List of fabrications, outright and suspected
List of outright fabrications either by Israel directly or via agents/authors who are linked to the "accident theory".
1) The first "gun-camera picture" from the IDF History Report in 1982 does not show the USS Liberty.
2) The second "gun-camera picture" of 1984 has been photo-shopped, and is almost certainly an American photograph taken weeks after the incident.
3) The 1984 claim, much repeated, that there was a "friendly-fire" incident by the Israelis on their own armoured column the previous day (6th June 1967) Hirsh Goodman and Ze'ev Schiff, "The Attack on the Liberty," Atlantic Monthly, (September 1984). This claim has been dropped from the JVL source once depended on by Wikipedia.
4) Numerous claims made by AJ Cristol, particularly some details of his "13 inquiries exonerate Israel", see above. Cristol calls the rushed Naval Court of Inquiry "remarkably competent (and) thorough", while the veterans call it "a doctored sham". Cristol stresses that 14 seamen spoke at the hearing. Ship’s officers Ennes, Painter, Golden, and others charge that in dozens of cases, sworn testimony damaging to Israel’s case was not allowed or, if allowed, not entered into evidence or made part of the transcript. Ennes avers not only that his testimony went unentered but also that deck and weather log entries in his hand were altered. Former cryptologic technician Joe Lentini stated that the naval hearing helped Israel "get away with murder" a view not contradicted by any known survivor.
While convincing to some, some evidence/assertions by defenders of Israel cannot be conclusively proven to be fabrications. However, where evidence is strong and could easily be falsified, then an assumption of outright and deliberate falsification seems justified.
"Thursday, June 8 [1967] began in a note of tragedy. A morning news bulletin reported that a U.S. Navy communications ship, the Liberty, had been torpedoed in international waters off the Sinai coast. For seventy tense minutes we hadn't idea who was responsible, but at eleven o'clock we learned that the ship had been attacked in error by Israeli gunboats and planes. Ten men of the Liberty were killed and a hundred were wounded. This heartbreaking episode grieved the Israelis deeply, as it did us. There was a possibility that the incident might lead to even greater misfortune, and it was precisely to avoid further confusion and tragedy that I sent a message to Chairman Kosygin on the hot line. I told him exactly what had happened and advised him that carrier aircraft were on their way to the scene to investigate. I wanted him to know, I said, that investigation was the sole purpose of these flights, and I hoped he would inform the proper parties. Kosygin replied that our message had been received and the information had been relayed immediately to the Egyptians.
Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson reported, after his return to Moscow, that this particular exchange had made a deep impression on the Russians. Use of the Hotline For this purpose, to prevent misunderstanding, was exactly what both parties had envisioned.
*********
On the morning of June 10 we thought we could see the end of the road. But new word from Moscow brought a sudden chill to the situation. I was told that the hot line was active again and that "Mr. Kosygin wants the President to come to the equipment as soon as possible." I hurried to the Situation Room. Already there were McNamarra, Rostow, Clifford, Bundy, Katzenbach, Thompson and CIA Director Helms. At 9:05 AM I received the first rough translation of the Kosygin message.
The Soviets accused Israeli of ignoring all Security Council resolutions for a ceasefire. Kosygin said a "very crucial moment" had now arrived. He spoke of the possibility of "independent decision " by Moscow. He foresaw the risk of a "grave catastrophe", and state that unless Israel unconditionally halted operations within the next few hours, the Soviet Union would take "necessary actions, including military". Thompson, at Rusk's request, read the original Russian text to make certain that the word "military" was indeed the correct translation. Thompson said it was. In an exchange between Heads of government, these were serious words : "very crucial moment," "catastrophe", "independent decision," "military actions".
The room was deathly still as we carefully studied this grave communication. I turned to McNamarra. "Where is the Sixth Fleet now?"
Foxbats Did Fly over Dimona
In their sensational historical detective work, Foxbats over Dimona: The Soviets' Nuclear Gamble in the Six-Day War (Yale University Press, 2007), Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez have challenge the widely-accepted idea that the Six Day War happened without anyone wanting it. Instead, they present a theory that the U.S.S.R. instigated the war as a way preemptively to destroy the Israeli nuclear facilities.
I was drawn to the argument (in an analysis at "The Soviets' Six-Day War) but dared not quite fully endorse it, wondering if all the evidence would hold up under critical scrutiny by other experts on this topic.
