Phil Tourney /David Gahary

Erasing the Liberty

By Phil Tourney and Dave Gahary. For well over half an hour on June 8, 1967, the United States Navy technical research ship, USS Liberty, was attacked by Israeli air force and navy units with 30-mm cannons and rockets, napalm bombs, machine guns, and finally torpedoes. The Israeli attack killed 34 US Servicemen, and wounded 171—but, incredibly, failed to sink the ship.

The ship took nearly 1,000 cannon and rocket holes—some the size of basketballs—as well as over 5,000 armor-piercing shells, through the skin of the vessel. The Israelis dropped napalm on the defenseless ship and shot at sailors attempting to rescue the wounded and put out fires, as well as firing on all the remaining life rafts, a war crime.

Israel claimed the massacre was an “accident,” a case of “mistaken identity,” a lie none of the survivors could ever believe.

There was no question that the attackers knew that the ship was American—its flag was flying and intercepted radio communications revealed that the Israelis knew exactly what they were doing.

The resultant official cover-up—which claimed that the attack was a “mistake,” despite all the evidence to the contrary—remains one of the greatest scandals of the second half of the twentieth century, cutting as it does to the very heart of the “special relationship” between Israel and the United States.

This riveting book—prepared by one of the USS Liberty survivors, and drawing upon interviews with other eye-witness survivors and participants—tells the true story of the attack.

It is a story which will shock the reader, not only in the brutal details of the attack, but also the extent of the cover up which followed—a cover up which reached to the very White House itself, all in an effort to protect the true villains of the incident: Israel, and the Jewish lobby in America.

Included in this book for the first time is the story of how the Jewish lobby in America has tried to suppress the story of the attack on the USS Liberty being told, even to the point of physical attacks and threats against the survivors and their children. It is a story of deceit, betrayal, and terror which will forever shame the establishment.

“Phil Tourney and Dave Gahary have captured the horror and devastation experienced by those of us who were aboard the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967. It is clear that this was a well planned and executed Israeli attempt to remove real-time witnesses before they annexed the Palestinian lands taken as the Six-Day War wound down.”
—CTC Joseph C. Lentini, USN (Ret.) , survivor USS Liberty (AGTR-5)

434 pages. Paperback.

$25.00

Additional information

Weight 20.45 oz
Dimensions 6 × 0.9 × 9 in
Writer

Phil Tourney /David Gahary

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