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JerusalemU Lies About the USS Liberty [UPDATED]
Two years ago, I contacted the founder of the JerusalemU website about the claims made in his video mentioning the June 8, 1967, Israeli attack on the USS Liberty.
He told me, “We will look into your website and your claims more in depth.”
He has not.
UPDATE
I had a recent email exchange with Rabbi Raphel Shore of JerusalemU. While he did not distance himself or his organization from the lies about the USS Liberty attack in his video or tell us the lies will be corrected, Rabbi Shore wrote: “While the video you are referring to of ours mentions the USS LIberty, it’s not really about it. We are however, considering a video that does unpack the USS LIberty story, and show the different sides.”
He then asked if I would consider being interviewed for the planned video.
My response:
Thank you for your kindness in responding to my email.
I applaud your effort to create a more inclusive video about the attack on our ship.
While I feel it would be inappropriate for me to direct you in a way that will result in a video that has a pre-determined conclusion, I hope you don’t mind my making a few suggestions of what you should consider for including in your video. I will be the first to admit that any of these suggestions will go a long way in achieving our goal of ensuring the attack is documented as completely as possible.
First on my list would be interviews with Israelis involved in the attack. I was briefly in touch with a retired Israeli Admiral who was the head of an organization of former IDF Navy personnel. He told me he counted in the membership of his group a number of attack participants. I have been looking for his contact information but cannot find it. I’m sure your associates in Israel will be able to obtain that information from the IDF.
You may also find Gen. Yiftah Spector who lead the air attack amenable to being interviewed.
My second suggestion is to have your Congressional Delegation contact the Congressional Research Service and ask the question, “Has the US government conducted an investigation of the attack on the USS Liberty?”
To your offer to my being interviewed for the video, there was a time when I would gladly accept the invitation. A time when I could speak about the attack as if it had happened to someone else. Unfortunately, that time is long past. One can only speak about our being ordered abandoned by the Sixth Fleet while we were still under attack and calling for help for so long before the wall I created between me and the attack comes crashing down. And the knowledge that no Member of Congress has ever accepted our invitation to attend our annual memorial service in DC is just one of the things I have a hard time dealing with.
I’m afraid the mental preparation needed to participate in such an interview has gotten to be too much for me to handle. I hope you can use the videos on our YouTube channel in lieu of a new interview.
Thank you again for your kindness and your interest in the attack on our ship.
According to his Wikipedia reference, Rabbi Shore is a Canadian-Israeli Rabbi who founded JerusalemU and the Clarion Project. In his email to me he showed no concern for the effect the lies in his video about the USS Liberty has on the American survivors of the attack and on our families.
One can only hope that his anticipated video about the attack on our ship will not include comments by parties not involved in the attack itself (e.g. Jay Cristol who did not interview a single USS Liberty survivor for his dissertation about the attack) but will include comments, evidence and testimony made available by those actually involved in the attack.
By Joe Meadors
In a previous version of the JerusalemU website we learned that the organization was “founded by Rabbi Raphael Shore in 2009 to address the prevalent and growing need to educate and inspire the new generation about Judaism and Israel so that they gain a stronger Jewish identity and an appreciation of their heritage.”
Jerusalem U is committed to strengthening the emotional and intellectual connection of young Jews to Judaism and Israel breaking old molds, forging new approaches to Jewish and Israel education through the creative use of film and technology all distributed via the Internet, social media, television, grassroots campaigns and partnerships with mainstream pro-Israel and Jewish organizations.
Apparently, that approach involves lying about the attack on the USS Liberty.
In their video about day six of the Six Day War they repeat the claim that the attack consisted solely of an air attack followed by a recognition of the true identity of the ship and termination of the attack.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56_K78fRdvM]
They omit the apparently mundane facts that are routinely overlooked by those more intent on ensuring their visitors are told a fictionalized account of the attack instead of one supported by evidence and testimony of all persons involved.
Do they think their visitors can’t handle the truth?
If they don’t, why omit the facts that they used unmarked aircraft, jammed our radios on both US Navy tactical and international maritime distress frequencies, deliberately machine-gunned serviceable life rafts we had dropped over the side in anticipation of abandoning ship, fired upon USS Liberty crewmen who attempted to help our wounded shipmates who were trapped topside during the attack, and departed the scene for over an hour instead of offering aid immediately upon cessation of hostilities as is their obligation under international law?
Two years ago, I contacted Rabbi Shore and asked that he consider information we have accumulated over the past 5 decades and include that information in their reference to the USS Liberty.
He promised that he would.
He has not.
Perhaps it is time for me to remind him of his promise.
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Sen. John Cornyn Changes His Tune
by Joe Meadors
We have achieved a level of success. Congress is slowly changing its USS Liberty boilerplate.
Our effort to make it clear that neither Congress specifically nor the US government in general has conducted an investigation of the June 8, 1967, Israeli attack on the USS Liberty has gotten some traction among those who draft Congressional boilerplates.