Today comes confirmation of a critical piece of data, as suggested by the title of David Horovitz' article in the Jerusalem Post, "Russia confirms Soviet sorties over Dimona in '67." The confirmation comes from Col. Aleksandr V. Drobyshevsky, chief spokesman of the Russian Air Force, and it is inadvertent, coming in a completely different context (commemorating the anniversary of the test pilots' school from which one of the pilots who participated in the 1967 flights had graduated). Drobyshevsky wrote, in an article posted on the official Web site of the Russian Defense Ministry in October 2006 but only noticed by Remez and Ginor now:
In 1967, the military valor and high combat training of Col. Bezhevets, A.S. (now a Hero of the Soviet Union, an honorary test pilot of the USSR, [and] retired Air Force major-general), were demonstrated while carrying out combat operation in Egypt, [and] enabled [him] to perform unique reconnaissance flights over the territory of Israel in a MiG-25RB aircraft.
The MiG-25RB would be the "Foxbat" aircraft of the title. Remez and Ginor describe this passage as an "extraordinary disclosure" and as "official confirmation of the book's exhibit A and the source of its title." It comes, they add, "as close to an official document as one can hope for in the foreseeable future, given the prevailing circumstances in Russia."
An aerial view of Israel's Dimona reactor.
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But the verdict is not unanimous. Bezhevets, the Foxbat pilot over Dimona, continues to deny having undertaken this mission. Remez and Ginor explain this discrepancy by suggesting that Bezhevets is sticking to the old line; in contrast, "Drobyshevsky's [Defense Ministry] statement relied not on the pilot's testimony but rather on the air force's own documentation." This difference illustrates their point that "full and direct documentation of the Soviet role in 1967 is still being suppressed." (August 24, 2007)
Nov. 4, 2007 update: Stanford University Press provides the following description of its forthcoming book, The Soviet Union and the June 1967 Six Day War, edited by Yaacov Ro'i and Boris Morozov:
Why did the Soviet Union spark war in 1967 between Israel and the Arab states by falsely informing Syria and Egypt that Israel was massing troops on the Syrian border? Based on newly available archival sources, The Soviet Union and the June 1967 Six Day War answers this controversial question more fully than ever before. Directly opposing the thesis of the recently published Foxbats over Dimona by Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez, the contributors to this volume argue that Moscow had absolutely no intention of starting a war. The Soviet Union's reason for involvement in the region had more to do with enhancing its own status as a Cold War power than any desire for particular outcomes for Syria and Egypt.
Comment: Good to see the topic joined; may the stronger argument prevail.
Feb. 1, 2008 update: Book reviews are pleasingly unpredictable. Here is David Rodman in The Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, voice of the Israeli foreign policy establishment:
Though Ginor and Remez marshal a prodigious amount of previously overlooked information to bolster their case, this documentation does not add up to unequivocal evidence of a Soviet-Arab conspiracy. … it is difficult to accept their charge of a conspiracy. … Furthermore, Ginor and Remez do not endow their thesis with a very persuasive rationale as to why the Soviets would launch a war against Israel.
In contrast, Lawrence Freedman writes in Foreign Affairs magazine, the voice of the U.S. foreign policy establishment:
Here is a book that is truly revisionist, challenging what we thought we knew about the origins and conduct of the Six-Day War. ... Ginor and Remez have succeeded to the point where the onus is now on others to show why they are wrong.
And most surprising of all, Mark N. Katz in The Middle East Journal, voice of American Arabism: He started out skeptical but
Long before reaching the book's end … I became convinced that Ginor and Remez have gotten it right.
Sep. 1, 2008 update: Ginor and Remez have published a follow-up paper, "The Six-Day War as a Soviet Initiative: New Evidence and Methodological Issues," in the Middle East Review of International Affairs. It contains what the authors themselves describe as a "welter of minute particulars," but particulars that buttress the Foxbatthesis.
INTERNATIONAL By DAVID HOROVITZ \ 08/23/2007 19:21
Russia confirms Soviet sorties over Dimona in '67
Israeli authors: This is proof USSR deliberately engineered 6 Day War to destroy nuclear program.
Russia confirms Soviet sorties over Dimona in '67
(photo credit:Courtesy)
The chief spokesman of the Russian Air Force, Col. Aleksandr V. Drobyshevsky, has confirmed in writing for the first time that it was Soviet pilots, in the USSR's most-advanced MiG-25 "Foxbat" aircraft, who flew highly-provocative sorties over Israel's nuclear facility at Dimona in May 1967, just prior to the Six Day War.
Gideon Remez and Isabella Ginor, who co-wrote the recent book Foxbats over Dimona, which asserts that the Soviet Union deliberately engineered the war to create the conditions in which Israel's nuclear program could be destroyed, on Thursday described this "extraordinary disclosure" as "official confirmation of the book's exhibit A and the source of its title."
Published in June by Yale University Press, the Israeli duo's book asserted that the Soviets flew sorties over Dimona in the still-experimental and top-secret Foxbats both to bolster a deliberate Soviet effort to encourage Israel to launch a war, and to ensure that the nuclear target could be effectively destroyed once Israel, branded an aggressor for its preemption, came under a planned joint Arab-Soviet counterattack. Soviet nuclear-missile submarines were said to have been poised off Israel's shore, ready to strike back in case Israel already had a nuclear device and sought to use it. The Soviets were also said to have geared up for a naval landing on Israel's beaches.
