Open Mic: The USS Liberty, Conspiracies, and Antisemitism

Hey, I’m Noam Weissman and you’re listening to Unpacking Israeli History, the podcast that takes a deep dive into some of the most intense, historically fascinating, and often misunderstood events and stories linked to Israeli history. This episode of Unpacking Israeli History is generously sponsored by Carol & Adam Reich. If you’re interested in sponsoring an episode of Unpacking Israeli History, or even just saying what’s up, be in touch at noam@jewishunpackeded.com!

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Okay. Yalla. Let’s do this.

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Introduction

Welcome to a new episode of Israel Open Mic, which is maybe my favorite new kind of episode. Normally, we dedicate 45 or so minutes to one story from Israeli or Jewish history. We take the time to unpack, in detail, all the beautiful and messy and complicated aspects of one specific story or theme that our team has chosen after lots and lots of conversation.

These episodes are different. 

To start, the topics come from you – they come from you, our amazing community of listeners who reach out to ask tough questions because they want to know more.

These episodes are a privilege. Because they feel like a conversation – a back and forth between me and you, back and forth. Open, unedited, raw. And I love that. It’s awesome.

Especially when lots of different people reach out asking the exact same question. No joke – over the course of 48 hours, a solid dozen of you amazing listeners emailed me asking the same thing.

I can’t read all the letters aloud, so here’s just one, from a listener named Albert.

This is Albert: (PLAY AUDIO/VIDEO)

ALBERT! 

Thank you – and everyone else – for writing in about this. 

Those of you on social media probably know why Albert asked about this. But those of you who are smart enough to avoid Twitter might be like, uh, what’s going on?

So here’s the long and short of it.

Why are people talking about the USS Liberty?

A few weeks ago, Candace Owens – a controversial but very popular conservative pundit – made headlines for a special episode she ran recently, about a tragic event from the Six Day War, the attack of the USS Liberty. Jake Shields, another popular right-wing podcaster, has also been talking about it recently, but I don’t know so much about him, so I’m less comfortable talking about him, and I’ll focus on Candace Owens instead. Sorry, Albert, I hope that’s okay.

And, uh… well, I’m just gonna say it. Candace is not what I think most people would call a reputable historian, or educator. And the fact that she’s resuscitating the story of the USS Liberty raises some questions.

Like: what are the actual facts, the facts of this story?

And: why is it being brought up now? 

And: why should we care about debunking Candace Owens, who, as I have said, is nowhere close to someone who would be regarded as a reputable historian or educator?

In this Israel Open Mic episode, we’re gonna answer those questions.

Starting with number three:

Why should we care what Candace Owens has to say?

I actually debated about whether to give her, and this story, any air. 

On the one hand, shining a light on conspiracy theories can illuminate and disinfect some of the darker corners of the Internet. And my lord, it gets dark there sometimes. If you share the facts and give the context, if you let people come to their own conclusions based on reality, then everyone walks away smarter and more knowledgeable. Truth wins, lies wither, the tsunami of Jew-hatred gets a liiiitle bit smaller. 

But sometimes, addressing some of the wilder claims (including, I’ll just say it now, conspiracy theories) can backfire. Conspiracists and provocateurs thrive on attention. The more airtime we give them, the louder and more persistent they get. Sometimes, in addressing their nonsense, we accidentally spread it further.

And so I struggled. I struggled, I struggled.

Did I want to make that gamble? If I addressed Candace’s conspiracy theories, would I accidentally be spreading them further?

Put another way: Did I want to feed the troll?

This isn’t a one-and-done dilemma, by the way. I’ve been struggling with this question for years. There’s no shortage of controversial topics in the public square right now. 

Like, BDS, aka the Boycott, Divest, Sanction movement against Israel.

Like, Holocaust deniers. (Fun story, by the way: when I was a senior, my high school brought in someone pretending to be a Holocaust denier to see if we would know how to respond. It didn’t go well. Don’t get me wrong, the intentions were good. But it actually just confused and intrigued impressionable 17 and 18 year olds. Why even expose high schoolers to lies, distortions, omissions, and half-truths? Why make them doubt what they already know to be true? OK, maybe this wasn’t such a fun story after all. But I got what they were try to do.)

