January 5, 2006
From BluWiki
January 5, 2006
Host: Daryl Bradford Smith
Guest: Lt. Cmdr. James Ennes (ret.), U.S. Navy
Here are today's lies, misstatements, disinformation, and stupidity:
(1) Daryl Bradford Smith says that the IDF attacked the U.S.S. Liberty because they wanted to frame the Egyptians for doing it. This is ridiculous on several counts. First of all, Israel immediately owned up to the mistake once it was realized. Second and more importantly, Egypt did not have a working air force on the day of the attack, June 8, 1967. That's because three days earlier, Israel had destroyed the Egyptian Air Force while it was still on the ground.
(2) In a single sentence, Daryl Bradford Smith lists every Jewish organization and individual as part of a conspiracy against "the truth."
(3) Daryl Bradford Smith says that Benjamin Freedman was present at the signing of the Balfour Declaration. Given that Freedman would have been only 26 years old at the time and given that the Balfour Declaration was a personal letter, I have a hard time believing this.
(4) Daryl Bradford Smith claims in this broadcast that it is Israel that is setting roadside bombs in Iraq, but, as usual, he doesn't offer a shred of evidence.
(5) Daryl Bradford Smith tells us to enter "gladio" into our computers. I did just that. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=gladio I suppose the issue that Smith is trying to touch on is the idea that Israel was behind the bombing of a plane on November 23, 1973, in Italy. There a few reasons why this isn't true, mainly because one of the heads of Operation Gladio (a NATO operation to fight communists in Italy) said it was the communists who did it. He said this sixteen years ago. The only reason anyone thought the Israelis might have done it is that the Italian government had deported back to Libya rather than try five Arabs who nearly bombed an Israeli airliner while it was in Italy. Furthermore, being led by a left-wing government in 1973, there's little chance that Israel would have been involved in such an action. Furthermore, they were still recovering from the Yom Kippur War, which had ended only a month earlier.
(6) Daryl Bradford Smith asks his listeners why Benjamin Netanyahu was in London on 7/7. He was a probable target of the attack -- that's why.
(7) Daryl Bradford Smith says that Ariel Sharon sent the Christian Phalange militias into the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps. While it's true that the Kahan Commission certainly found Sharon indirectly responsible for the massacre, Sharon sued Time magazine and won when they alleged what Smith did.
(8) James Ennes comes on to discussion the Liberty incident. Rather than trying to refute Commander Ennes's version of the story, I am instead directing reader's to Michael Oren's article "The U.S.S. Liberty: Case Closed." [1] This article was included, pretty much in its complete form in Oren's excellent and now canonical history of the Six-Day War, Six Days of War. [2]
Members of the "Remember the Liberty!" community have attacked Oren, notably in an article by James Bamford. [3]
Note the following falsehoods stated therein:
(a) "Oren, however, is a reserve officer and war veteran of the Israeli Defense Forces as well as a former advisor to the government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin -- who was Army chief of staff at the time the Liberty was attacked." This is absolutely true. In fact, all Israeli men, unless they are for some reason unable to serve, serve three years in the military beginning at age 18. Furthermore, all Israeli men are reservists until the age of 54. This means that, in the case of war, they are called up for service. Thus, while I don't know for sure, he could have served in either the Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur War, or both.
(b) "He now works for a small right wing, pro-Benjamin Netanyahu Israeli think tank in Jerusalem, the Shalem Center." It's true that Oren was associated with the Shalem Center. (He did not "work for" them; rather he received funding from them.) I have not heard of it being a pro-Bibi front, however. And Six Days of War is hardly a pro-right-wing book. In fact, one might wonder what a former advisor to Yitzhak Rabin, a scion of the Israeli Left, would be doing with Netanyahu followers. Netanyahu was Rabin's most potent political enemy.
(c) "The principal mission of the center, where Mr. Oren is a senior fellow, is the cause of extreme Jewish nationalism -- Israel for the Jews -- i.e. apartheid. That is hardly surprising given that the center's intellectual guru, Yoram Hazony, is an admitted admirer of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane." This is an accusation against Oren of guilty by association. Again, whether Hazony was associated with Kahane I am unable to determine. But clearly the notion is to identify Oren with Kahane, and nothing could be further from the truth.
