Israel should have been held responsible. Whether it was intentional or not (and I don’t believe it was) they were still responsible and should have been liable financially for their reckless actions
......”Pinchas Pinchasy, naval liaison officer at Israeli air force headquarters, reports to Naval Headquarters that the ship cruising slowly off El Arish is “an electromagnetic audio-surveillance ship of the U.S. Navy, named Liberty, whose marking was GTR-5.”
...some years ago an account of this tragedy was published and it was revealed that the US had a spy plane flying overhead (the Israelis apparently did not know this...) and they copied all of the Israelis’ transmissions and the Israelis KNEW this was an American ship and deliberatly and intentionally attacked it...yes, they should have been held accountable but never were and they never apologized, if I recall.....
They were. Israel admitted their mistake, apologized and paid compensation to the victims.
from wiki article on the incident:
Israel apologized for the attack, saying that the USS Liberty had been attacked in error after being mistaken for an Egyptian ship.[5] Both the Israeli and U.S. governments conducted inquiries and issued reports that concluded the attack was a mistake due to Israeli confusion about the ship's identity.[6] Others, including survivors of the attack, have rejected these conclusions and maintain that the attack was deliberate.[7][8]
In May 1968, the Israeli government paid US$3.32 million (equivalent to US$24.7 million in 2020) to the U.S. government in compensation for the families of the 34 men killed in the attack. In March 1969, Israel paid a further $3.57 million ($25.2 million in 2020) to the men who had been wounded. In December 1980, it agreed to pay $6 million ($18.8 million in 2020) as the final settlement for material damage to Liberty itself plus 13 years of interest.[9]