"More proof has recently come to light from the Israeli side. A few years after Attack on the Liberty was originally published, Ennes got a call from Evan Toni, an Israeli pilot. Toni told Ennes that he had just read his book and wanted to tell him his story. Toni said that he was the pilot in the first Israeli Mirage fighter to reach the Liberty. He immediately recognized the ship to be a US Navy vessel. He radioed Israeli air command with this information and asked for instructions. Toni said he was ordered to “attack.” He refused and flew back to the air base at Ashdod. When he arrived he was summarily arrested for disobeying orders."

[counterpunch.org]

@WilliamCharles n addition to the realpolitik there is also credible testimony that there were wholesale massacres of Egyptian soldiers on Israel's southern front. The Liberty had amassed a huge amount of evidence on this because their sophisticated equipment was picking up everything in the region that was being transmitted. When the ship was attacked the captain ordered the destruction of all the recordings. Some of the evidence on massacres comes from Amos Oz's interesting film Censored Voices vimeo.com/ondemand/censoredvoices2

I got this from a friend who is heavily involve din the Palestine issue. It makes sense and a reason for the Israelis attacking the Liberty

"U.S. TAXPAYERS PAID ALL THAT WAS PAID!

An arrangement was agreed to by Israel only after U.S. aid to Israel was increased from $13 million in Fiscal Year 1967 to a whopping $76.8 million in Fiscal Year 1968. That aid increase took care of negotiations for the crew, dead and wounded. These payments were made with U.S. Government checks in late Spring, 1968.

Israel then refused to pay for the LIBERTY damage. The United States government then increased the aid to Israel to $121.7 million for FY 1969. The new negotiations began and Israel agreed to pay $7.6 million damages for the $40 million ship which was sold for less than $200,000.00 as scrap. But Israel DID NOT PAY as promised when U.S. aid was cut to $71 million for FY 1970, even though that was still five times the U.S. aid of 1967. And the bill remained unpaid (and not deducted from the increased U.S. aid)."

[eutimes.net]