So every time some new unhinged conspiracy theory announces itself on social media, I wonder: does this even deserve the dignity of a response?

Often, the answer is no. Most of the time, it’s a waste of breath.

But this is different. Because Candace Owens has millions of followers. Compared to her, I’m nobody. I’m not gonna grow her following just by chiming in. As Golda Meir once said, “Don’t be so humble, you’re not that great.” Spot on, ma’am. Spot on.

Now, before we get into it, let me make something super duper, super duper clear.

There is literally no part of me that is worried about engaging because I’m scared to make Israel look bad.

You know that. If you’re a listener of this podcast, you already know that’s never been a concern. The whole point of Unpacking Israeli History is to… unpack Israeli history. All of it – from the moments of heroism and triumph to the moments of ugliness and horror. We aren’t afraid to talk about massacres – look for our episodes on Deir Yassin, Kfar Kassem, Sabra and Shatila, or Qibye. We aren’t afraid to question Zionist myth-making – look at our episodes on Kishinev and the Black Panthers and Operation Solomon and Israel’s early foundations. We aren’t afraid to discuss failures, like we did in our Mossad episode, which features a couple of triumphant stories and one really, really embarrassing one. And we aren’t afraid to tackle tough questions, like Is Israel an apartheid state?

So let’s tackle this one, about the USS Liberty.

And at the end, you can decide for yourself: is the USS Liberty up there with other problematic moments in Israeli history? Or is this all a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing?

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What happened to the USS Liberty?

May, 1967.

As you might remember from our three-part series on the Six Day War, tensions between Egypt, Syria, and Israel were ratcheting up, up, up. Which meant that tensions between the US and the USSR were rising, too. Because the USSR was backing Egypt and Syria, eager to counter US influence in the region. And by “backing Egypt and Syria,” I mean “supplying Egypt and Syria with billions of dollars worth of weapons and inciting a whole lot of anti-Israel hatred in the Arab world.”

The US, on the other hand, was – well, not backing Israel, but certainly concerned about the Jewish state. 

So in May of ‘67, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff sent the USS Liberty to the eastern Mediterranean to intercept Egyptian radio transmissions. And it hung out there, in the warm waters of the Mediterranean Sea, until the afternoon of June 8 – four days into the Six Day War. By this point, the Egyptian air force was devastated, Israel had wrested away the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip, and President Nasser had just accepted a ceasefire. 

But the war wasn’t over yet. Israel was still fighting Syria, and Israeli fighter jets were still hovering over the shores of the Mediterranean. Coastal Israeli cities were still massively vulnerable to a naval attack. Egypt had five times as many warships as Israel – plus the backing of dozens of nearby Soviet vessels. 

Remember that.

We’re not just talking about a war between Israel and its neighbors. US and Soviet forces were standing by… just in case. And Israel had made it clear, even before the war began, that they would take down any unidentified ships.

On the morning of June 8, the USS Liberty was stationed 13 nautical miles from the Sinai Coast, in a lane that the Egyptians had closed, even to neutral ships. 

They shouldn’t have been there. And I’m not saying that in a blamey way. I’m stating a fact: The night before, the Joint Chiefs of Staff had cabled the Liberty with instructions to retreat. They should have been 100 miles from the coast. 

But the message got delayed. I don’t really understand how cables work, or what cables even are, but apparently back in the 60s, the US Navy’s comms system was a bit of a mess, and messages got routed all over the map before they finally reached their destination. 

So unbeknownst to the crew, the Liberty was in the danger zone.

At 5:55 am, Israeli forces noted an unidentified ship. But they quickly figured out the ship was American, and therefore not a threat. They marked it neutral and moved on. 

But things change fast in war.

And by 11am, when the next Israeli Air Force shift showed up, the board was cleared. It was up to the next shift to reassess the positions and identities of all nearby ships.

That might sound ridiculous. What was gonna change in 5 hours?! But that was standard operating procedure. You close out a shift, you wipe the slate clean.

24 minutes into the next shift, a huge explosion sounded on the coast – very close to an area that Egyptian warships had shelled just the day before. The Israelis knew there were unidentified ships nearby – including the Liberty. They feared that the shelling – or what they thought was shelling – was just Part I of a multi-phase attack. Later, it became clear the explosion wasn’t shelling at all, but what’s called an “ammunition dump fire.” (Ammunition is explosive. When too much ammunition is stored in one place, you’re at risk of an explosion.)

