave of anti-Israeli sentiment in Egypt. The sequence of events leading to the unearthing of two mass graves outside the Sinai city of El Arish last week began a month ago with admissions by Israeli war veterans that unarmed Egyptian civilians and pows were murdered in the 1956 and 1967 wars.

The expedition that discovered the shallow burial sites was organized by the semiofficial Al-Ahram newspaper and guided by Abdel Salam Moussa, 55, a former air force officer who was taken prisoner by the Israelis during the 1967 war. The searchers found human bones and estimated that the first grave contained the remains of approximately 90 people. Recalling the killings, Moussa told Al-Ahram, "I saw a line of prisoners, civilians and military, and they [Israeli troops] opened fire at them all at once. When they were dead, they told us to bury them." Another witness to such shootings, a local Bedouin named Soliman Salama, identified a second grave 27 km away where he said he saw Israelis kill about 30 Egyptian soldiers after they had surrendered.

The fury aroused in Egypt by the apparent proof of massacres was fueled by the press, which matched wartime photos with imaginative illustrations showing Egyptian soldiers surrendering, being ordered to dig their graves, then being executed. Opposition parties and newspapers are pressing President Mubarak to suspend diplomatic ties with Israel until a full investigation into the executions is conducted. Director of Egypt's State Information Service Nabil Osman responded, "This is a very serious issue. The truth has to be made clear. Such crimes are against humanity, and they just don't fade away."

The sudden revival of old resentments threatened to poison relations between Cairo and Tel Aviv, and worse, to undermine a diplomatic alliance that is essential to the process of reaching a broader Middle East settlement. The controversy led Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to veto Cairo as the site for current talks with the Palestinians over self-rule in the West Bank, explaining that he would have to answer questions about the mass graves.

For the Israelis, who take pride in the morality of their armed forces, the revelations were deeply troubling. Prompted, he said, by conscience, retired Israeli General Arieh Biro admitted last month that he had executed 49 Egyptian pows with submachine gunfire in the 1956 Sinai campaign. The disclosure touched off a bout of soul-searching and prompted Israelis who had witnessed other executions of prisoners to come forward. The newspaper Yediot Aharonot urged a government investigation, not only to satisfy Egyptians but also "for our own sake, our conscience, our beliefs and our principles." Biro, 69, said he had been ordered to advance but lacked the means to take along his Egyptian captives; he could not leave them for fear that they would lead their advancing comrades to Israeli positions. So he killed them. He has "ached over" his actions, he said, but "under the same circumstances, I think I would do it again."

While Egyptian anger was on the rise, the reaction in Israel grew more muted. Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said, "We know that Israeli prisoners were killed many times in the past. Without accepting them, atrocities are part and parcel of war. The Egyptians cannot claim the moral superiority to criticize us, while ignoring whatever their own side did."

The Egyptians are demanding that Israel officially apologize, launch an investigation into the incidents, punish those found guilty and compensate the families of every prisoner of war killed by the Israelis. Israel's Attorney General Michael Ben-Yair ruled last month that there was no basis for prosecuting soldiers for offenses in 1956 and 1967 because of a 20-year statute of limitations on homicide charges. Israel's only war-crimes law, Ben-Yair noted, related to crimes of genocide or crimes committed by Nazis during World War II. While the shootings of pows were "unlawful and intolerable acts," he said, they were not the kind of crimes covered by the law on genocide.

That reasoning has rankled many Egyptians, who point out that Israel has set a precedent in such matters by relentlessly tracking down Nazi war criminals all over the globe. "This is not just a political issue," said retired Major General Ahmed Fakhr, director of the National Center for Middle East Studies in Cairo and a veteran of all three wars, "this is an issue of families who were told that their men were missing in action. Now, after 20 years, they learn they were slaughtered in cold blood by the Israelis." Concludes Fakhr: "The Israelis opened that file, now they have to close it. And peace means justice."

--Reported by Amany Radwan/Cairo and Eric Silver/Jerusalem

Copyright 1995 Time Inc. All Rights Reserved.

http://www.time.com/time/internatio...middleeast.html

http://www.usslibertyinquiry.com/forums/showthread.php?p=3134&mode=threaded

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/01/52113.html

http://www.tocatch.info/en/Six_Day_War.htm#IDF_killings_of_Egyptian_prisoners_of_war

I can't think of a good reason why Israel would strike at the USS Liberty, which makes me think it was an immense error of incompetence during a tense period of war.

As for the killing of POWs, that is common practice in all wars, certainly committed by Israel and certainly committed by Egypt.

