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Bamford Bashes Israel: Conspiracy Theorist Claims Attack on USS Liberty Intentional
In a just-published book, author James Bamford once again charges that Israel intentionally and knowingly attacked a US spy ship, the USS Liberty, during the 1967 Six Day War. Though he claims to have uncovered new evidence, the charges in Body of Secrets (Doubleday) directly parallel demonstrably false charges Bamford leveled in his earlier book, The Puzzle Palace. For this reason, neither Bamford’s charges nor his “new evidence” deserve much credibility. For example, consider what Bamford agrees is an absolutely key point, the question of motive. Why would Israel, in the midst of a three-front war against Soviet-supported Arab regimes, intentionally attack what it knew to be a US Navy ship? Bamford offers a number of related reasons, all hinging on Israel’s alleged obsession with maintaining absolute secrecy. Thus, in Puzzle Palace, Bamford argued that Israel attacked the Liberty on June 8th to prevent the US from knowing the extent of Israeli victories in the war and to prevent the imposition of a cease-fire:
There is a devastating flaw in Bamford’s logic – the “true extent” of Israeli victories was well known before the Liberty was attacked on June 8, 1967. Thus, on June 7th the New York Times featured a large three-column front-page story by James Reston headlined “Israelis Think the War Has Been Won.” And on the very day the Liberty was attacked, banner headlines in the New York Times literally screamed the news: Israelis Rout the Arabs, Approach Suez, Break Blockade, Occupy Old Jerusalem; Agree to U.N. Cease-Fire; U.A.R. Rejects It (New York Times, June 8, 1967).
Perhaps Mr. Bamford will someday explain just how those clever Israelis managed to prevent the President and his advisers from noticing these headlines. Also, as the headline indicates, and further contradicting Bamford’s reckless allegations, Israel accepted the U.N. cease-fire while Egypt (ie, the U.A.R. ) rejected it. Why would Israel attack the Liberty to prevent a cease-fire which Israel had already accepted? Bamford offers no explanation for this, either in Puzzle Palace or in his new book, Body of Secrets, which recycles many of his old canards, and adds a few new ones. Again harping on Israel’s desire for secrecy, Bamford once more argues that the Liberty was attacked because “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.” (p 203) Actually, hiding “behind a carefully constructed curtain of lies” is about as self-descriptive a phrase as Bamford could have written. And the crux of Bamford’s new curtain is an explosive charge sure to grab headlines and drive book sales, especially in certain circles. For, according to Bamford, among the secrets the Israelis were desperate to hide from the prying eyes of the USS Liberty were alleged war crimes against Egyptian POWs near the coastal town of El Arish, not far from the ship’s position on June 8th. Bamford charges that Israel turned El Arish into a “slaughterhouse, systematically butchering their prisoners” (p 202), and attacked the Liberty to prevent these crimes from being discovered. Again, there is a devastating flaw in Bamford’s logic – the “slaughter” never occurred. But even if it had, the reports Bamford cites offer no support for his claim that Israel attacked the Liberty and murdered US soldiers to cover-up its murder of Egyptian soldiers. That said, there were press reports in 1995 alleging that Egyptian POWs were murdered during the 1967 Six Day War, and Bamford cites some of these to support his charges. However, a number of the reports cited by Bamford also note that Israeli eyewitnesses denied any such thing occurred. Bamford keeps this from his readers. These same reports also indicate that Israeli POWs were killed by their Arab captors. Again, Bamford never mentions this, intent on painting a one-sided portrait of bloodthirsty Israelis. Finally, Bamford also ignores the fact that later investigations refuted the claim that the alleged massacres of Egyptian POWs ever took place. Beyond omitting such relevant information, Bamford also invents information not in the references he cites. Nothing could be more revealing of Bamford’s shoddy research and irrational animus towards Israel than to compare his charges with the sources he cites, and with the facts. Bamford’s key charges concerning the alleged Israeli massacre as the reason for attacking the Liberty appear in four consecutive paragraphs on pages 201 – 202 (for convenience the paragraphs are numbered):