(d) "Thus it was not surprising that Oren's article on the Liberty was published by The New Republic -- long the U.S. propaganda arm of the Israeli far right -- they also published Hazony's book in which he espouses his extremist views." That the New Republic is a "propaganda arm of the Israeli far right" is ridiculous. It was pro-Clinton, and Clinton was deeply anti-Netanyahu and pro-Oslo.
(e) "This may be why Oren, in his article, seems to have deliberately forgotten about the Israeli war crimes that I write about in Body of Secrets." As Bamford's book is not limited to the Liberty incident, I fail to see why he should have read the book. As shown in his own bibliography, Oren conducted massive archival research, both in Israel and among LBJ's papers and NSA files. He has built a rock-solid case.
(f) In conclusion, Bamford's attack on Oren is pure ad hominem and does not address his paper at all.
(9) Mike from Arizona calls in and asks the commander if his communcations staff could understand Hebrew and seems surprised that the Israeli soldiers communicated in Hebrew. Did he expect them to communicate in English? Are Daryl Bradford Smith's listeners as stupid as Smith himself?
(10) There is a small point to make here, of sorts. Commander Ennes says that no "apology" of any sorts was offered by the Israelis. According to Oren, upon recognition that the ship was American, an apology was immediately send to the Naval attaché in Tel-Aviv, Cmdr. Earl Castle. Further, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and Foreign Minister Abba Eban apologized to the Johnson Administration, and Efraim Evron, a person friend of LBJ's as well as the Israeli chargé d'affaires in Washington apologized directly to the president. Oren cites State Department files, as well as U.S. Navy files to support these allegations. Meanwhile, Ennes offers nothing in the way of proving that Israeli seamen were ordered not to apologize.
(11) Cmdr. Ennes's story does not jibe with the IDF's version of events, which you can read in the Oren essay. This is hardly surprising, except to note that the Israeli Air Force attempted to contact Naval Attaché Castle and determine whether the Liberty was a U.S. vessel. According to the IAF, Castle said he didn't know, a claim he now denies. However, notably, the ship's captain, William L. McGonagle, has confirmed this story -- on Ennes's own Web site, at least in 2000. I could not personally find this information; however, Oren published his paper six years ago, and Ennes has had plenty of time to react and alter the Web site.
(12) Daryl Bradford Smith guesses that the attack was designed by Israel to mimick an attack on the Liberty by the Egyptians, thus drawing the U.S. into the war. Ennes, to his credit, dismisses this idea, but he does charge that the Israelis committed summary executions of Egyptian POWs at El-Arish. In fact, not only do the IDF records not reflect any such order (though it would be surprising if they did, even if it had happened), there were journalists and photographers at El-Arish on June 7 and forward. But no photographic evidence exists of a massacre, and though the Egyptians claimed when this story arose in 1995 that they had found a mass grave, no one was ever given access to verify its existence. Plus the entire story rests on Bamford, who cites Israeli journalist Aryeh Yitzhaki, who, it turns out, made the story up. Plus, though Bamford calls Yitzhaki a military historian, he was actually a clerk during the Six-Day War and was far from combat.
(13) Daryl Bradford Smith asks Ennes if he was ever told to keep quiet about the incident. Ennes says he was ordered to stay quiet about it. The problem is that the story was already out in the press. Daryl Bradford Smith says such orders were treason; they are not.
(14) What's interesting about James Ennes's story about the publishing of his book is that Ennes never consulted Israeli files or interviewed Israeli military figures, whereas Oren actually worked both side, digging around in the U.S. and Israeli files.
(15) Daryl Bradford Smith says he wants justice for the Liberty, for the Lavon Affair, and for 9/11. Ennes seems put off by much of what Smith says
(16) Ennes says that the U.S. Government has refused to investigate the whole affair. This is patently untrue. Read Oren's article, where he cites the relevant investigations.
(17) A final note is important to make: Israel paid compensation to wounded soldiers and families of the dead. Ennes never mentions this.