Wow, old news is exciting...:rolleyes:

MYTH

"During the 1967 War, Israel deliberately attacked the USS Liberty."

FACT

The Israeli attack on the USS Liberty was a grievous error, largely attributable to the fact that it occurred in the midst of the confusion of a full-scale war in 1967. Ten official United States investigations and three official Israeli inquiries have all conclusively established the attack was a tragic mistake.

On June 8, 1967, the fourth day of the Six-Day War, the Israeli high command received reports that Israeli troops in El Arish were being fired upon from the sea, presumably by an Egyptian vessel, as they had a day before. The United States had announced that it had no naval forces within hundreds of miles of the battle front on the floor of the United Nations a few days earlier; however, the USS Liberty, an American intelligence ship assigned to monitor the fighting, arrived in the area, 14 miles off the Sinai coast, as a result of a series of United States communication failures, whereby messages directing the ship not to approach within 100 miles were not received by the Liberty. The Israelis mistakenly thought this was the ship doing the shelling and war planes and torpedo boats attacked, killing 34 members of the Liberty's crew and wounding 171.

Numerous mistakes were made by both the United States and Israel. For example, the Liberty was first reported — incorrectly, as it turned out — to be cruising at 30 knots (it was later recalculated to be 28 knots). Under Israeli (and U.S.) naval doctrine at the time, a ship proceeding at that speed was presumed to be a warship. The sea was calm and the U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry found that the Liberty's flag was very likely drooped and not discernible; moreover, members of the crew, including the Captain, Commander William McGonagle, testified that the flag was knocked down after the first or second assault.

According to Israeli Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin's memoirs, there were standing orders to attack any unidentified vessel near the shore.28 The day fighting began, Israel had asked that American ships be removed from its coast or that it be notified of the precise location of U.S. vessels.29 The Sixth Fleet was moved because President Johnson feared being drawn into a confrontation with the Soviet Union. He also ordered that no aircraft be sent near Sinai.

A CIA report on the incident issued June 13, 1967, also found that an overzealous pilot could mistake the Liberty for an Egyptian ship, the El Quseir. After the air raid, Israeli torpedo boats identified the Liberty as an Egyptian naval vessel. When the Liberty began shooting at the Israelis, they responded with the torpedo attack, which killed 28 of the sailors.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff investigated the communications failure and noted that the Chief of Naval Operations expressed concern about the prudence of sending the Liberty so close to the area of hostilities and four messages were subsequently sent instructing the ship to move farther away from the area of hostilities. The JCS report said the messages were never received because of “a combination of (1) human error, (2) high volume of communications traffic, and (3) lack of appreciation of sense of urgency regarding the movement of the Liberty.” The report also included a copy of a flash cable sent immediately after the attack, which reported that Israel had “erroneously” attacked the Liberty, that IDF helicopters were in rescue operations, and that Israel had sent “abject apologies” and requested information on any other U.S. ships near the war zone.

Initially, the Israelis were terrified that they had attacked a Soviet ship and might have provoked the Soviets to join the fighting.30 Once the Israelis were sure what had happened, they reported the incident to the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv and offered to provide a helicopter for the Americans to fly out to the ship and any help they required to evacuate the injured and salvage the ship. The offer was accepted and a U.S. naval attaché was flown to the Liberty.

The Israelis were “obviously shocked” by the error they made in attacking the ship, according to the U.S. Ambassador in Tel Aviv. In fact, according to a secret report on the 1967 war, the immediate concern was that the Arabs might see the proximity of the Liberty to the conflict as evidence of U.S.-Israel collusion.30a

Many of the survivors of the Liberty remain bitter, and are convinced the attack was deliberate as they make clear on their web site. In 1991, columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak trumpeted their discovery of an American who said he had been in the Israeli war room when the decision was made to knowingly attack the American ship.31 In fact, that individual, Seth Mintz, wrote a letter to the Washington Post on November 9, 1991, in which he said he was misquoted by Evans and Novak and that the attack, was, in fact, a "case of mistaken identity." Moreover, the man who Mintz originally said had been with him, a Gen. Benni Matti, does not exist.

Also, contrary to claims that an Israeli pilot identified the ship as American on a radio tape, no one has ever produced this tape. In fact, the official Israeli Air Force tape clearly established that no such identification of the ship was made by the Israeli pilots prior to the attack. Tapes of the radio transmissions made prior, during and after the attack do not contain any statement suggesting the pilots saw a U.S. flag before the attack. During the attack, a pilot specifically says, “there is no flag on her!” The recordings also indicate that once the pilots became concerned about the identity of the ship, by virtue of reading its hull number, they terminated the attack and they were given an order to leave the area. A transcript of the radio transmissions indicates the entire incident, beginning with the spotting of a mysterious vessel off El Arish and ending with the chief air controller at general headquarters in Tel Aviv telling another controller the ship was “apparently American” took 24 minutes.32 Critics claimed the Israeli tape was doctored, but the National Security Agency of the United States released formerly top secret transcripts in July 2003 that confirmed the Israeli version.