At the time, though, the Israelis heard a massive boom and flipped out. The navy sent out three torpedo boats to find and destroy the attacking warship. After two hours, they spotted an unidentified ship sailing towards Egypt at an estimated pace of 30 knots.

And that’s a lot of detail, but it’s important.

Only fighter ships could travel that fast, and the navy had standing orders to fire on any ship moving above 20 knots. But the Israeli torpedo boats weren’t fast enough to reach the unidentified ship before it got to the Egyptian coast. So they asked the Israeli Air Force for help. 

The Israeli Air Force sent two fighter jets, which looped close to the ship to look for markings.

They found… none. No markings. No flag.

The Israeli Air Force intelligence chief even called up the American naval attache to ask if this unidentified ship might be the Liberty. But the attache said, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Not sure, I don’t know the Liberty’s schedule.”

It was two minutes to 2.

The jets were given the signal.

They unleashed their cannon shells.

In a matter of seconds, nine unsuspecting Americans were dead.

The Liberty’s frantic crew immediately radioed for help. But no one was answering – not even when the second wave of fighter jets arrived, with their payloads of napalm. 

The ship was in flames, its hull pocked with hundreds of holes.

Israeli boats drew near, signaling AA. Identify yourself. But after the bombing, the Liberty’s equipment wasn’t working. All they could do was repeat the signal. AA. Identify YOURSELF.

It was the same response that the Israelis had gotten years earlier, during the Suez Canal Crisis, from an Egyptian destroyer.

That confirmed it. This had to be the “El-Quseir” – an Egyptian ship.

And then the Liberty started firing.

The shots didn’t do much damage to the Israelis. But they did damage the Liberty. Because the Israelis took the shots as confirmation that they were dealing with an enemy. So they released five torpedoes, only one of which struck true. 

In an instant, another 25 Americans were dead.

The Liberty was broken, half-sunk, aflame. Israeli ships closed in for the kill.

That’s when they realized their mistake. 

The ship’s lifeboats were marked with the signs of the US Navy. On its side were the Latin letters GTR 5, which designates American spy ships. And at 3:30pm, the ship’s identity was finally confirmed. Israel had fired on an American ship, killing 34 and wounding hundreds more.

Did Israel really not know that the USS Libery was American?

And now we come to the crux of the question – the point on which the conspiracies hinge.

Did they REALLY not know the Liberty was American? After all, all parties agree that the Liberty was flying multiple American flags. True, the first wave of the attack knocked down one – but the crew raised another, bigger one after that. Everyone also agrees that the Liberty was marked with Latin script – not Arabic.

So what do these two facts mean?

Well – not a lot.

Israeli jets were flying 3,000 feet in the air, as fast as 800 miles per hour. At that distance, you miss things – like fluttering American flags, or even American markings.

And the Latin markings didn’t mean that much. Sure, they weren’t in Arabic or Cyrillic script –  but how hard is it to paint some English as a decoy? But it was no decoy.

The Israelis had fired on an American ship, killing 34 and wounding 171.

Immediately, they sent helicopters to help rescue the survivors — but the captain of the Liberty sent them away.

The apologies began pouring in.

Prime Minister Levi Eshkol sent “profound condolences.” Deputy Prime Minister Abba Eban said he was “mortified.” In a matter of hours, the Israeli government offered to compensate the survivors, as well as the families of the victims.

Over the next few years, they would pay out the equivalent of nearly $68 million in today’s money. But money is cold comfort to bereaved families.

And so is the fact that this was “friendly fire.” (What a stupid, stupid phrase.) War is hell, to borrow from an American Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman..

Horrible, tragic mistakes happen. Civilians die. Armies can accidentally kill their own soldiers. The IDF even shot three hostages in this recent war. 

And these stories are awful. They’re beyond awful. They’re tragedies, every single one.

But they’re also ammunition for a certain type of person.

Because there is, sadly, no shortage of people who believe that the IDF kills its own. That those hostages were killed on purpose, and beyond that, that October 7th was staged, that the USS Liberty was attacked on purpose. That the Israelis jammed the Liberty’s signals, ensuring no one could save it.

