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Remember the USS Liberty?
As much Israel discourse as there's been in the last 45 years, you never hear about the time the Israeli air force and navy attacked an American ship in broad daylight and killed 34 Americans, except from the most conspiratorially-minded places like /pol/ (and Brett Favre when he's being trolled by /pol/).
Why? This seems strange. One might think this is because it blends into the background of innumerable incidents that make up the Arab-Israeli conflict, and thus most people simply shrug and accept that, "yeah, shits really fucked over there," and leave it at that, but this involved Americans. You know, the people that matter. There's some dispute about what really happened and whether or not it was deliberate. It's not surprising that this would be controversial; it's surprising that this is not a real issue at all.
My tentative opinion is that it was a deliberate attack. The USS Liberty was a spy ship. It was not supposed to be as close to the coast as it was. Israel didn't want the State Department jeopardizing their OPSEC in the 6-day war, so they made sure the Americans had no eyes on the ground (or the water). It was probably the right decision tbh. US leadership decided that the incident wasn't worth making major foreign policy changes over, and so they went along with the Israeli cover-up.
Quite the opposite, I hear about it roughly six times a day. It's the most widely publicized attack on the US shipping since Pearl Harbor. Why? This seems strange, until you remember Joooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooos!
This is the third time I've heard about it in the last few weeks just on this site. It's a completely outsized amount of attention for a 50+ year old friendly fire incident. At this point it's time to let bygones be bygones about deliberate atrocities, never mind an accidental bombing in the fog of war.
The conspiracy theories are nonsense, too. There is no plausible rationale that would justify Israel taking the insane risk of deliberately attacking the United States, and "jeopardizing their OPSEC" 4 days into a 6 day war that was already being decisively won by Israel certainly isn't one.
I agree we should do the former, but insisting on framing it as the latter makes it a bit hard. Surely the dead deserve for the truth to come out?
What truth? It’s a murky conjecture at best, lacking a clear motive. And the nationalistic pride baiting around it is so transparent. Why did they do it? I guess they just wanted to prove the greatest country on earth is a little bitch, sammy. Now what are you gonna do about it when you grow up?
I suggest you remember the maine instead.
The spontaneous coal combustion?
Are there still people who think spain perfidiously blew up the maine?
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