A U.S. spy plane was sent to the area as soon as the NSA learned of the attack on the Liberty and recorded the conversations of two Israeli Air Force helicopter pilots, which took place between 2:30 and 3:37 p.m. on June 8. The orders radioed to the pilots by their supervisor at the Hatzor base instructing them to search for Egyptian survivors from the "Egyptian warship" that had just been bombed were also recorded by the NSA. "Pay attention. The ship is now identified as Egyptian," the pilots were informed. Nine minutes later, Hatzor told the pilots the ship was believed to be an Egyptian cargo ship. At 3:07, the pilots were first told the ship might not be Egyptian and were instructed to search for survivors and inform the base immediately the nationality of the first person they rescued. It was not until 3:12 that one of the pilots reported that he saw an American flag flying over the ship at which point he was instructed to verify if it was indeed a U.S. vessel.33

In October 2003, the first Israeli pilot to reach the ship broke his 36-year silence on the attack. Brig.-Gen. Yiftah Spector, a triple ace, who shot down 15 enemy aircraft and took part in the 1981 raid on the Iraqi nuclear reactor, said he had been told an Egyptian ship was off the Gaza coast. "This ship positively did not have any symbol or flag that I could see. What I was concerned with was that it was not one of ours. I looked for the symbol of our navy, which was a large white cross on its deck. This was not there, so it wasn't one of ours." The Jerusalem Post obtained a recording of Spector's radio transmission in which he said, "I can't identify it, but in any case it's a military ship."34

None of Israel's accusers can explain why Israel would deliberately attack an American ship at a time when the United States was Israel's only friend and supporter in the world. Confusion in a long line of communications, which occurred in a tense atmosphere on both the American and Israeli sides (five messages from the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the ship to remain at least 25 miles — the last four said 100 miles — off the Egyptian coast arrived after the attack was over) is a more probable explanation.

Accidents caused by “friendly fire” are common in wartime. In 1988, the U.S. Navy mistakenly downed an Iranian passenger plane, killing 290 civilians. During the Gulf War, 35 of the 148 Americans who died in battle were killed by “friendly fire.” In April 1994, two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters with large U.S. flags painted on each side were shot down by U.S. Air Force F-15s on a clear day in the “no fly” zone of Iraq, killing 26 people. In April 2002, an American F-16 dropped a bomb that killed four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan. In fact, the day before the Liberty was attacked, Israeli pilots accidentally bombed one of their own armored columns.35

Retired Admiral, Shlomo Erell, who was Chief of the Navy in Israel in June 1967, told the Associated Press (June 5, 1977): “No one would ever have dreamt that an American ship would be there. Even the United States didn't know where its ship was. We were advised by the proper authorities that there was no American ship within 100 miles.”

Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara told Congress on July 26, 1967: “It was the conclusion of the investigatory body, headed by an admiral of the Navy in whom we have great confidence, that the attack was not intentional.”

In 1987, McNamara repeated his belief that the attack was a mistake, telling a caller on the “Larry King Show” that he had seen nothing in the 20 years since to change his mind that there had been no “cover*up.”36

In January 2004, the State Department held a conference on the Liberty incident and also released new documents, including CIA memos dated June 13 and June 21, 1967, that say that Israel did not know it was striking an American vessel. The historian for the National Security Agency, David Hatch, said the available evidence "strongly suggested" Israel did not know it was attacking a U.S. ship. Two former U.S. officials, Ernest Castle, the United States Naval Attache at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv in June 1967, who received the first report of the attack from Israel, and John Hadden, then CIA Chief of Station in Tel Aviv, also agreed with the assessment that the attack on the Liberty was a mistake.37

The new documents do not shed any light on the mystery of what the ship was doing in the area or why Israel was not informed about its presence. The evidence suggests the ship was not spying on Israel.

Israel apologized for the tragedy and paid nearly $13 million in humanitarian reparations to the United States and to the families of the victims in amounts established by the U.S. State Department. The matter was officially closed between the two governments by an exchange of diplomatic notes on December 17, 1987.


There, happy?

13 million that must have been a lot of money.

Did they pay any to the 1,000 or so POWs that the original poster said was killed?

Or what about to the U.N members that were supposedly killed?