(American Greatness)—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.
- Read More: amgreatness.com
