richard lightner

Dec 3, 20236 min read

ISRAELI LIES

DECEMBER 1, 2023

Mainstream Media Largely Ignore Israel’s Duplicity and Deceit

BY MELVIN GOODMAN

Over the years, particularly during the wars of 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982, the Israelis have lied about their military campaigns, and have tried to deceive U.S. administrations about their actions. In 1954, Israeli intelligence operatives bombed a U.S. Information Agency Library in Egypt, and tried to make it appear to have been an Egyptian act of violence. The Israelis were trying to compromise U.S.-Egyptian relations, particularly the efforts of the Eisenhower administration to finance the Aswan Dam. In the 1980s, the Israelis denied that Jonathan Pollard was spying on behalf of Israeli intelligence; they continued to do so throughout Pollard’s thirty-year prison sentence. However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu personally welcomed Pollard to Israel upon his release from prison in 2020 with the greeting “You’re home.”

Israeli duplicity on key national security issues began in their War for Independence, 75 years ago, when they lied about the Nakba (the catastrophe) that involved the forced removal of 700,000 Palestinians from their villages. Israel claimed that the Palestinians made their own decision to leave, when in fact there was an Israeli plan (Plan Dalet) that prescribed the ethnic cleansing of Israeli territory. The plan was developed in 1948 by Zionist political and military leaders, including Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion. It included operational military orders that specified which Palestinian population centers should be targeted and detailed a blueprint for their forcible removal and destruction. The plan is rarely cited, although it was Israeli historians who used archival documents to trace the official policy of displacement.

Israeli deceit has been present in all of their subsequent wars. The Israelis have never released sensitive documents that demonstrate their secret dealings with Britain and France to regain control of the Suez Canal and to remove Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1956. The secret plan called for an Israeli invasion of Gaza and the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula in order to justify a British and French invasion along the Suez Canal. Political pressure from the United States and the Soviet Union led to withdrawal of British, French, and Israeli forces. The episode strengthened Nasser; humiliated Britain and France; ended Britain’s role as a global power; and convinced Arab States that Israel was a part of European colonialism in the Middle East.

In 1967, Israelis officials at the highest level lied to the White House about the start of the six-day war. The Israeli Ambassador to the United States assured the Johnson administration that the Israelis would not attack first under any circumstances, ruling out even a preemptive attack. Israel then attacked and claimed it was preemptive. I served on the CIA’s Task Force for the war, and there was no evidence of an Egyptian battle plan that would justify preemption. In face, half of the Egyptian army was fighting in a civil war in Yemen. The Israeli attack against the Egyptian air force was extremely successful because Egypt’s fighter jets were parked on airfields wingtip-to-wingtip, another indicator of Egypt’s lack of a plan to attack Israel.

Nevertheless, Israeli officials told President Lyndon Johnson that the Egyptians had initiated firing on Israel settlements, and that an Egyptian squadron had been observed heading toward Israel. Neither statement was true. Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan had done his best to convince his government not to lie to the United States.

In addition to lying about the start of the Six-Day War, the Israelis were even more deceitful three days later when they attributed their malicious attack on the USS Liberty to a random accident. In actual fact, the “accident” was well planned. The ship was a U.S. intelligence vessel in international waters, both slow-moving and lightly armed. It brandished a five-foot-by-eight-foot Stars and Stripes, and resembled no ship in any other navy, let alone a ship in the arsenal of one of Israel’s enemies. Yet, the Israelis claimed they believed they were attacking an Egyptian vessel.

The Israeli attack took place after six hours of intense, low-level reconnaissance, which was followed by an attack conducted over a two-hour period by unmarked Mirage jets using cannons and rockets. Israeli boats fired machine guns at close range at those helping the wounded, including a Soviet warship, then machine-gunned life rafts that survivors dropped in hopes of abandoning the ship. The National Security Agency’s investigation of the disaster remains classified to this day, fifty-six years later.

Israeli duplicity played a significant role in the end game of the October War of 1973. National Security Adviser Henry A. Kissinger used Israeli disinformation about a possible Soviet intervention in the war to justify the declaration of a DefCon-III nuclear alert, which could have worsened the Arab-Israeli war and provoked a Soviet-American confrontation. Kissinger himself lied to our NATO allies in Europe as well as to China about a Soviet alert to their airborne divisions to prepare for intervention in the Middle East. (The Soviets never introduced their airborne forces into areas that were not contiguous to the Soviet Union.) The Israelis also violated the cease-fire that had been carefully arranged by Kissinger and Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin; it took a Kissinger threat to Defense Minister Dayan to put a stop to the Israeli violations.

In 1982, the Israelis lied about their role in allowing Lebanese Christian Phalangists to enter the Sabra and Shitila refugee camps, where they committed horrific war crimes against defenseless Palestinians. The Israelis have never conceded that the Phalangist militia were under the political and military control of the State of Israel. Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon maintained that the Israeli Defense Forces “did not know exactly what was taking place” in the refugee camps, although it was Sharon himself who encouraged the Phalangists to attack.

