Fifty-nine years ago, on June 8, 1967, Israel killed 34 American sailors

The technical research ship USS Liberty was cruising in international waters off the Sinai Peninsula on June 8, 1967, when the jet fighters appeared. They made six strafing runs, raking the deck with cannon fire. Then came the torpedo boats. One torpedo tore a 39-foot hole in the starboard side.

Thirty-four American sailors were killed. Another 170 were wounded. The ship was not Egyptian. It was not hostile. It was an American intelligence vessel flying the U.S. flag in broad daylight.

And according to declassified documents and accounts that have haunted U.S.-Israeli relations for 58 years, the Israeli pilots knew exactly what they were hitting.

“But sir, it’s an American ship — I can see the flag,” an Israeli pilot radioed the IDF war room, according to a CIA document from November 1967, still partly censored today.

The response, as recounted by former U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Dwight Porter, who said the conversation was intercepted by an NSA aircraft: “Never mind. Hit it.”

Israel has always maintained the attack was a tragic mistake, a case of friendly fire in the fog of war. The Israeli government apologized and paid compensation to the victims’ families. American and Israeli commissions of inquiry concluded the attack was an accident.

But published documents from the Israel State Archives tell a more complicated story.

“The Americans have findings that show our pilots were in fact aware the ship was American,” reads a Foreign Ministry cable from the Israeli embassy in New York to Jerusalem, unearthed by historian Adam Raz.

Another document, marked “Urgent,” warns: “We must change the abovementioned letter, because we certainly won’t be able to say there is no basis for the accusation that the identity of the ship was determined by Israeli planes prior to the attack.”

The attack occurred amid the Six-Day War, the lightning Arab-Israeli conflict that began on June 5, 1967, and ended in a decisive Israeli victory. The Liberty had been ordered to remain more than 100 miles from the coast. At the time of the attack, it was about 25 miles northeast of the Sinai, well within international waters.

Lt. Cmdr. Philip Armstrong Jr., the executive officer, was killed. Cmdr. William L. McGonagle, the commanding officer, was awarded the Medal of Honor. He stood on the bridge, his own leg torn open, steering the crippled ship toward Malta while refusing Israeli offers of assistance due to the sensitive nature of the Liberty’s mission.

Historians remain divided. Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the United States and a Kulanu party lawmaker, told Haaretz in 2017: “There is no doubt. Not even the smallest percentage. I’ve taken part in wars. I know what friendly fire is. It was a classic screw-up.”

But Oren also acknowledged the persistence of the questions: “What continues to fuel these conspiracy theories? The subject is revived every few years. It is part of a theory that Israel spies on the United States. As Israel’s ambassador to the United States I saw this undercurrent, which is also sometimes anti-Semitic.”

Tom Segev, the Israeli historian, wrote in 2012: “None of the four people who could have ordered an attack on an American ship — Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, Mossad chief Meir Amit, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, and Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin — was daring and crazy to that extent.”

Yet Segev added a note that has never fully closed: “A number of questions still hover over the affair, and these nourish the conspiracy theories.”

One of those questions comes from the Israeli embassy’s own cable warning of a “malignant wound” in relations. “Do you realize that the president is also the supreme commander of the U.S. armed forces?” the telegram asked.

The embassy urged Israel to announce prosecutions before the American report was published, to create “the impression, both to the U.S. government and the public here, that the attack on the ship was not the result of malicious intent by the Israeli government — I repeat, the Israeli government.”

The Liberty was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation. It was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register in 1970 and sold for scrap. The 34 sailors’ names are carved in stone at Arlington National Cemetery.

On Yom Yerushalayim, Jerusalem Day, when Israel celebrates the reunification of the city and the victories of the Six-Day War, the Liberty is rarely mentioned. The March of the Flags proceeds through the Old City. The Western Wall fills with singing. The dead of June 8, 1967, are not part of the official memory.

Survivors of the Liberty, along with some historians, claim the investigations were cover-ups and that the Israelis attacked the ship fully aware it was an American vessel. They believe the U.S. government avoided uncovering the truth to protect its relationship with Israel.

But the documents remain in the archives. The hole in the starboard side remains in the photographs. And the question — mistake or murder — remains unanswered for the families who buried their sons.