Six Days (37 page)

Bethlehem

On the first full day of the occupation, Israel was trying to win hearts and minds. Jeeps with loudspeakers toured the streets offering an amnesty for all weapons that were surrendered voluntarily. Samir Khouri, the owner of a restaurant, handed in his old revolver at the Town Hall. For him the beginning of the occupation was not painful. ‘The first Israelis behaved well, distributed food and some of the soldiers spoke Arabic. Before the war there were demonstrations almost every week against the king. The Jordanians weren't bad – we felt we lived in peace and Jordanians and Palestinians married each other – but the government was a different matter. At first many people thought the Israelis were better than the Jordanians. It wasn't too bad until the 1973 war, tourists came, life was good, but the Israelis put up taxes and made life harder. Then we started to think in a different way about the occupation.'

Fifteen miles to the south Lieutenant-Colonel Zvi Ofer, the commander of the battalion of the Jerusalem Brigade that captured Hebron, was trying to set up a local military government. First he organised a ceremony for the mayor formally to surrender the town. Details of the curfews were sent to the mosques so that the muezzins could proclaim them from the minarets.

Jerusalem

Nazmi Al-Ju'beh, a studious twelve-year-old Palestinian boy, looked down from his grandfather's house on to the Moroccan quarter. The district was right next to the Wailing Wall, which was supposed to be off-limits to Israeli civilians. Soldiers flouted the rule, bringing in their friends and families to line up alongside official parties of VIPs to marvel at Israel's new possession. As far as Nazmi could see, soldiers were everywhere, in the alleys and on the flat roofs of the old houses. His older relatives were jumpy and miserable. The sight of the Israeli flag flying on the Dome of the Rock brought home to them what had happened. But Nazmi was fascinated and intrigued by the Israeli soldiers. They were the first Jews he had ever seen. Like so many others, some of his neighbours thought they were Iraqis when they appeared in the Old City. One old neighbour of his grandfather's prepared a pot of tea for the men who he assumed were his liberators. With a smile and a spring in his step for a man of his age, he arranged it on a tray with some glasses and took it out to them. Just as he was preparing to welcome his Iraqi saviours, the soldiers yelled at him in broken Arabic to go home. They spoke with rasping Hebrew accents. The old man retreated, confused and still carrying the tray of tea. He sat on his step with the tray next to him muttering ‘go home, go home', as if the phrase could help him understand what had gone wrong.

Among the euphoric Israelis at the Wall that morning was a party led by Mayor Kollek. He believed Israel should and would never give up what it had captured, and he dreamt of peace, on the grounds that ‘the Arabs will have learned that they cannot fight us and win'. Kollek invited his group, including Ben-Gurion and a member of the Rothschild banking family, which had been among the Jewish state's strongest supporters, back to lunch at his home. There, Ben-Gurion punctured his host's mood. ‘This is not the end of the war,' he said. ‘The Arabs cannot take such a defeat and such humiliation. They will never accept it.' Ben-Gurion wanted Kollek to demolish the city walls, to integrate it properly into Jewish Jerusalem. If the walls stayed up he warned it would always feel like a place apart, tempting the Palestinians to think they could get it back. His suggestion was not taken up.

Suez canal, 1200

Tanks from Tal's division reached the Suez canal. The Egyptians had tried to delay them, their tanks opening fire from behind sand dunes with just their guns and turrets showing. Other tanks were deployed further away from the roads to ambush the Israelis if they tried to outflank them. But Colonel Shmuel Gonen, the commander of the lead brigade, saw what was happening. He sent two companies of tanks through the dunes while a battalion moved ahead in a column down the road. Once again the Israelis used their skills in long-range gunnery to blast the Egyptians. By the end of the morning the Israelis had lost five tanks and knocked out fifty. Among Israel's dead was Major Shamai Kaplan, the accordion-playing tank commander who back in 1964 had made his men sing to warm themselves up when they were waiting to attack the Syrians.

Sinai coast, 1230

It was another beautiful early summer morning. Visibility was perfect. Around twenty miles from the coast in international waters was an American naval spy ship called the USS
Liberty.
The officers on the bridge could just see the minaret on the mosque at Al-Arish on the horizon. As usual reveille had sounded at 6:00 a.m., but for an hour before that, since just after dawn, Israeli planes had been flying close to the
Liberty,
taking a strong interest in a ship that was dangerously close to the Sinai war zone. James Ennes was officer of the deck for the morning watch, from eight to midday, responsible for the ship's log. He reckoned the Israelis flew directly over the ship six to eight times, once at less than 200 feet. Before he went off watch he noted the Israeli overflights and, according to US Navy regulations, signed and dated the entry.

The
Liberty
was loosely attached to the American Sixth Fleet, the most formidable naval force in the Mediterranean. But its two aircraft carriers with all their support ships were 500 miles away, well away from the action. The
Liberty
was on her own, and unarmed, except for four .50 calibre Browning machine guns, but its crew was not worried. Lieutenant Lloyd Painter, a young American naval officer, felt reassured by the presence of the Israelis. He looked out over one of the upper decks. It was a peaceful scene. Off-duty officers were sunbathing. He felt ‘good and warm inside that we were safe, that we weren't strangers here'. On 8 June the
Liberty
was steaming in what the US Navy called a ‘modified condition of readiness three'. That meant its normal watch was on deck, plus one man standing at the forward gun mounts. Men from the bridge would run to man the two after guns if, in an emergency, general quarters sounded.

The
Liberty
had started life as a freighter in the Second World War. But by 1967 it had been comprehensively rebuilt into one of the most advanced spy ships in the world, one of about a dozen that the United States always had cruising the oceans. It listened in to radio transmissions. According to one of its crewmen, ‘If it was broadcast on a radio wave, we could receive it, on any frequency.' The
Liberty
was a highly distinctive, unusual-looking ship, festooned with aerials and an ultra-modern microwave dish.

