701 USS Liberty: the Israeli side of the story

USS Liberty: the Israeli side of the story

Newsletter published on 8 November 2014

(1) Zionists say USS Liberty was sending intelligence to the Arabs
(2) USS Liberty: the Israeli side of the story
(3) Mark Aarons - Communist and Zionist
(4) The Silence of the Israelis on ISIS - Stephen J. Sniegoski

(1) Zionists say USS Liberty was sending intelligence to the Arabs

From: Peter Grafström <mj532445@tele2.se> Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2014
12:32:50 +0100

John Loftus claims that the USS Liberty was sending the sensitive info
to the Arabs, warning them and that this was the reason they destroyed
the ships capability to transmit, but didnt sink it.

It is mentioned in The secret war against the jews. p
182,191,194,259,262-67,269-77,277-286

The following info is from p259. It is true to the text but not the
exact wording.

US informed the arabs that Israel would not have finished a nuclear
defense shield yet thus indicating a window of opportunity in 1967.
Israel informed the Us about intentions of launching a preemptive
strike, realizing the danger of a massive arab attack. Us intel promptly
informed the arabs about that. The Us,in order to curry favor with the
oil producers provided the arabs with precise details about Israels
order of battle during the war
Israeli intel discovered the betrayal and attacked Uss Liberty, which
was gathering electronic info on Israeli troop movements and sending it
to british intel which in turn relayed it to the arabs.

John Loftus based this book on many interviews with anonymous intel
sources. Of course this makes it vulnerable to be manipulated by lies.
But the explanation seems to me much more probable than the one about
informing the Usg.

(2) USS Liberty: the Israeli side of the story
from The Secret War Against the Jews, 1994

http://mailstar.net/Aarons-USS-Liberty.doc

Comment (Peter Myers, Novermber 8, 2014):

The authors claim that Israeli leaders (hawks all) took the USS Liberty
out because they feared that it was feeding intelligence to the Arabs.
This was AFTER Israel had destroyed the Egyptian and Syrian airforces;
the only airforce left in the skies was the Israeli.

As if Egypt or Syria could make some sort of comeback wityhout an airforce.

The US sought a peace-keeping role to stop Soviet entry into the war. To
that end, it tried to rein in the Israeli military and be somewhat
even-handed. But Israeli leaders saw this as aid to the Arabs.

The authors concede that Israel sent fake news messages to Jordan
(ostensibly from Egypt) to lure it to enter the war, so that Israel
could obtain the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The USS Liberty had
recorded that Israeli duplicity.

Although author Mark Aarons sided with Israel against its Soviet allies,
he was also a Communist, and son of the Secretary of the Communist Party
of Australia.

One conclusion from reading the Israeli side of the story, is that
Chomsky's depiction of Israel as merely a Sheriff for the US is totally
discredited. Israel behaved as an independent Great Power, and showed no
loyalty to any other power.

(3) Mark Aarons - Communist and Zionist

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Aarons

Mark Aarons (born 25 December 1951) is an Australian journalist and
author. He was a political adviser to NSW Premier Bob Carr. [...] He is
the son of the late Laurie Aarons, former secretary of the Communist
Party of Australia. Mark Aarons was a member of the Communist Party of
Australia from 1969 to 1978, and a Young Communist organiser in
1977.[...] This page was last modified on 14 October 2014 at 02:57.

(4) The Silence of the Israelis on ISIS - Stephen J. Sniegoski

Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2014 03:14:47 +0900
Subject: The Silence of the Israelis on ISIS | Consortiumnews
From: chris lancenet <chrislancenet@gmail.com>

http://consortiumnews.com/2014/11/05/the-silence-of-the-israelis-on-isis/

The Silence of the Israelis on ISIS

Consortiumnews

November 5, 2014
  A curious silence in the U.S.-led battle against the Islamic State of
Iraq and Syria is coming from Israel, which has advocated the overthrow
of Iran’s ally in Syria, President Bashar al-Assad, but has had little
to say about the brutal Islamists seeking to oust Assad, notes Stephen
J. Sniegoski.

By Stephen J. Sniegoski

In the war on the Islamic State, the alleged scourge of humanity, little
is heard about the position of America’s much-ballyhooed greatest ally
in the Middle East, if not the world, Israel. Now the Islamic State has
been conquering territory in very close proximity to the border of
Israel. But Israel does not seem to be fearful and it is not taking any
action.

And the Obama administration and American media pundits do not seem to
be the least bit disturbed.  This is quite in contrast to the complaints
about other Middle East countries such as Turkey that are being harshly
criticized for their failure to become actively involved in fighting the
Islamic State.

President Barack Obama holds a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in the Oval Office, Oct 1, 2014. The
meeting was described as chilly, reflecting the strained relationship
between the two leaders. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

For example, a New York Times editorial, “Mr. Erdogan’s Dangerous Game,”
begins, “Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, once aspired to lead
the Muslim world. At this time of regional crisis, he has been anything
but a leader. Turkish troops and tanks have been standing passively
behind a chicken-wire border fence while a mile away in Syria, Islamic
extremists are besieging the town of Kobani and its Kurdish population.”

