Love Story by USS Liberty Survivor of The Six-Day War

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USS Liberty survivor of The Six Day War, Donald Pageler exemplifies love as described by Fyodor Dostoyevsky in “The Brothers Karamazov”:

“Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams… active love is labor and fortitude.”

By Eileen Fleming

People with fortitude exemplify courage, endurance, resilience, moral fiber, strength of mind and character because of backbones filled with true grit. Because USS Liberty survivor of The Six-Day War, Donald Pageler exemplifies fortitude and active love this American is co-writing “Donald Pageler’s USS Liberty LOVE Story” which is also Part Two of A USS Liberty Remembrance of 50 years USA Government Cover-Up of Israel’s 8 June 1967 Attack on USA Spy-Ship:

What follows is the Foreword for “Donald Pageler’s USS Liberty LOVE Story”

This American knew nothing about the USS Liberty until 13 October 2007. Since then I have met many of the few remaining USS Liberty survivors of The Six Day War.

Over the last eleven years I learned that one cannot speak honestly about the USS Liberty without also addressing the issue of Anti-Semitism:

“ANTISEMITISM IS EXPRESSED AS HOSTILITY TOWARD OR DISCRIMINATION OF JEWS AS A RELIGIOUS, ETHNIC, OR RACIAL GROUP.”

I grew up in a Catholic home and am a granddaughter of a German Jew. He died before I could learn how many of my relatives might have been gassed or fried by the Third Reich.

Ernest Gallo, three time and current president of the USS Liberty Veterans Association stated, “We must never forget the Holocaust and it is equally important for the future of the United States to never forget the USS Liberty.”

I didn’t grow up hearing about holocausts. I grew up on promises such as truth and justice were the American Way. The way the USA is going today racism and anti-Semitism is on the rise and only active love and fortitude will change it.

New anti-Semitism is a concept that a new form of anti-Semitism developed emanating simultaneously from the far left, Islamism, and the far right. New anti-Semitism manifests as opposition to Zionism, the State of Israel and Jewish people.

Irwin Cotler, Professor of Law at McGill University is a leading scholar of human rights who identified nine aspects of what he considers to constitute the “new anti-Semitism.”

Cotler argues that classical anti-Semitism is discrimination against Jews as individuals whereas the new anti-Semitism “is anchored in discrimination against the Jews as a people- and the embodiment of that expression in Israel. In each instance, the essence of anti-Semitism is the same- an assault upon whatever is the core of Jewish self-definition at any moment in time.”

In a June 2011 interview with an Israeli television station, Cotler re-iterated his view that the world is “witnessing a new and escalating and even lethal anti-Semitism” focused on hatred of Israel. He cautioned that this type of anti-Semitism should not be defined in a way that precludes “free speech” and “rigorous debate” about Israel’s activities.

Yehuda Bauer, Professor of Holocaust Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, considers the concept “new anti-Semitism” to be false, since it is in fact old anti-Semitism that remains latent and recurs whenever it is triggered.

In his view, the current trigger is the Israeli situation, and if a compromise were achieved there anti-Semitism would decline but not disappear…

In July 2006, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights issued a Campus Anti-Semitism report declaring, “Anti-Semitic bigotry is no less morally deplorable when camouflaged as anti-Israelism or anti-Zionism.”

The Commission concluded that anti-Semitism is a “serious problem” on many campuses throughout the United States.

Anti-Semitism is a serious problem throughout the world, but I was not cognizant of it until 13 October 2007 after I flew from Florida to California to speak at a “No More Wars for Israel Conference”.

The organizers had dedicated the conference to Israel’s Nuclear Whistle Blower, Mordechai Vanunu. I was asked to speak at the conference because I met Vanunu while in Jerusalem in 2005 and was streaming Vanunu interviews at YouTube and enshrining them in books at Amazon. Before I made the trip to California, a few human rights activists warned me that I should NOT attend the conference because anti-Semites, neo-Nazis and white supremacists would be in attendance. I thanked them for their concern and imagined Jesus would welcome the opportunity to speak to anti-Semites, neo-Nazis and white supremacists. I took the red-eye from Florida to California and when I arrived I learned I did not have a room at the Inn where the conference was scheduled because the hotel had cancelled the event due to complaints that there would be anti-Semites, neo-Nazis and white supremacists in attendance.

The conference was rescheduled at a church nine hours later and indeed, I did not agree with many things some of the other speakers said, but I uphold that all people have the right to think their own thoughts and speak their own minds. However when USS LIBERTY veteran Phillip F. Tourney spoke I knew why I really was at that conference. Tourney chilled me to the bone when he told about how 34 Americans were slaughtered, 174 wounded [including himself] because Israel attacked the USS Liberty a virtually unarmed spy ship while she navigated in international waters during the Six Day War.

When Tourney said “It was God that kept the LIBERTY afloat” I knew I would do more than just listen to him….