This time it is the Israeli Defense Forces that are committing horrific war crimes in Gaza, where more women and children have been killed in one month than the Russians have killed in Ukraine in nearly two years of fighting. Israel’s use of 2,000-pound bombs in dense civilian areas is unprecedented. Yet, the mainstream media continue to cite Israeli officials who maintain that the “smallest available ordnance” is used to cause the “minimal adverse effect on civilians.” Israelis maintain that the “focus is on Hamas,” but the Israelis have slaughtered more civilians in one month than the the United States and its allies killed in Afghanistan over two decades.

There is no question that Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu is employing overwhelming military power to terrorize 2.3 million Palestinian civilians in Gaza in the name of defeating Hamas military forces. This would be consistent with an Israeli policy that began in 1948 to use every military engagement with Arab states to displace as many Palestinians civilians as possible from their homes, and to never acknowledge a right of return for Palestinian refugees. No U.S. administration has ever put pressure on Israel to allow the return of Palestinians to their homes in Israel.

Meanwhile, mainstream media support Israel’s contention that the Israel-Hamas War began on October 7th, which ignores Israel’s punishment of Palestinian civilians over the past 16 years. Israeli policy has limited the usage of electricity in Gaza, which has created the need to dump sewage into the Mediterranean Sea, making the water undrinkable. Israeli-imposed fuel shortages caused sanitation plants to be shut down. Netanyahu, who once boasted that I “stopped the Oslo accords,” never indicated any interest in lessening these punishments, let alone pursuing a diplomatic or political solution to the Palestinian tragedy.

Sadly, U.S. administrations have paid lip service to the idea of a two-state solution, but have never pressed an Israeli government to move toward Palestinian statehood. At the very least, the Biden administration should recognize Palestine as a member state in the United Nations, and press Israel to enter talks with Palestinians regarding borders, Jerusalem, and security from Israeli settlers on the West Bank.

Melvin A. Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. A former CIA analyst, Goodman is the author of Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA and National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism. and A Whistleblower at the CIA. His most recent books are “American Carnage: The Wars of Donald Trump” (Opus Publishing, 2019) and “Containing the National Security State” (Opus Publishing, 2021). Goodman is the national security columnist for counterpunch.org.

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Different Points of View over the future of Atomic weapons.

During the Afghan War, President Donald Trump (GAG!) authorized a General to use the Mother of all Bombs, a bomb just shy of the power of an atomic bomb, on his own. Notice that this had no positive affect for the US in the outcome of the war. (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/13/world/asia/moab-mother-of-all-bombs-afghanistan.html)

There is a plethora of information about the development and use of the atomic bomb during World War II. Much of the world was astounded that the US used such a bomb on civilians. Others said, drop more.

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 9, 1945, “served as the symbolic coronation of American global power.” Nevertheless, the use of the atomic bomb in World War II brought international condemnation. At the Tokyo War Crimes Trials of 1946-1948, Justice Pal of India cited the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as war crimes. U.S. President Harry S. Truman responded by publicly saying that the atomic bombs were dropped “in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands of young Americans.” However, President Truman in correspondence with John Foster Dulles that his reasons for dropping the atomic bombs were the attack on Pearl Harbor and the murder of our prisoners of war. “The only language they seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them.” (Martin Sherwin. “Hiroshima and Modern Memory.” The Nation. October 10, 1981)

“In the summer and fall of 1945, US atomic policy left us troubled and perplexed. Roosevelt, we thought, had been committed to a policy of international understanding and conciliation. . . . Truman’s policy, however, appeared to have the opposite aim: to keep a monopoly of the atomic bomb in U.S. and British hands, and to use it as a strong trump card in tough political bargaining with the Soviet Union.” (Sherwin, Martin. A World Destroyed: the Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance. 1975. xi)

And, well before the bombings FDR and Churchill “rejected steps that might have led to the international control of atomic energy.” (Martin Sherwin. “Hiroshima and Modern Memory.” The Nation. October 10, 1981)

According to nuclear physicist Hans Bethe who worked on the Manhattan Project, “Many of us had been influenced directly or indirectly by Niels Bohr, the great Danish physicist. He argued that only international control of nuclear weapons could save the world from a nuclear arms race, and that such a race would imperil, not enhance the security of the United States and Great Britain. Many other scientists, especially at the University of Chicago Metallurgic Laboratory, at the initiative of Leo Szilard, had come independently to the same conclusion.

Martin Sherwin, George Mason University History professor who specialized in the history of nuclear weapons, wrote that, this interpretation by physicists and historian is wrong. Roosevelt decided, with Churchill, “that the bomb should remain and Anglo-American monopoly.” (Sherwin, Martin. A World Destroyed: the Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance. 1975. xii)

However, this is not mentioned in Hiroshima in America: fifty years of denial, by Robert Jay Lifton and Gregg Mitchell.

KOREA

There are numerous arguments about whether or not the atomic bomb should have been used in Korea, Vietnam, or other existential circumstances.