An article in the Boston Globe read “Turkey has failed Kobani, Kurds.”
An editorial in the USA Today was titled “Turkey waits as ISIL crushes
Kobani.”

Neocon Charles Krauthammer in “Erdogan’s Double Game” compared Turkey’s
failure to come to the defense of the Kurds in the surrounded border
town of Kobani to Stalin’s unwillingness to aid the uprising of Polish
nationalist forces in Warsaw in 1944, thus allowing the latter’s
destruction at the hands of the Nazis.

“For almost a month, Kobani Kurds have been trying to hold off Islamic
State fighters,” Krauthammer wrote. “Outgunned, outmanned, and
surrounded on three sides, the defending Kurds have begged Turkey to
allow weapons and reinforcements through the border. Erdogan has refused
even that, let alone intervening directly.”

Even the normally antiwar Noam Chomsky expressed support for protecting
the Kurds. “With regard to Kobani, it is a shocking situation,” Chomsky
opined. “This morning’s newspaper described Turkish military operation
against Kurds in Turkey, not against ISIS, a couple of kilometers across
the border where they are in danger of being slaughtered. I think
something should be done at the UN in terms of a strong resolution to
call for a ceasefire.”

“It is hard to impose the use of force,” Chomsky continued, “but to the
extent that it can be done try and protect Kobani from destruction at
the hands of ISIS, which could be a major massacre with enormous
consequences.” Chomsky added that “the strategic significance of the
town in the Kurdish region is pretty obvious, and the Turkish role is
critical in this.”

Israel’s Reticence

Returning to the issue of Israel, the fact of the matter is that Israel
acts to protect its own national interests.  At the current time, the
primary goal of the Islamic State is to purify Islam rather than attack
non-Muslims.

In response to Internet queries as to why the militant group wasn’t
fighting Israel instead of killing Muslims in Iraq and Syria, its
representatives responded: “We haven’t given orders to kill the Israelis
and the Jews. The war against the nearer enemy, those who rebel against
the faith, is more important. Allah commands us in the Koran to fight
the hypocrites, because they are much more dangerous than those who are
fundamentally heretics.”

As justification for this stance, the group cited the position of the
first caliph, Abu Bakr, who began his caliphate by fighting against
those he deemed apostates who still professed to be followers of Islam.
(Shiites hold a negative view of Abu Bakr and his policies). Also cited
was Saladin, who fought the Shiites in Egypt before conquering
Christian-controlled Jerusalem.

Considering the Islamic State is targeting Muslims, the Israeli
government does not see it as a significant enemy at this time. And it
is reasonable for Israeli leaders to believe that the Islamic State
would never move on to attack their country because it will never be
able to conquer its major Islamic foes, though American military
involvement would further secure Israel from any possible threat from
the Islamic State.

Moreover, the fact of the matter is that the Islamic State actually
benefits Israel by causing problems for those very states that do
actively oppose Israel and support the Palestinians, such as Syria. What
the Islamic State is causing in the Middle East is perfectly attuned
with the view of the Israeli Right — as best articulated by Oded Yinon
in 1982 — which sought to have Israel’s Middle East enemies fragmented
and fighting among themselves in order to weaken the external threat to
Israel.

Currently, these divisions are not only plaguing Syria and Iraq, but
also Turkey, where ethnic Kurds are rioting because of the government’s
unwillingness to help their brethren in Syria, and Lebanon, where the
Shiite group Hezbollah — allied with Iran, Israel’s foremost enemy — is
being assailed by the radical jihadist Nusra Front, which has the
support of many Lebanese Sunnis. [See Jonathan Spyer, “The Shia-Sunni
War Reaches Lebanon,” Jerusalem Post, Middle East Forum, Oct. 17, 2014.]

More than this, the Netanyahu government is trying to take advantage of
the Islamic State’s aggression by falsely claiming that Hamas is its
equivalent. In an address to the UN General Assembly on Sept. 29,
Netanyahu asserted that “Hamas’s immediate goal is to destroy Israel.
But Hamas has a broader objective. They also want a caliphate. Hamas
shares the global ambitions of its fellow militant Islamists.”

Thus, Netanyahu claimed that it is wrong for countries to criticize
Israel’s brutal treatment of the Palestinians in its conflict with
Hamas, pointing out that “the same countries that now support
confronting ISIS, opposed Israel for confronting Hamas. They evidently
don’t understand that ISIS and Hamas are branches of the same poisonous
tree. ISIS and Hamas share a fanatical creed, which they both seek to
impose well beyond the territory under their control.”

In short, Netanyahu maintained that the Islamic State and Hamas were
essentially identical, “when it comes to their ultimate goals, Hamas is
ISIS and ISIS is Hamas.”

National Interest

Now there is nothing strange about Israel’s position here. It is simply
acting in its own national interest. There is no reason to fight a group
that doesn’t threaten it. Furthermore, it is in Israel’s interest to try
to make it appear that it is acting for the good of all humanity when
attacking Hamas, and though these arguments are unlikely to sway any UN
members, the prime minister did provide ammunition to the Israel lobby
and its supporters that could be used to persuade some gullible Americans.

