Israel and the USS Liberty

Some time ago BBC Four showed a documentary titled "Dead in the Water". It was about the USS Liberty, a US spy ship stationed off the Israeli coast at the outbreak of the six-day war. The Liberty was attacked first by Israeli jets with torpedoes, then strafed, and later it and survivors in the water were attacked by Israeli torpedo boats. The official story put out by the Israeli government and accepted by the US government is that it was an accident. Israel claimed that they thought the boat was Egyptian. The documentary showed fairly conclusively this was a load of bollocks.

Not only was the ship quite clearly marked, its name in huge letters, it was flying the US flag, it had been there for some considerable time etc., etc. but further information including from Israeli pilots (one of whom refused to attack the ship because he knew it was American) showed that its identity was known before the start of the attack.

So why did the attack take place. The documentary interviewed a number of people involved at the time, including the US Defence Secretary Robert McNamara. From these interviews a number of pieces of information came out. Firstly, the US had been flying missions from inside Israel over Egypt. This together with pictures from US spy planes and satellites provided the kind of intelligence the Israelis needed to make the decisive strike on Egyptian assets that eventually was decisive in the war. At the time, Egypt and Syria were Soviet clients in the area, and as part of the Cold War geopolitics, the US had a clear interest in the outcome. This also seems to be perhaps the reason for the attack on the Liberty. The US seems to have thought that there was a possibility of the Soviets coming in to support Egypt and Syria.

What the programme uncovered, and what is still not mentioned in many of the US sites which deal with the attack on the Liberty is that jets from the US 6th fleet had been despatched for Cairo with nuclear payloads. They had been launched to retaliate against an Egyptian attack on the Liberty. Adding, to this is the fact that having shot up the Liberty the Israelis jammed its radio transmissions. This could only be done apparently if you knew the frequencies on which the ship was transmitting. However, due to the bravery of sailors on the Liberty who climbed the masts to rig radio masts whilst being strafed by Israeli warplanes the ship was able to get out an SOS, and to transmit a message that it was under attack by Israeli warplanes. Only then when crews on the ships of the 6th fleet picked up this message did Mcnamara call back the US warplanes. The plan seemed to have been to nuke Cairo in order to frighten off the Soviets from intervening.

The incident shows just how far the US is prepared to go in creating situations which justify its imperialist ambitions.

See: Dead In The Water

and associated links.

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Attack on the USS Liberty

In recent years Israel has fought a number of wars in the region. The invaswion of Lebanon, and attacks against Hezbollah, and even its support for Fatah as against Hamas, have been recognised by most observers for what they are - proxy wars between the US and Iran. If Israel attacks Iran on the pretext of the potential of IRan developing nuclear weapons such an attack can only be seen as a continuation of that policy. It will undoubtedly be used as a pretext - once Iran responds - for a full scale attack by the US in defnce of its Israeli allies.

The working class in Israel must begin to mobilise now against any such attack by Israel, an attack which will be catastrophic for Israeli as well as Iranian workers. The world Labour Movement must mobilise to support Israeli workers in such action, but must also mobilise against the huge mobilisation of US imperialism in the Gulf, which is preparing such a War in order to maintain and develop its strategic military positions in the Region - and up through the resource rich and vitally important Central Asian republics - as it recognises the growing competition it faces with the new dynamic world economic powers in China, India and Russia - a competition frighteningly similar to that in the 20 twenty years that led up to World War I - a competition, which the increasingly sclerotic US economy is ill-prepared to win, but which its military hegemony can still secure. The strategy was set out clearly in the "Project for a New American Century". It is the reason the US invaded Iraq, and has constructed three huge fortified US enclaves there as large as small cities, it is why it has done deals with various dictators in the Stans to forge a series of strategic bases that can be used in a war against both China and Russia for the vast resources of Central Asia, it is why it has established its bases in Afghanistan, it is why it has attempted to sow nationalist discontent in Tibet, and in the Balkans where again it has established important strategic military bases and outposts.

Marxists do not concern themselves in such situations with whether one side or another in such wars between expansionist capitalist robbers - and Iran is expansionist if not imperialist, which is why the US will be forced to attack it sooner or later - but only in looking to the interests of the working class, and mobilising them against the war aims of the capitalists. But, as Trotsky pointed out workers ultimately cannot prevent capitalist powers going to war, or control the actions of capitalist armies. The best they can do is to be defeatists against their own governments, and striving to turn imperialist war in a class civil war. Only through the overthrow of the capitalist regimes in Tel Aviv, Washington and Tehran can workers snatch the control of the military out of the hands of their own immediate enemies - the capitalists - only on that basis can a guarantee against imperialist war be obtained.