In late 1950, following their invasion of Korea, Chinese forces surrounded U.S. Marines. “Distraught himself, the chief executive (Truman), told a press conference on November 30 that nuclear bombsight be used against the enemy and seemed to indicate that the decision would be MacArthur’s.” (William Manchester. American Caesar. 608, 610; Bruce Cumings. The Korean War: a History. 2010. p. 30)

The U.S. developed the ability fire an “atomic shot from a cannon.” (Bruce Cumings. The Korean War: a History. 2010. p. 34)

“In mid-May Ike (President Dwight Eisenhower) told the [American] National Security Council that using nukes in Korea would be cheaper than conventional weaponry, and a few days later the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended launching nuclear attacks against China.” (Bruce Cumings. The Korean War: a History. 2010. p. 34)

This is interesting since Eisenhower’s reaction to Hiroshima was, we didn’t have to use that awful thing on them. (Lifton, Robert Jay and Mitchell, Greg. Hiroshima in America: fifty years of denial. 1995. 213)

Operation Hudson Harbor - flying lone B-29 bombers over North Korea to simulate a dropping of an atomic bomb. North Korean leaders must have had “steel nerves” as this simulation was eerily similar to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Operation Hudson Harbor concluded that the use of atomic weapons would not be “useful” as it was difficult to identify “large masses of enemy troops.” (Bruce Cumings. The Korean War: a History. 2010. p. 157-159)

The United Nations/United States forces faced defeat in Korea but Truman looked strong because he “threatened to use the atom bomb against China.” However, this “made peace talks virtually impossible.” (Stone, I.F. The Hidden History of the Korean War. 213)

Major General Emmett (“Rosy”) O’Donnell, commander of the Far East Air Force’s Bomber Command . . . [stated that] “We have never been permitted to bomb what are the real strategic targets, the enemy’s real sources of supply.” He said that the strategic bombing commanded been “designed to deliver the atomic offensive to the heart of the enemy” and indicated very clearly that he thought the bomb should have been used against the Chinese.”” (Stone, I.F. The Hidden History of the Korean War. 245)

RICHARD NIXON

Richard Barnet, former State Department aide, activist and scholar, who founded the Institute for Policy Studies (Wikipedia) warned “of the danger that the United States government might resort to the use of nuclear weapons. Barnet then cites Vice President Richard Nixon speaking to the Executive Club of Chicago on March 17, 1955 as saying,

“The weapons which were used during the Korean War and World War II are obsolete. Our artillery and our tactical Air Force in the Pacific are now equipped with atomic explosives which can and will be used on military targets with precision and effectiveness.

“It is foolish to talk about the possibility that the weapons which might be used in the event war breaks out in the Pacific would be limited to the conventional Korean and World War II types of explosives. Our forces could not fight an effective war in the Pacific with those types of explosives if they wanted to. Tactical atomic explosives are now conventional and will be used against the military targets of any aggressive force.”

Of course, we are not aggressors by threatening China or invading Vietnam.

VIET NAM

1964 American Republican Presidential candidate Senator Goldwater of Arizona was a reserve Air Force General and “suggested that the United States could isolate the Vietcong in South Vietnam any bombing the supply routes connecting China and North Vietnam.” He also proposed using nuclear weapons “to clear the jungles where the Vietcong were presumably hiding. The public reaction to those notions was one of horrified alarm.” (Thomas Powers, The War at Home. 2) It turns out that the United States bombed Southeast Asia the equivalent of many atomic bombs through out the war.

“Although Goldwater was finally persuaded to stop talking about nuclear weapons.”

Although Goldwater’s advocacy of atomic weapons scared people his idea to win the war did not. Johnson portrayed himself as “responsible” as opposed to Goldwater who he implied would get us all killed. (Thomas Powers, The War at Home. 9)

Noted military writer Hanson Baldwin believed that the US should use its overwhelming technological power to counter communism even if that meant nuclear weapons. Of course, only for “defensive purposes.” “If we cannot do this, he says, we had better “call it quits.” (Noam Chomsky, At War with Asia. 52)

General Curtis LeMay advocated the use of nuclear weapons to end the conflict with communism once and for all. “We ought to nuke the chinks. . . . We are swatting flies when we should be going after the manure pile.” (Thomas Powers. The War at Home. 40; Rowland Evans and Robert Novak. Lyndon B. Johnson: the Exercise of Power. 538)

So, there is pretty much agreement that the use of the atom bomb was on the table. The horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki completely ignored.

In 1954 the United States “assuming the Chinese Communists intervene would engage in a “highly selective atomic offensive.” (Pentagon Papers. New York Times. 1971. 46) However, if the “Chinese Communists do not intervene” then the use of atomic weapons would occur if it would aid the US in the war. (Pentagon Papers. New York Times. 1971. 47)

McNaughton drafted a “Proposed Course of Action” to McNamara. In his long list of actions McNaughton noted risks. One was the “escalation to the use of nuclear weapons.” (Pentagon Papers. New York Times. 1971. 442-445, passim)

Presidential assistant for national security, Walt. W. Rostow, wrote a memorandum on May 6, 1967, analyzing U.S. bombing strategy in Viet Nam. One of his conclusions was “we do not want a nuclear confrontation over Viet Nam.” (Pentagon Papers. New York Times. 1971. 585, 588)

ISRAELI LIES

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