The book, hailed by experts such as the former US ambassador to Israel and Egypt Daniel Kurtzer for marshalling a "compelling argument," nonetheless featured what the authors acknowledged was a dearth of incontrovertible documentation that would back up central aspects of their thesis. They noted at the time that it was "entirely possible that few corresponding documents ever existed," that key documents may have been destroyed, and that "the accounts of numerous Soviet participants refer to orders that were transmitted only orally down the chain of command."
However, a delighted Remez and Ginor told the The Jerusalem Post that official confirmation of the Soviet Foxbat sorties had now been published by Drobyshevsky in an article posted on the official Web site of the Russian Defense Ministry. The "extraordinary disclosure of a hitherto secret operation," they noted, "apparently was included inadvertently - in a statement that was published in a completely different context": to mark the anniversary of the test pilots' school from which one of the pilots who participated in the 1967 flights graduated.
The relevant section of Drobyshevsky's article states (in translation): "In 1967, the military valor and high combat training of Col. Bezhevets, A.S. (now a Hero of the Soviet Union, an honorary test pilot of the USSR, [and] retired Air Force major-general), were demonstrated while carrying out combat operation in Egypt, [and] enabled [him] to perform unique reconnaissance flights over the territory of Israel in a MiG-25RB aircraft." Remez and Ginor said this high-level admission of the Soviet sorties, which was first posted on the ministry's Web site last October, "comes as close to an official document as one can hope for in the foreseeable future, given the prevailing circumstances in Russia."
They noted that it corroborates the personal testimony of Bezhevets's senior colleague, Lt.-Gen. Aleksandr I. Vybornov, who is quoted in the book as having described the missions on several occasions.
The book's findings were first published by the Post on May 16, under the heading "Soviets engineered Six Day War 'to destroy Israel's nuclear program.'" Remez and Ginor told the Post that this article "was widely reproduced" and "aroused intensive discussion" in the FSU. Several respected news media outlets, notably the Russian daily Komsomolskaya Pravda, they said, "contacted some of the veterans who were among the main sources for the book, and they reiterated their accounts." Among such veterans confirming their stories was Gen. Vasily Reshetnikov, the commander of the Soviet strategic bombers, said to have been given maps for the planned strike at Dimona.
The "conventional view" of the events leading up to the 1967 war, Remez noted when the book came out, "is that the Soviet Union triggered the conflict via disinformation on Israeli troop movements, but that it didn't intend for a full-scale war to break out and that it then did its best to defuse the war in cooperation with the United States." The book, he said, "totally contradicts everything that has been accepted." Having received information about Israel's progress toward nuclear arms, the book asserts, the Soviets aimed to draw Israel into a confrontation in which their counterstrike would include a joint Egyptian-Soviet bombing of the reactor at Dimona.
The Soviets' intended central intervention in the war was thwarted, however, by the overwhelming nature of the initial Israeli success, the authors write, as Israel's preemption, far from weakening its international legitimacy and exposing it to devastating counterattack, proved decisive in determining the conflict. Because the Soviet Union's plan thus proved unworkable, the authors go on, its role in stoking the crisis, and its plans to subsequently remake the Middle East to its advantage, have remained overlooked, undervalued or simply unknown to historians assessing the war over the past 40 years.
The Israeli authors' thesis, they told the Post this week, had now won over Komsomolskaya Pravda's Col. Viktor Baranets, a noted military correspondent and former General Staff officer.
They quoted him as having written recently that "the time has apparently come to set the record straight. So far, the facts have often been replaced by inventions. No one can dispute the obvious: the USSR 'orchestrated' that war... The USSR was prepared for an invasion of Israel. The confessions of our own officers prove this." The Russian media also recently contacted Bezhevets himself, the authors said, but even though he has now been officially praised by his own Defense Ministry for making the Foxbat flights over Israel, he denied doing so.
According to Remez and Ginor, this "indicates that Drobyshevsky's [Defense Ministry] statement relied not on the pilot's testimony but rather on the air force's own documentation." This, in turn, they said, "illustrates the point... that full and direct documentation of the Soviet role in 1967 is still being suppressed."
Remez, a longtime prominent Israel Radio journalist, fought in the Six Day War as a paratrooper. Ginor was born in the Ukraine, came to Israel in 1967 and is a noted analyst of Soviet and post-Soviet affairs.
USS Liberty - US Navy Almost Nuke Cairo, McNamara Denies LBJ Recalled Liberty Rescue Flight from Spike EP on Vimeo.