Some of those people are survivors of the attack. And they don’t buy the American and Israeli inquiries who ruled the attack as a tragic accident. For decades, they’ve been calling for new investigations, certain that this time, they’ll find the proof.

And look – I’m all for investigations. Truth is good, no matter how painful it might be. But here’s where it gets tricky.

Because: what are they expecting to find?

Even the conspiracy theories don’t agree what such an attack would even accomplish.

Some say Israel attacked in order to frame Egypt, so they could drag the U.S. into a war against the Arab states.

I remind you: it was day four of the war. Israel had already taken the Sinai and Gaza. By the end of the day, Nasser would agree to a ceasefire. The Israelis had already decimated the Egyptian air force in the first two hours of the war. Why would they need America’s help? And why would they go about getting it by firing on an American ship?

This explanation just doesn’t hold water.

Others say that President Lyndon Johnson had planned the attack along with Israel, in order to boost his chances in the next election.

I can’t even parse that one, because it makes absolutely no sense. Absolutely no sense, so I’m gonna let it go.

Some say that Israel merely wanted to spark a third World War. To which I say… really? REALLY? If they really wanted that, they would have attacked a Soviet ship. They would have used the nukes they may or may not have. They could have done a million things to spark a third world war if they wanted to.

But also… and I know this is a crazy question… WHY WOULD THEY WANT TO DO THAT? Seriously. Why would Israeli want to do that? What would they have gained???

How conspiracy theories about the USS Liberty echo typical antisemitic tropes

Look. I really, really hate to cry “antisemitism.” I really do. 

But these conspiracy theories happen to fit very, very neatly into well-documented, pre-existing antisemitic canards. Jews as killers. Jews as puppet masters, controlling the strings behind the scenes. Jews as architects of chaos and misery.

These tropes are far, far older than the USS Liberty. 

In their earliest iteration, Jews are murderers who killed God’s son. Jews kill Christian children and use their blood to bake matza. Jews sit around plotting world domination. Jews control every institution – the banks, the media, the American president – making them dance, dance, monkey!, to serve some unknown and nefarious purpose.

These lies are so old. They’re lazy. They’re so boring – seriously, get a new conspiracy theory, guys. And yet, they refuse to die. Because they can be adapted to any occasion, dressed up in modern clothing to fit today’s sensibilities.

Few people still believe we kill Christian kids for their blood. But a lot of people believe Israel kills Palestinian kids on purpose, targeting them specifically because… what? Israel is inherently evil? I don’t even understand where these conclusions lead.

So let me say it again: There is not a shred of evidence to support any of the conspiracy theories surrounding the Liberty. Not. One.

And listen – if Congress wants to reopen an investigation, cool, fine, do it. I love a good investigation. So does Israel. The Agranat Commission after the 73 mishap? So important. The Kahan commission after the first Lebanon war in 1982? Critical. The commission that needs to take place ASAP in the wake of October 7th? Yes, yes, and yes.

But there was a commission. Two, in fact – one from the US, and one from Israel. There was no evidence of malice. And there is no motivation for it, either.

And so the people calling for a commission of inquiry are either antisemites, or hurt and traumatized people falling into the antisemites’ trap. Yes, hurt people hurt people. Because there is a clear and obvious line between “looking for the truth” and the facade of “Just asking questions” that so many bad actors adopt.

Which brings me back to our friend Candace Owens.

That name might mean nothing to some of you, might ring a bell to others, and some of you might even know where I’m going with this. But stick with me.

As I said earlier, Candace Owens is described as a controversial but very popular conservative pundit. She’s always been good at being provocative, which is fair, it’s really fair, it’s how you have to be in her industry. She is excellent, excellent, at racking up views on social media. (By the way, something I’m not great at. I’m too centrist. Too boring.)

And by 2021, she was doing pretty well for herself as a rising star in conservative media: she was hosting her own show on Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro’s media company. And she had millions of fans, including celebrities – Kanye West publicly praised her. (On second thought, maybe that’s foreshadowing?)