Previously, Members of Congress would ignore the questions about the USS Liberty that were asked and replied by claiming that the attack has been investigated, Israel was completely absolved, and the US has no interest in conducting another investigation.
This even if inquiries were made by USS Liberty Survivors.
If you haven’t asked for a copy of the investigation of the attack on the USS Liberty, please do so now. Click here, here and here. You will be sending emails to your Congressional Delegation and to the Historians of both the US House and US Senate asking them to send you a copy of the investigation of the attack on our ship.
In their response, they should tell you they cannot find any.
You can read the letter I recently received from Senator John Cornyn where he didn’t refer to any investigation but he did try to divert my attention to some other USS Liberty information.
To which I replied:
The Honorable John Cornyn
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Senator Cornyn:
Thank you for your letter of July 11, 2019.
We appreciate your providing us with the URL of the NSA website containing USS Liberty documents.
If you will visit that page you will notice a document titled, “Station has voice tapes.” We have repeatedly requested the NSA to provide us with a copy of the voice tapes referenced in that message.
The NSA has refused to provide us with a copy of the voice tapes even to the extent of telling us that any future FOIA requests from us will simply be ignored by the NSA.
Could you obtain a copy of the referenced voice tapes and send them to me?
Also, my request that elicited your July 11th letter was to have you provide us with a copy of the Congressional investigation of the June 8, 1967, Israeli attack on the USS Liberty and to contact the Congressional Research Service and request that they provide us with a copy of the US government investigation of the attack on the USS Liberty.
That request remains outstanding.
Can I anticipate receiving a copy of those investigations soon?
Warmest regards,
Joe Meadors
USS Liberty Survivor
Director of Operations, USS Liberty Veterans Association
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How Does This Violate Quora.Com’s “Be Nice, Be Polite” Rule?
by Joe Meadors
This morning I checked into my Quora.com account to see if there was anything interesting I could comment on.
To no one’s surprise, I found yet another poster claiming that the US government has conducted an investigation of the attack on our ship. To prove it he posted a link to a Wikipedia article along with condemning everyone who disagrees with him as an anti-Semite.
Since we prefer to base our position on personal accounts as well as official US government documents and not on the opinions of anonymous authors writing in an online publication that does not insist that articles be correct, I wrote a reply to the comment and posted it to the original poster.
I barely had time to do a screen print to verify that the post had been made before I was notified that my post had been deleted.
Were I not on that page at the time I would not know that the post was deleted. Quora.com doesn’t tell me when they delete my posts. They’ve deleted a number of mine without telling me.
I’ve appealed their decision and asked why my comment was deleted. I anticipate a boilerplate response that ignores the question I asked.
I am posting my deleted comment below.
You tell me.
How does it violate Quora.com’s “Be Nice, Be Polite” rule?
Of course, everyone is invited to take the actions I refer to in my post below. Indeed, I hope everyone will not only take the action but encourage your friends and neighbors to take the actions as well.
The claim that the US government has conducted any number of investigations of the June 8, 1967, Israeli attack on the USS Liberty is provably false.
In only a few minutes, anyone can prove it is false by contacting the US government instead of relying upon the opinions of intermediaries such as the authors of a Wikipedia article or of a book written by someone who failed to interview any USS Liberty survivors.
Contact your Congressional Delegation and ask them to send you a copy of the Congressional investigation of the attack.
You will receive no such document.
Contact your Congressional Delegation and have them request the Congressional Research Service to send you a copy of the US government’s investigation of the attack.
You will receive no such document.
Contact the Historians of the US House and US Senate and ask for a copy of the Congressional investigation of the attack.
You will receive no such document.
The closest report to a US government investigation of the June 8, 1967, Israeli attack on the USS Liberty is the US Navy Court of Inquiry that was conducted as a result of the attack.
In a March 6, 2005, Letter from Capt. Jane G. Dalton, USN, JAGC to Congressman Rob Simmons, Capt. Dalton writes, “The Court of Inquiry was the only United States Government investigation into the attack..”
That is not to suggest that the US Navy Court of Inquiry Report doesn’t have its detractors. One of the most vocal is then-Captain Merlin Staring who at the time of the attack was serving as the Legal Advisor to ADM John S. McCain, Jr. who as CINCUSNAVEUR was the Convening Authority who established the Court of Inquiry.
In a July 27, 2005 letter to the Secretary of the Navy, Staring writes an excoriating rebuke of the US Navy Court of Inquiry Report. Merlin Staring is not some johnny-come-lately who has no basis to criticize the Report. He later rose to the position of US Navy Judge Advocate General.
Some selective quotes from RADM Staring’s letter of many available:
“We most respectfully submit, Mr. Secretary, that such a position by the Department of the Navy – if it is to be construed as a firm and considered determination – can only be adopted by ignoring a complex of evidence and circumstances that demonstrate the utter inadequacy and unreliability of the investigative proceedings conducted by the Navy Court of lnquiry of June 1967 – to put the kindest face on the record of those Proceedings.”
