With President Obama facing an Israel that refuses to comply with his wish that it halt all further housing expansion in the illegally-occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, James Scott’s book, “The Attack on the Liberty: The Untold Story of Israel’s Deadly 1967 Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship,” has special meaning.

The editor had the opportunity of meeting the author at the National Press Club on November 17. Scott, a Charleston, South Carolina-based journalist, has a unique insight into the Israeli attack on the National Security Agency (NSA) ship during the 1967 Six Day War: Scott’s father was the damage control officer on the USS Liberty. Fortunately, Ensign John Scott survived the Israeli attack. Thirty-four of his shipmates were not so lucky.

Author Scott recounts that on the eve of the outbreak of the Six Day War, President Lyndon Johnson received a gift from the American Jewish community. Scott writes about a huge anti-Vietnam War demonstration that was planned to confront Johnson on a trip to New York City: “Many Jewish organizations at the forefront of the antiwar movement opted not to protest, hoping to reduce the pressure on the president as Israel sought America’s support in its standoff with Egypt.”

It is interesting to note how, today, “antiwar” organizations like MoveOn.org, which had rallied against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush administration, have now changed their tunes on both wars with Obama in the White House. MoveOn.org, like many antiwar organizations during the Vietnam War, receives a large degree of financial support from wealthy Jewish-Americans. In the case of MoveOn.org, huge support comes from Jewish-American financier George Soros.

At a hundred-dollar-a-plate political fundraiser in New York, Scott, writes, “Many of the 1,650 tuxedoed diners represented New York’s influential Jewish community, all anxious to hear Johnson’s views on the crisis . . . The president, described by one aide as “part Jewish” because of his close ties with that community, found that his years of support did little to shield him from the demands to intervene in the Middle East.”

Scott describes Johnson’s close relationship with Israel. “Soon after Kennedy’s assassination, he [Johnson] signaled his intentions. ‘You have lost a very great friend,’ Johnson confided in an Israeli diplomat, ‘but you have found a better one.’”

Johnson’s family upbringing had much to do with the president’s strong support for Israel. According to Scott, “[Johnson] family elders had preached that the destruction of Israel would trigger the apocalypse. ‘Take care of the Jews, God’s chosen people,’ Johnson’s grandfather scrawled in a family album. ’Consider them your friends and help them any way you can.’”

Johnson also politically calculated that he would need Jewish support, including their votes and donations, in the 1968 presidential race. Scott writes: “Johnson surrounded himself in office with Jewish and pro-Israel advisers. The shrewd politician picked brothers Walt and Eugene Rostow to serve as his national security adviser and undersecretary of state for political affairs, respectively. The president chose Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg as ambassador to the United Nations, replacing him on the bench with Abe Fortas, another Israel supporter. John Roche, a former dean at Brandeis University, wrote many of Johnson’s speeches. The president also relied on those Jewish friends for advice, including high-profile lawyers Ed Weisl and David Ginsburg, who often represented the Israel Embassy. Johnson never missed a call from Democratic fund-raiser Abe Feinberg, because, as one senior aide noted, ‘It may might mean another million dollars.’ United Artist Chairman Arthur Krim and his wife, Mathilde, a former gunrunner for early Zionist guerrillas, spent so many nights in the White House that Room 303 became the couple’s regular quarters.”

The night before Israel’s pre-emptive attack on Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, Johnson had dinner at the home of Fortas. When he was awakened at the White House at 4:30 a.m. and told of the Israeli attack by Walt Rostow, the news came as no surprise to Johnson. The president had done virtually nothing to pressure Israel to avoid the aggression on the Arab countries.

However, Johnson would show his support for Israel in even more dastardly ways. On June 8, when the Israeli Air Force and Navy preemptively attacked the USS Liberty, Johnson refused to intervene. Author James Bamford later discovered that the Liberty, which was monitoring both Israeli and Egyptian communications, had discovered that Israeli forces in Sinai were committing war crimes, including the execution of surrendering Egyptian prisoners of war. Israel would do everything to stop that intelligence from being made known to Washington and other capitals. They decided to eliminate the Liberty and Johnson aided and abetted in what amounted to an act of treason on the part of the president of the United States. Johnson’s personal fingerprints on the cover-up of the attack are now well documented.

Even in his memoir, Johnson covered up for Israel by writing that only 10 American sailors were killed in the attack on the Liberty, not 34. Johnson wrote that the Israeli attack was a “tragic accident.”

To this day, Israel and its apologists in the American Jewish community insist that the Israeli attack on the Liberty was some sort of tragic mistake. James Scott’s book has driven another nail in the coffin of Israeli innocence in what amounts to as the most perfidious acts ever carried out by a so-called “friendly nation” against the United States. 

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

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