The defence of Israel in AJ Cristol's book is a fraud, starting from the front cover.

Submitted by Nick Adler (United Kingdom), Apr 20, 2013 at 11:20

In 2002, AJ Cristol published "The Liberty Incident", the most detailed defence of Israel's position ever presented.

In 2004, evidence was produced that the picture on the front cover of this book, claimed to have come from Kursa flight leader's gun camera, was highly suspicious. The photo appeared to be part of a series taken by the US Navy. Not in the Mediterranean and not from the gun camera, but from a helicopter in Virginia weeks after the attack. Not only did the people on the deck appear to be the same in both pictures, but the ship in the photo was not on patrol, it was unladen. The bow-wake in the photo was air-brushed in, and the strange smudge of smoke where the Liberty had never been hit was in fact covering a tug-boat. See http://www.usslibertyinquiry.com/essays/guncameracristol.html

In 2005, the Israelis wrote and confirmed that all the pictures in AJ Cristol's book (except one of Moshe Dayan) were in fact from the US Navy. See the Israeli letter at http://www.scribd.com/doc/13755008/IDF-On-Cristol-Photos?autodown=pdf

In others words, a very deliberate fraud. Not only was it the wrong picture entirely, but it had been further air-brushed to deceive us.

Astonishingly, this was the second time this bizarre "mistake" had been made by the IDF, since there is a picture in an IDF history of 1982 which is also supposed to be from the gun camera - but is actually a different ship altogether.

AJ Cristol, author of this disturbingly unpatriotic book has never commented on how on earth he could have presented such a fraud to the American people this way.

Nor has he ever commented on the fact that almost all of his "13 investigations that exonerate Israel" are either non-existent or were not not investigations of anything. The only true investigation ever undertaken is the very rushed one by the US Navy. Instead of the 6 months or so it would have taken, it was wound up after just 2 weeks. Only 3 days had been spent with a handful of witnesses, who were deeply unhappy about the use of their testimony. The results of this investigation were then totally discredited when, outraged by Cristol's book and the claims he was making, Captain Ward Boston, chief counsel to the Navy's 1967 Court of Inquiry of Liberty attack, declared the investigation of which he'd been a central part to have been a sham. See http://www.thelibertyincident.com/docs/boston-comments.pdf

It is high time that Israel and Israel-firsters within the US dropped this shameful pretence that their attack was an accident. Israel set out to sink a ship of the US Navy, killing 34 American sailors (and wounding a huge number of others) and the American people deserve an explanation, not only of how this came about, but of why their own people, witness to what happened, were never heard. There's been the most horrific cover-up.

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