Of course, contrary to Bamford’s charges here and elsewhere in the book, Israel did not “launch” the war. Egypt’s blockade of Eilat, Israel’s southern port, and its blockade of the Straits of Tiran, an international waterway, were both acts of war under international law. And prior to the major outbreak of shooting on June 5th, there were numerous incidents of Egyptian fire against Israeli positions, any one of which justified retaliation in force. Bamford ignores this, just as he ignores relevant evidence in order to charge in the second paragraph that Israel turned El Arish “into a slaughterhouse.” Bamford cites two sources for the second paragraph, an article from the New York Times and one from Newsday, which according to Newsday’s archives was actually an AP story. Neither article mentions anything at all about the “El Arish mosque,” neither mentions anything at all about prisoners with their “hands tied behind their backs,” and neither mentions anything at all about how the “pale desert sand turned red.” All this is apparently straight from Mr. Bamford’s overheated imagination, making one wonder what else he made up. The New York Times story, by Youseff Ibrahim and dated September 21, 1995, does contain the quote from Abdelsalam Moussa, who claimed to be an eyewitness to the killing of 30 to 60 POWs. But – and this is crucial – the report does not indicate when the killings described by Moussa took place, before the Liberty arrived, or while it was on station off El Arish. However, a Reuters dispatch published in the Jerusalem Post (September 21, 1995), reports Moussa as saying that the killings he claims to have seen took place on June 7, which was before the Liberty arrived! Thus, contrary to Bamford’s charge, the attack on the Liberty could not have been to prevent the ship from discovering the Israeli slaughter alleged by Moussa. Mr. Bamford also takes from Ibrahim’s report the story of the Israelis supposedly gunning down 30 more prisoners and then ordering some Bedouins to bury them. According to Ibrahim however, these episodes took place on June 6 and June 7, two days and one day before the Liberty even arrived off El Arish. So, again, Bamford deceptively cites this episode even though it clearly offers no support for his thesis. Ibrahim also notes the curious fact that Moussa had not come forward sooner, attributing this to the Egyptian government’s supposed desire not to delve into such issues after it recovered the Sinai from Israel in the early 1980’s, but this certainly does not explain why the Egyptians would not have trumpeted Moussa’s claims in the twelve years between the war and the peace treaty with Israel in 1979. Deceptively, Bamford keeps this too from his readers. The AP story which Bamford cites to support his claims in this paragraph (dated August 16, 1995; it ran in Newsday the following day), actually has nothing to do with the details of the paragraph. There is no mention of Abdelsalam Moussa and no mention of the Bedouins. While the article does mention killings in El Arish, it dates them to June 9-10, after the attack on the Liberty. If Bamford considers this article a credible source, then whatever happened in the episode it describes clearly had nothing to do with the attack on the Liberty. But Bamford deceptively keeps this from his readers as well. And, so eager is he to paint the Israelis as latter-day Nazis, he also hides from readers another relevant passage in this AP article, which stated that the alleged killings of Egyptians occurred when “some of the prisoners opened firing after surrendering and shot dead two Israeli soldiers.” Bamford’s deceptions continue in the third paragraph, with yet more fabricated details about an event which may or may not have occurred: 3. In still another incident at El Arish, the Israeli journalist Gabi Bron saw about 150 Egyptian POWs sitting on the ground, crowded together with their hands held at the back of their necks. "The Egyptian prisoners of war were ordered to dig pits and then army police shot them to death," Bron said. "I witnessed the executions with my own eyes on the morning of June eighth, in the airport area of El Arish." Did Gabi Bron, as Bamford claims, see Israeli soldiers slaughter 150 bound Egyptian prisoners? Bamford cites as his source a New York Times article by Serge Schmemann dated August 21, 1995. While this article does contain the quoted passage from Bron, it says not a word about the number of Egyptians shot or even the number seen by Bron. Where did Bamford get the number of victims as 150? He doesn’t say. The article also doesn’t mention anything about prisoners “sitting on the ground, crowded together with their hands held at the back of their necks.” This is apparently another creation of Bamford’s all-too-fertile imagination. However, another AP article dated August 17, 1995, which Bamford seems not to quote, gives the number of killed according to Gabi Brun (the spelling is slightly different) as five, not 150. In addition, according to the article, Brun’s commanding officer, who was also there at the time, denied that there were any executions at all. If he is wrong, and these executions did occur, it was clearly inexcusable but would hardly qualify as Bamford’s “slaughterhouse.” And that brings us to the final paragraph, concerning an alleged report on alleged Israeli war crimes written by an alleged historian: 4. The Israeli military historian Aryeh Yitzhaki, who worked in the army's history department after the war, said he and other officers collected testimony from dozens of