“Some of the few crewmen whose testimony was in fact recorded included in their sworn testimony factual observations concerning the attack which were eliminated by the Court from its written record or were otherwise subsequently redacted from the Court’s record as it is now officially held and acknowledged by the Government.”
“Some of the LIBERTY crewmen who did have an opportunity to testify before the Court attempted to respond in full, or to include in or add to their accounts factual observations which would have been clearly relevant to the ‘pertinent facts and circumstances . . . connected with the armed attack’ that the Court had been charged with eliciting — but were stopped and expressly forbidden by the Court to testify further in those areas.”
“We would first note that the U.S. Navy commander who appointed the Court of Inquiry directed it ‘to inquire into all the pertinent facts and circumstances leading to and connected with‚ the armed attack[, the] damage resulting therefrom[, and the] deaths of and injuries to naval personnel.’ In contrast to the fully waranted and completely justified breadth of that investigative assignment, the recent letter from your Department to the Congress purports to restate – and, in the process, seeks to narrow – both the scope and significance of that Court of Inquiry investigation. Noting simply that the Court had been ordered ‘to investigate the circumstances surrounding the attack,’ it told the Congress that the investigation had ‘focused primarily on U.S. military communications problems prior to the attack’ and upon ‘the heroic efforts of LIBERTY’S crew in damage control during the aftermath of the attack.’ To the extent that these latter representations may be true, they constitute in themselves an acknowledgment that the 1967 Court of Inquiry fell far short of inquiring into ‘all the pertinent facts and circumstances leading to and connected with the armed attack,’ as had been clearly directed by the Convening Authority.”
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Jewish Virtual Library Perpetuates Myth About USS Liberty Attack
by Joe Meadors
USS Liberty Entry in Myths & Facts Copyright © American Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE) Inc., 2017 Used Under Provisions of fair use principles in U.S. copyright laws.
The Jewish Virtual Library publishes Myths and Facts A Guide to the Arab-Israel Conflict describing it as “The most comprehensive and informative book explaining the intracacies [sic] of the Arab-Israeli Conflict throughout history.”
Dr. Mitchell G. Bard, Founder and Executive Director of The American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise who wrote the screed goes to extensive lengths to try to prove that the attack on the USS Liberty was not the premeditated, deliberate and illegal attack that we know it was.
All to no avail.
He has an entire page of “investigations” of the “incident” but nowhere does he tell you that none of the reports was prepared following an investigation of the attack.
Why does he omit such a relevant fact?
Simple. He wants you to believe the US government has investigated the attack.
It has not.
Do what Dr. Bard is afraid to do himself and hopes you don’t.
Prove it from an official US government source – the Congressional Research Service.
Requests to the Congressional Research Service must be initiated by a Member of Congress so you’ll have to go through your Congressional Delegation to contact them.
We’ve taken the effort out of the process and automated it for you. All you have to do is to CLICK HERE and send the email we’ve prepared.
Then share this post with anyone you feel may be interested in helping us in our effort to ensure the truth about the USS Liberty attack is finally known to the American people.
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The ADL’s Connecticut Office Lies About the USS Liberty Attack
by Joe Meadors, USS Liberty Survivor
Andy Friedland
Andy Friedland, Assistant Director at the Anti-Defamation in the League’s Connecticut Office, has lied about the US government’s conduct following the attack on the USS Liberty.
In a February 27th letter to the editor of the Post-Chronicle, Mr Friedland writes that “Several government investigations have concluded that the attack [on the USS Liberty] was carried out in error.”
Given that it is almost 51 years since the attack it is hard to believe that Mr. Friedland’s effort is nothing more than an effort to perpetuate the myth created by Jay Cristol that claims the US government has conducted many investigations of the attack on our ship.
In my letter to the editor response to Mr. Friedland which at this writing has not been published I write:
Andy Friedland’s reference to the USS Liberty attack in his letter of February 27th leaves the reader with the impression that the US government has conducted a number of investigations of the attack on our ship.
It has not.
House and Senate historians cannot find any reference to a Congressional investigation of the attack on our ship.
Neither can the Congressional Research Service.
Had the attack already been investigated, we wouldn’t still be trying to convince the US government that an attack on a US Navy ship that includes the use of unmarked aircraft, the jamming of our radios on both US Navy tactical and international maritime distress frequencies and the deliberate machine gunning of our life rafts in the water warrants Congressional scrutiny.
We hope that the Post-Chronicle will assign an investigative reporter to independently verify the facts we have presented by contacting official US government sources.
While I doubt Mr. Friendland will be moved to conduct the research I am asking the Post-Chronicle to do, I hope the Post-Chronicle will deem the claims made by USS Liberty survivors credible enough to do as we ask and research the claim by contacting official US government sources.
You can help us by politely encouraging the Post-Chronicle through their email address at post-chronicle@ctcentral.com.