Because then things started to get messy. In 2023, Owens made a series of even more controversial claims on her show. And “controversial claims” is a gentle way of saying, she started going off the deep end – specifically when it comes to my people, the Jews. (Yes, the deep end, that’s a technical term.) Here are just a few ideas from Candace Owens:

1. She claimed on her show that the historic Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem is a a state-enforced ghetto. (FYI, it’s not.)
2. She lashed out against quote, “political Jews” and seemed to endorse the literal textbook definition of a blood libel: that Jews murder Christians so that they can drink their blood for Jewish ceremonies. (That’s wild.)
3. She tweeted at Ben Shapiro, her literal boss at the time, an observant Jewish person, that, quote, “you cannot serve both God and money.” (Lovely.)
4. There are quote, “secret Jewish gangs” controlling and terrorizing Hollywood. (Ok, c’mon. Be serious. Be serious. Be serious!)

As you might imagine, Owens was formally dismissed by the Daily Wire in March 2024. Since then, she has gone off on her own, producing her podcast independently and honestly, she seems to be doing really well for herself. I just checked Spotify top news podcast, and she’s top 3, top 5. Again, millions of followers, viral on twitter constantly…it’s really something.

Now, I’m going to say something that some of you might like, and some of you might not love – I kiiiiind of get why people like her. She’s outrageous! She’s funny! She’s passionate. She’s really, really good at what she does. She says things that people on the more extreme right love hearing (anti-trans/loves religion). And she says things that people on the extreme left love hearing (Israel is awful, hideous and oppressors). She’s a rabble rouser, and her fans love her for that…and to her credit, she can’t be pigeonholed in any one political direction.

So I’ll let you guess. Has she come back to (somewhat) normal? Is she attempting to do legitimate journalism, try to understand stories, help the people get to the truth?

Yeah, no. Shockingly, it’s only gotten worse! Some recent gems she’s shared 1about Jews are that Stalin was Jewish, and that Kabbalists are pedophiles. Weird.

But there’s one more good one. And that brings us back…you guessed it, to the USS Liberty.

In December 2024, only a few weeks ago, Candace Owens released an interview with Phil Tourney, a survivor of the USS Liberty, and helped spread this conspiracy theory that Israel purposely attacked the ship.

And as of today, the video of Owens’ interview with Tourney has almost 6 million views on Youtube. I didn’t pull any clips, because most of the episode was Candace really letting Tourney speak, and share his story of what he thinks the story of the USS Liberty is. You can go watch it on youtube, though. (Not endorsing it, obviously, but just saying, it’s there. It’s your choice.)

And by the way, I want to say something here. Phil Tourney went through something traumatizing. Horrible, horrific, treacherous. Treacherous. His ship was fired upon while he helplessly watched his friends and coworkers die. It’s awful, and I feel horrible for him, and what he went through.

And yet, this story just isn’t true. The evidence isn’t there. And Candace Owens…I’m not sure if she’s malicious or ignorant, or has a bone to pick. I don’t know. But she’s wrong to do this. It’s factually wrong, and it’s irresponsible.

Okay. (Deep sigh.) All of this was important. Understanding the actual story of the USS Liberty, the conspiracy theory, Candace Owens and her role with this whole thing. But before we end, I want to say one more thing, and I think it’s important. Actually, it’s the most important. 

In 2021, Yair Rosenberg, a writer for the Atlantic, then writing for Tablet, wrote a piece explaining Marjorie Taylor Greene, who infamously coined the term “Jewish space lasers.” (By the way, amazing Purim/Halloween costume idea, you’re welcome.)

He explained who she was first.

Greene has shared material related to QAnon, which posits that the world is dominated by a clandestine pedophile cabal. She has expressed 9/11 conspiracy theories, claimed Barack Obama was a secret Muslim, and said that the mass school shooting in Parkland, Florida, was a “false flag.” And she’s had a particular soft spot for wild anti-Jewish plots. She posted a neo-Nazi video that declared that “Zionist supremacists” were “breeding us out of existence in our own homelands.” She accused the Jewish Rothschild banking dynasty of setting forest fires with a secret space laser. And she even liked a tweet claiming that Israel’s Mossad was behind the assassination of JFK.

That’s all a lot, right? And you know what? Most people I know think she’s a crackpot, and that people who listen to her are just as ridiculous.

