From: jake@bony1.bony.com (Jake Livni)
Subject: Re: Schmidling is simply wrong.
Organization: The Department of Redundancy Department
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 92 23:31:58 GMT

In article <EGGERTJ.92Aug11132525@moses.atc.ll.mit.edu> eggertj@atc.ll.mit.edu writes:

>I read an interesting account of the Liberty affair (you know, when
>the Israelis bombed the USS Liberty during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war)
>in the book
>        AUTHOR: Steven, Stewart, 1937-
>         TITLE: The spymasters of Israel / Stewart Steven.
>     PUB. INFO: New York : Macmillan, c1980.
>   DESCRIPTION: xxi, 329 p., [4] leaves of plates : ill. ; 24 cm.
>
>According to Steven, the attack on the Liberty was by no means a
>mistake.  (I know that has been hashed out on the net already, but go
>on.)  The Israelis had been intercepting radio transmissions from
>Cairo and rebroadcasting them to Jordan in a modified form, making the
>war news sound like Egypt was winning.  

You mean to say the Israelis trapped radio transmissions in mid-air so
that the Jordanians wouldn't have any idea of what was actually going
on?  Didn't the Jordanians have alternate means of receiving
information?  They're not completely backward, you know.

>This was an obvious attempt to
>lure Jordan into the war, which succeeded.  

"Lure Jordan into the war"?  

Let's put this into perspective.

At the time, Israel was in a full scale war with Egypt and Syria;
Israel was outnumbered by 10 to 1 or more in men, tanks and aircraft;
Iraqi troops were entering the battle; no one knew how long the war
would continue nor what it's outcome would be; and the Israeli army
hadn't yet developed it's phenomenal reputation, which was soon to
come.  Under these circumstances, can anyone believe that Israel
"lured" Jordan into a war?   

Look at a map of the pre-1967 borders.  Israel had a long and difficult 
border to defend with Jordan.  Jerusalem, the capital, was cut in
half, the Jordanians could have cut off and surrounded Jerusalem, 
Tel-Aviv was only a few miles away from the Jordanian border and they
could have cut Israel in 2 by moving forward to the Mediteranean.  

The last thing Israel wanted in such a dire war of true survival was
to "lure" Jordan into the fray.  Israel wanted Jordan in the Six Day
War even less than Bush wanted Israel in Desert Storm.  This is a
truly ridiculous contention.

>The Liberty was listening
>in on this, and the Americans found out what the Israelis were up to,
>and told the Israelis as much.  With the Israeli deception unmasked,
>the Israelis didn't want any other secrets snooped on, and felt forced
>to bomb the USS Liberty (after asking that it be removed, and seeing
>that it wasn't moving).

It certainly looks like this author knew his audience.  He seems to
have been writing for entertainment value (and $?); the title almost
proves it.  This story doesn't even pass a simple sanity check. 

Your attempts to portray history as if Israel has encouraged the Arabs
to attack it are as dishonest, repulsive, idiotic and vile as your
current campaign to redefine terrorism as things that Israel does.
Very few people can accept your odd view of the world - and they've
probably already been converted anyway.


-- 
Jake Livni  jake@bony1.bony.com               Pat Paulsen for President
American-Occupied New York                    This year he has a real chance!
My opinions only - employer has no opinions.
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