USS Liberty survivor of The Six-Day War’s second book, “Erasing the Liberty” is also the fundraising vehicle for a full-length feature film:
Phillip Francis Tourney has been on the road for the last thirty years keeping the memory of Israel’s attack on the USS LIBERTY alive by educating Americans to the nearly fifty-year cover-up by the USA Government;
Which began within hours after Israel’s attack on the unarmed spy-ship by a civilian from either the NSA or Office of Naval Intelligence screaming at the traumatized and near death crew:
YOU DON’T TALK TO YOUR SHIPMATES, YOU DON’T TALK TO YOUR FAMILY, YOU DON’T TALK TO YOUR FRIENDS, YOU DON’T TALK TO THE GUY AT THE BAR ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED. IF YOU DO YOU’LL BE COURT-MARTIALED OR WORSE.
What drives Tourney and his Liberty band of brothers seeking to end America’s Cover-up of Israel’s 8 June 1967 War Crimes, are the thirty-four men who were murdered on that day in infamy when the USA Government FAILED to support and honor the troops.
Tourney writes about the cosmetically repaired USS Liberty’s last trip home to Norfolk, Virginia:
One of my duties was to check the CT spaces for any leaks or signs of future trouble.
I would go down there alone…
Every time I descended into this silent grave-this killing field where so many of my shipmates had been murdered.
I could feel the eyes of them upon me as I moved.
I felt they could read my every thought and I could hear their voices crying:
DO NOT let what happened to us be forgotten…
Even now, almost fifty years later it is still with me…
Throughout Tourney’s heartbreaking trail of tears, he heavily cites the seminal work of James Scott [journalist and son of a USS LIBERTY veteran] The Attack on the Liberty: The Untold Story of Israel’s Deadly 1967 Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship.
However, Tourney omitted the following important facts every American needs to know:
Two months before the sailor’s mass burial at Arlington Cemetery, Navy analysis also uncovered that the Israeli torpedo boat gunners had targeted the spy ship with 40-mm tracer rounds made in the United States.
In 1967, the Republican representative from Iowa, H.R. Gross rose up in The House and asked:
Is this Government now, directly or indirectly, subsidizing Israel in the payment of full compensation for the lives that were destroyed, the suffering of the wounded, and the damage from this wanton attack? It can well be asked whether these Americans were the victims of bombs, machine gun bullets and torpedoes manufactured in the United States and dished out as military assistance under foreign aid. [1]
By November 1967, lawmakers were willing to spend six million USA tax dollars to build schools in Israel but during the debate, Representative Gross spoke with the voice of conscience and introduced an amendment:
That not one dollar of U.S. credit or aid of any kind [should] go to Israel until there is a firm settlement with regard to the attack and full reparations have been made [and Israel] provides full and complete reparations for the killing and wounding of more than 100 United States citizens in the wanton, unprovoked attack.
I wonder how you would feel if you were the father of one of the boys who was killed in that connection-or perhaps you do not have any feelings with respect to these young men who were killed, wounded and maimed, or their families. [2]
In the Chapter LBJ, Tourney writes: The 36th president was also a Christian Zionist….LBJ’s worldview was decidedly ‘Jewish’.
Everyone should know that Judaism was the first great faith to believe in one God in the then pagan world.
What a wonderful world it will be when we all engage in Tikkun which is Hebrew for mend, repair and transform the world.
Tikkun is also an interfaith organization that researched and discovered that there are three distinct elements energizing Christian Zionists:
- A strong commitment to conservative and ultra-nationalist American politics (so strong, I believe, that if the U.S. were to decide to break with Israel, this part of the Christian Zionist leadership would go along with that and drop its defense of Israeli policies).
- Dispensationalist religious commitments that lead many of the Christian Zionists to yearn for a cataclysmic “end of history” eschatological war in the Middle East that will precipitate the second coming of Jesus and the Rapture in which all true Christians will go to heaven and all Jews who have not yet converted to Christianity will burn in hell for eternity.
- A widespread understanding among many Christians that atonement and repentance is needed for 1700 years of murder, rape, and oppression of Jews that was frequently generated by the Church (though, of course, the Evangelicals do not recognize that church as their church). In this category are many Christian Zionists who genuinely feel terrible about what has happened to the Jews and genuinely want to help the Jewish people. Their philo-Semitism is real and sincere. [Rabbi Lerner, Tikkun Magazine page 9, Nov/Dec. 2007]
On 8 November 2006, this reporter attended a lecture by Israeli born historian Professor Ilan Pappe, on the seventh day of Sabeel’s [Arabic for THE WAY] 6th International Conference: The Forgotten Faithful/AKA the Palestinian Christians.
Pappe spoke to over 330 International ecumenical Christians gathered within the Ramallah Cultural Palace on the topic “Dynamics of Forgetting.”
Pappe said:
The Red House in Tel Aviv is gone now. It was a typical building in Tel Aviv that had all the characteristics of Mediterranean homes but with the local Palestinian architecture of the ’20’s. Today a USA Sheraton Hotel stands in its place.
The Red House was the home of the Hagganah; a Jewish underground organization but before 1948 it was the home of a socialist movement, from which it received its name.
The New York Times followed Israeli troops and reported the truth of the expulsion and separation of men and women, and of the many massacres.
The world was well informed in 1948, but a year later not a trace was reported in the USA press or books.
It was as if nothing ever happened.
From March to October 1948 the USA State Department stated what was happening was a crime against humanity and ethnic cleansing.
When ever one ethnic group expels another group they should be treated as War Criminals and the victims should be allowed to return.
This is never mentioned in the USA about Palestine…
The ethnic cleansing continues via the apartheid policies of the Israeli government and because of the denial of the truth by the USA media.
To claim Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East is bullshit!
The Six Day War of 1967 escalated the ethnic cleansing and today in Jerusalem every Palestinian who fails to pay taxes, or has a minor infraction will loose their citizenship.
In 1948 the mechanism of denial and ethnic cleansing as an IDEOLOGY, not a policy but a formula began.
When Zionism began in the 19th century it was meant to be a safe haven for Jews and to help redefine Judaism as a national movement, not just a religion. But by the late 19th Century it was decided the only way these goals could be achieved was by ridding the indigenous population and it became an evil ideology…
But that is another story and this one is about the USS LIBERTY.
Learn more about Tourney’s Erasing the Liberty http://usslibertymovie.com
Help end USA Government Cover-up and Honor the USS LIBERTY HERE
Producer "30 Minutes with Vanunu" who founded WeAreWideAwake.org in response to her first of 8 trips to both sides of The Wall in Palestine Israel.
In 2012, Eileen ran for US House of Representatives District 5, in Fl.
Read her FREE eBooks and more at:http://www.eileenfleming.org/
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