soldiers who admitted killing POWs. According to Yitzhaki, Israeli troops killed, in cold blood, as many as 1000 Egyptian prisoners in the Sinai, including some 400 in the sand dunes of El Arish. (Body of Secrets, p 201-202) Was Aryeh Yitzhaki an “Israeli military historian,” and did he collect evidence that “Israeli troops killed, in cold blood, as many as 1,000 Egyptian prisoners?” Perhaps because Yitzhaki’s claims are so incendiary, Bamford cites two sources, both dated August 17, 1995: an article from the Washington Post, and the already cited article from Newsday. That these articles are from the same date, however, is no accident – they are, with cuts, the same AP article (datelined August 16)! If this was not an honest mistake, then it was only the beginning of Bamford’s deceptions concerning Yitzhaki. For the AP article of the next day, August 17, revealed that Yitzhaki, a member of a far-right political party in Israel, admitted he came out with his charges to protect the leader of his party, who had just been indirectly implicated in some genuine killings of Egyptian POWs in the 1956 Middle-East war. According to the AP, Yitzhaki “acknowledged that he spoke out mainly to shift attention ... from Tzomet leader Raphael Eitan ... to leading government officials, including Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.” That Yitzhaki’s credibility was therefore shaky at best is another fact kept from readers by Bamford. In addition, a Jerusalem Post story of August 17, 1995 quoted Yitzhaki’s then-commanding officer, historian Meir Pa’il, who stated that in 1968 Yitzhaki was not a military historian at all, but rather a mere clerk:
This report also states that “transcripts of orders from the Six Day War shown to the Jerusalem Post yesterday clearly indicate that the alleged mass murder of Egyptian POWs near El-Arish never occurred as described by [Aryeh Yitzhaki].” According to the Post, what actually happened was a full-fledged battle between soldiers:
Supporting this is a contemporaneous account from the New York Times, which reported precisely such battles, but no massacres. Datelined El-Arish, June 7, the Times article reported that:
Perhaps as important as the corroborating details offered by this account, is the affirmation that in El Arish on June 7th Israeli forces were accompanied by reporters who evidently neither saw nor heard even a hint of Bamford’s alleged “slaughterhouse.” And not just reporters; photographers also accompanied the Israeli troops throughout their advance into the Sinai. Indeed, an American photographer for Life Magazine, Paul Schutzer, was killed while riding with Israeli troops in a half-track that came under Egyptian attack. Despite the dangers, these news photographers, both Israeli and foreign, filed numerous battle images, as well as photos of the war’s immediate aftermath, such as Israeli soldiers dealing with Arab POWs in El Arish during the very time that Bamford charges there was an ongoing slaughter:
The photographers also recorded Israeli doctors tending to wounded POWs. Why the Israelis would bother to provide advanced medical care to POWs while they were at the same time slaughtering them is unclear:
Some of the wounded Egyptian POWs bade a friendly goodbye as they were being repatriated to Egypt:
Many passages in Body of Secrets and Puzzle Palace display Bamford’s fanatical animus towards Israel and its American – especially Jewish-American – supporters, which perhaps explains why he would publish such nonsense. There are also numerous apparently careless errors which further undermine Bamford’s believability. But the bottom line is that merely consulting old newspapers and old photographs is enough to demolish Bamford’s new conspiracy theories. Case closed.
Addendum: Confronted with facts, Bamford tells new liesConfronted on the NPR program The Connection with the fact that contemporaneous press reports, including New York Times accounts from June 1967, contradict his anti-Israel conspiracy theories, Bamford tried to confuse listeners by acting as if the issue were a recent Times review of Body of Secrets. In the process, Bamford also grossly misrepresented the review, which raised serious questions about his Liberty allegations and his ability to write credibly on Israel. Indeed, the reviewer, Joseph Finder, called the chapter on the Liberty the “weakest” part of the book and speculates that perhaps Bamford’s “palpable distaste for the Israeli state” had clouded his judgement. Whatever the explanation for Bamford’s willingness to deceive, a comparison shows that his characterization of the review is no more credible that his writing on Israel. Here is Bamford’s version of the review:
Now, compare that with the relevant portion of the Times review:
This, according to Bamford, is an endorsement of his credibility and his allegations concerning Israel. In other words, not only can’t Bamford be trusted about what happened in 1967, he can’t even be trusted about what happened a week ago.
Prepared by Alex Safian.
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