Published Commentary: Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East
Analysis and Criticism
The following is an excerpt from Norman Finkelstein's review of Oren's Six Days of War.
Oren's account of events attendant on the June war frequently descends to vulgar propaganda. Deeming the Israeli combined air and naval assault on the U.S.S. Liberty, in which 34 U.S. Navy men were killed and 171 wounded, an "accident" and an "incident [of] faulty identifications," Oren rehashes official Israeli tales and embellishes on them with his own whoppers. He avers that Israeli reconnaissance pilots flying just overhead on a cloudless morning missed noticing the Liberty's five-by-eight-foot American flag fluttering in the wind because they "were not looking for the Liberty, but rather for Egyptian submarines"; that "the IDF could have easily sunk the Liberty," although with the IDF's extended air attack using missiles, cannon and napalm, followed by a torpedo attack followed by sustained fire on the crippled vessel that left 2/3 of the crew dead or wounded, the miracle is that the Liberty managed, just barely, to stay afloat; and that Israeli ships, after torpedoing the Liberty, "ceased firing the instant the mistake was realized and offered to assist the ship," although surviving members of the crew uniformly testify that the Israeli ships fired from close range after the torpedo explosion and after stopping near the fantail, where the Liberty's name and hull number appeared in large letters (a new oversized American flag had also been unfurled), finally firing on the life rafts in the water, and then left the area for more than an hour before returning to offer assistance (SDW: pp. 264, 271).
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