But guess what. In my life, yes, in my life, I have met people, good and kind people who believe:

• The mossad was behind jfk’s killing
• Obama is secretly a muslim 
• George Soros is the man behind all the horrible things in the world. 
• Parkland was a false flag. Btw, a false flag is a harmful action or event that is designed to make it appear as if it was carried out by someone other than the person or group responsible. The term can also refer to a deliberate misrepresentation of one’s motives or identity..
• The Rothschilds do control the world
• The Jewish people have a secret amount of power.

I have. I have met these people. Some are friends, yes. Yes, they are. Human beings are attracted to conspiracy theories. You, listening, are probably attracted to conspiracy theories. They explain the unexplainable. They are fun! They help make sense of the world.

Being attracted to conspiracy theories…it’s human. It’s not evil. People who watch this video about the USS Liberty, and say, wow, this is interesting – it’s not that they’re morons, and you and I are geniuses who would never be tricked by something like that. That’s really not the case. It’s actually so completely normal to be confused about this stuff.

But here’s the problem. Here is the problem.

Yair wrote something that I always find myself saying. 

As long as there are conspiracy theorists seeking scapegoats to blame for the nation’s problems, there will be antisemites. That’s because antisemitism is the world’s biggest and most durable conspiracy theory. It constructs itself as the ultimate explanation for how the world works, and blames powerful shadowy Jewish figures for all problems.

Again, “That’s because anti-Semitism is the world’s biggest and most durable conspiracy theory.”

In other words, Rosenberg says, in other words, you might start out as a free agent conspiracy theorist with no particular problem with Jews. You might be into the faked moon landing, or Roswell, New Mexico, the earth is flat, or anything else. But the deeper you dive into this world, the more likely you’ll ultimately land on Jewish people as the ultimate culprits of the problems of the world. Just. Look. Throughout. History. 

Antisemitism – the belief that Jews exercise too much power and control the world – is the longest running conspiracy theory of all time! 

So ultimately, my goal is not to just explain why the USS Liberty did not happen the way the conspiracy theorists claim.

But instead, this is my goal, and again, Rosenberg says it more eloquently than I ever could. Here’s what he says:

A key component of any effort to counter anti-Semitism must entail combating conspiracy theories and the simplistic thinking that underlies them. Teaching people to understand the world in all its complexity, rather than default to superficial explanations, inoculates them against the reductive arguments of anti-Semites—no matter where they encounter them.

See, people are afraid of complexity. They want the simple answers. Good or bad. Yes or no. A rush of adrenaline here, some dopamine there, etc. But, that is not the world I want to teach and talk about.

Maximilien Robespierre, an important leader in the French Revolution, once said: “The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.” And I think that’s soooo real. And one more quote, while I’m quoting brilliant thinkers: Henry Giroux, a 20th century pioneer in educational theory, said that quote, “All education is a struggle over what kind of future you want for young people.”

So I know normally I end these episodes with an enduring lesson as I see it, but for this episode, I think I’ll leave with a question for you instead. When we malign one distinct group, over and over again, what future are we advocating for?

Ok, fine, one more thing. Never let anyone cause you to doubt your own self-worth. Your own story. Never let anyone – no matter how charismatic and charming and smart make you believe theories that you know are just there to make you second guess yourself and your people. The cynic tries to get you to think they are so smart, but sometimes, that cynic is just trolling and getting attention, not leading and making an impact. 

Yes, always explore your history.

Yes, ask questions.

Yes, recognize that your story has good, bad, and ugly.

Yes, internalize that there is work to be done, to build a stronger future.

AND – Know the distinction between complicated histories and conspiracy theories. 

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And that’s all for this episode. Thank you all so much for joining us for this special episode of Israel Open Mic. If you want your question featured on a future episode, well, send it along! And, in general, just be in touch with me at noam@jewishunpacked.com.

Unpacking Israeli History is a production of Unpacked, a division of OpenDor Media. Check out jewishunpacked.com for everything Unpacked-related, and one. more. time, write to me at noam@jewishunpacked.com.

This episode was produced by Rivky Stern. Our team for this episode includes Adi Elbaz, Hona Dodge, and Rob Pera, and of course, Hanser Perez. I’m your host, Noam Weissman. Thanks for listening, see you next week!