It can be argued that if Israel openly entered the fray as a member of
the anti-Islamic State coalition, it would be counterproductive. Since
many Arabs see Israel as their major enemy, Israel’s involvement in the
war would turn them against fighting the Islamic State and maybe even
cause some of them to support that militant jihadist group as an enemy
of Israel.

So it might be understandable that the United States would not demand
that Israel participate in the war against the Islamic State, just as it
did not expect Israel to fight against Saddam Hussein. Although this
might be understandable, if true it would mean that Israel could not
really be an ally of the United States in the Middle East because it
could not participate in America’s wars in the region, which is the very
raison d’état of an ally.

Conceivably, Israel could covertly support the enemies of Islamic State.
Israel has been doing just that in regard to Syria. During the past two
years it has launched airstrikes against Assad’s forces which has helped
the rebels. Israel takes the position that any attacks on its territory
from Syria are the responsibility of the Assad government even if they
are made by the rebels.

Moreover, just like the United States, Israel has provided training for
Syrian rebels. For example, Abdul-Ilah al-Bashir al-Noeimi, currently
the Chief of Staff of the Supreme Military Council (SMC) of the Free
Syrian Army, secretly trained in Israel in 2013 after being admitted
into the country for medical treatment. [See “Report: Commander of
Syrian Rebels Trained in Israel, Jewish Press News Briefs,”  Feb. 24,
2014. In regard to Israeli participation in training Syrian rebels, see:
Jason Ditz, “Report Claims US, Israeli Trained Rebels Moving Toward
Damascus,”  Antiwar.com, Aug. 25, 2013,; Jinan Mantash, “Israeli analyst
confirms link between Israel, ‘moderate’ Syrian rebels,” Alakbar
English, Oct. 17, 2014.]

Staying Out of the Fray

Israel’s pro-rebel activities in the Syrian conflict have not been
counterproductive in that they have not caused any of Assad’s many Arab
enemies to abandon their effort to remove his regime. But it is not
apparent that Israel is taking any steps like this regarding the Islamic
State, and the United States does not seem to be pressuring it to do so.

What this means is that Israel is not really any type of ally of the
United States. It does not bend its foreign policy to aid the United
States but only acts in its own interest. It takes actions against the
Assad regime because the latter is an ally of Iran and provides a
conduit for weapons being sent to Israeli’s enemy Hezbollah.

Israel’s inaction toward the Islamic State, despite its close proximity,
should actually provide a model for the United States to emulate. It
shows that the Islamic State should not be regarded as a threat to the
faraway United States. And this lesson is further confirmed by the fact
that the nearby Islamic countries,  which should be far more endangered
than the United States, do not seem to be fighting hard against it. It
would seem that the fundamental way for the United States to face
significant attacks from the Islamic State is to attack it first, which
is exactly what it is now  doing.

Considering Israel’s inactivity, it is ironic that in the United States
it is the supporters of Israel, such as the neoconservatives, who have
taken the lead in pushing for a hard-line American military position
against the Islamic State. [See Jim Lobe, “Project for a New American
Imbroglio,” LobeLog Foreign Policy,  Aug. 28, 2014.]

Neocon Max Boot, for example, wrote about the need for “a
politico-military strategy to annihilate ISIS rather than simply chip
around the edges of its burgeoning empire,” which would “require a
commitment of some 10,000 U.S. advisors and Special Operators, along
with enhanced air power, to work with moderate elements in both Iraq and
Syria.”

Fred and Kimberly Kagan have developed a strategic plan involving up to
25,000 American ground troops to combat the Islamic State, which I have
already discussed at length. Some of the other noted members of the
neocon war-on-the-Islamic-State chorus include Bill Kristol,John
Podhoretz, Dan Senor, David Brooks, John Bolton, Richard Perle, Danielle
Pletka (vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the
American Enterprise Institute), and, as noted earlier, Charles Krauthammer.

Needless to say, neither the neocons, nor any other mainstream
commentators for that matter, have uttered a word about Israel’s
inaction. As Scott McConnell wrote in August in The American
Conservative, “over the past two generations thousands of articles have
been written proclaiming that Israel is a ‘vital strategic ally’ of the
United States, our best and only friend in the ‘volatile’ Middle East.
The claim is a commonplace among serving and aspiring Congressmen. I may
have missed it, but has anyone seen a hint that our vital regional ally
could be of any assistance at all in the supposedly civilizational
battle against ISIS?”

However, it would be far wiser for the United States to follow the
example of Israel here — and, in fact, always follow the example of
Israel by adhering to national interest (that of the United States, of
course, not Israel) — than to follow the advice of those American
supporters of Israel who have, because of their influence on American
Middle East policy, involved the United States in endless wars creating
a regional environment beneficial to Israel from the perspective of the
Israeli Right.

Stephen J. Sniegoski is the author of The Transparent Cabal: The
Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National
Interest of Israel.