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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   19133 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026

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Well the linked write-up explains that Israel killed 34 American soldiers, the president and his advisors and most of the surviving crewmen all believed it was on purpose

I'm not familiar with this incident in any great detail, but what would the Israelis possibly hope to gain from a deliberate attack on a US warship, in the middle of a major war?

If Israeli influence was so strong over the US that they could effectively puppet the government and its armed forces, why even strike the ship at all?

Why not just use all that shadowy influence to covertly achieve whatever goal they were trying to achieve instead?

I'm struggling to come up with an explanation for Israel being malicious rather than simply mistaken that doesn't sound like;

"No, Muttley, we can't win fairly! We are villains! Ergo, we have to cheat!"

According to our then-president, it was to prevent the ship from spying. It’s possible the Liberty had obtained comms about the slaughter of surrendering Egyptian soldiers.

About noon, as the Liberty was again in sight of El Arish, and while the massacres were taking place, an army commander there reported that a ship was shelling them from the sea. But that was impossible. The only ship in the vicinity was the Liberty, and she was eavesdropping, not shooting. As any observer would have recognised, the ship was a tired old second world war vessel crawling with antennae, and unthreatening to anyone - unless it was their secrets, not their lives, they wanted to protect.

But it could have obtained other valuable information:

This and other war crimes were just some of the secrets Israel had sought to conceal since the start of the conflict. An essential element in the Israeli battle plan seemed to have been to hide much of the war behind a carefully constructed curtain of lies: lies about the Egyptian threat, lies about who started the war, lies to the US president, lies to the UN Security Council, lies to the press, lies to the public. Thus, as the American naval historian Dr Richard K Smith noted, "any instrument which sought to penetrate this smoke screen so carefully thrown around the normal 'fog of war' would have to be frustrated". Into this sea of deception and slaughter sailed the USS Liberty, an enormous spy factory loaded with the latest eavesdropping gear.

—

If Israeli influence was so strong over the US

They do not have much influence within the meritocratic military that they largely do not serve in. They have power in politics and media, where money buys influence.

rather than simply mistaken

According to the crew, this was impossible. The flag was clearly visible, and they even had a passing Israeli pilot wave to them overhead.

According to the crew, this was impossible.

The crew aren't in a position to make that judgement, I've read far too many accounts of seemingly very dumb friendly fire incidents, particularly involving airstrikes, to believe that it is impossible to screw up this badly. During WW2, a little over 20 years before this incident, Allied planes mixed up what country they were attacking and bombed Switzerland something like 70 times. War is a confusing mess and shit does indeed happen.

The flag was clearly visible, and they even had a passing Israeli pilot wave to them overhead.

Yes, if I was planning to blow up an allied nations spy ship as part of a cover-up, I would make sure to have my planes fly low and slow so that everyone on board can see whose air force the plane belongs to, for good measure I'd also transmit to them and ask in plain, unambiguous language to tell me that they have positively identified the American ship that we are going to bomb in order to cover up our nefarious wrongdoings. After all, even if my foolproof plan of sinking the ship and doing a few strafing runs on the survivors in the water fails, the famously hostile-to-life mediterranean sea will take care of the rest.

This and other war crimes were just some of the secrets Israel had sought to conceal since the start of the conflict. An essential element in the Israeli battle plan seemed to have been to hide much of the war behind a carefully constructed curtain of lies: lies about the Egyptian threat, lies about who started the war, lies to the US president, lies to the UN Security Council, lies to the press, lies to the public. Thus, as the American naval historian Dr Richard K Smith noted, "any instrument which sought to penetrate this smoke screen so carefully thrown around the normal 'fog of war' would have to be frustrated". Into this sea of deception and slaughter sailed the USS Liberty, an enormous spy factory loaded with the latest eavesdropping gear.

There is absolutely nothing that the USS Liberty could have recorded that is more dangerous to the state of Israel, or those in power in Israel, than deliberately bombing a US warship. This is the cold war, the US does not care about the rights and wrongs of the war Israel is currently fighting, who started it or who is massacring who. The Soviets are backing the Arabs, so the US is going to back the Israelis to try and counter-balance the strategically significant middle east.

Israel killed 34 American soldiers, the president and his advisors and most of the surviving crewmen all believed it was on purpose, and Israel then conspired with American Jews in government to threaten the president not to talk about it, while conspiring with Jewish journalists to quash the story, all this done through their consulate.

If you can do this, you aren't afraid of a grainy 1960s recording of intercepted radio messages from a war zone. You just aren't.

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