The
Liberty
had been redeployed from a patrol along the West African coast when the crisis in the Middle East blew up. On 8 June it had just arrived on its new station, sailing slowly up and down the coast of Sinai, shuttling roughly between Al-Arish and Port Said. The
Liberty
took its orders from the US Navy, but the technicians it carried were under the control of the National Security Agency. The NSA is one of the most secret parts of the US government. It eavesdrops on the world's communications. In the 1960s it was a vital part of the Cold War with the USSR and the hot war in Vietnam. On 8 June 294 men were on board the
Liberty.
Around two-thirds of them had very little to do with sailing the ship. They were technical experts – linguists, radio engineers, cryptographers. While they were on duty they stayed below in front of a great array of scopes, scanners and monitors. There were also three civilians from the NSA, including an Arabic linguist, and three US Marines who were specialists in Arabic and Russian.

Just after 1300 the
Liberty
's captain, William McGonagle, sounded general quarters. It was a drill. The crew ran to take up the posts they would man in an emergency. They were patrolling at five knots, which was the best speed for their technical gear to suck intelligence out of the radio waves. But Captain McGonagle did not want them to have the idea that this was some sort of leisurely Mediterranean cruise. After all, they were only twenty miles from a war zone. Once the exercise was over, though, off-duty men went back to sunbathing. The crew of the
Liberty
prided themselves on the fact that they were different. They enjoyed their posting and were proud of their ship. There was a cook-out on the ship's fan-tail every Sunday. For young conscripts who had friends who were foot soldiers in Vietnam it seemed a pretty good way of doing their national duty.

That morning, orders were sent from Washington for the
Liberty
to move further away from the coast. But there was an error in transmission. Before they arrived, the
Liberty
was destroyed by Israel's air force and navy. Between 1400 and 1430 around two-thirds of the ship's company became casualties. Thirty-four men were killed and 172 wounded. How it happened is well documented. Why it happened is still a matter of bitter dispute.

At 1350 a flight of two Israeli Mirages, codenamed Kursa, was contacted by Colonel Shmuel Kislev, the chief air controller at the military headquarters in Tel Aviv. (Their exchanges were taped.) He told Yigal, one of the pilots, that he had a ship at ‘location 26. Take Kursa over there. If it's a warship, blast it.' In the Israeli air control room there were some doubts about their target's identity. Three minutes later another officer, a weapons controller, can be heard asking, ‘What is it? An American?' In later testimony the officer said that he was convinced the Egyptians would not send a solitary warship so close to a coastline now held by Israel. According to Aaron Bregman, an Israeli scholar who has listened to the tapes, Colonel Kislev is then heard picking up a phone and calling an unnamed superior officer. Referring to the suggestion that the ship could be American, he asks, ‘What do you say?' The answer is, ‘I don't say.' The tone, according to Bregman, is ‘I don't want to know'. Another three minutes later, at 1356, the leader of the two Mirages asks permission to attack. Colonel Kislev does not order them to establish its identity. All he says, impatiently, is, ‘I have already said: if this is a warship … to attack.'

Lookouts on the
Liberty
saw the Mirages. They were not worried, assuming it was another reconnaissance flight. Using radar, the ship's position was fixed as 25.5 nautical miles away from the minaret at Al-Arish, which was to the south-east. It was in international waters. Commander McGonagle believed they were safe. The
Liberty
's name and identification numbers were clearly marked, a stars and stripes flag measuring five feet by eight was flying and it had been identified by the earlier overflights. Lloyd Painter, who had been so reassured earlier by the Israeli presence, was looking at them through a porthole when he realised that they had levelled off and were approaching the ship as if they were attacking. Red flashes were coming from under their wings. The shells from the Mirages' 30 mm cannon exploded into the ship. Painter's porthole was blown out into his chest. The man looking through the next one along was hit in the face. Most of the men on the bridge were knocked off their feet. The helmsman was badly wounded. Quartermaster third class Troy Brown immediately took the wheel. Later, he was killed. Commander McGonagle grabbed the engine room telegraph and rang up all ahead flank, the order for maximum speed.

The
Liberty
's radio operators were trying to get an SOS to the Sixth Fleet. They had two big problems. The Israelis were jamming them, and the ship's complex system of antennas was being blasted away. James Halman, one of the radio operators, kept repeating the message, using the
Liberty
's call sign. ‘Any station, this is Rockstar, we are under attack by unidentified jet aircraft and require assistance.'

At 1359 the leader of the Kursa flight reported back to Tel Aviv: ‘We have hit her very hard. Black smoke is coming out. Oil is spilling out of her into the water. Splendid … extraordinary. She is burning. She is burning.' Two minutes later: ‘OK, I have finished. I have just finished my ammunition. The ship is burning … very big and black smoke.'

The
Liberty
was still trying to send an SOS. Lieutenant Commander Dave Lewis, in charge of the NSA operation on board, believes the Israelis targeted their communications gear. ‘The only reason we got an SOS out was that my crazy troops were climbing the deck stringing long wires while they were being shot at.' USS
Saratoga,
one of the Sixth Fleet's two aircraft carriers, acknowledged their distress calls at 1409. The
Liberty
's radio operators repeated their message: ‘Schematic, this is Rockstar. We are still under attack by unidentified jet aircraft and require immediate assistance.'
Saratoga
wanted an authentication code that had been destroyed. ‘Listen to the goddamn rockets, you son of a bitch!' the radio operator yelled back.

In Tel Aviv the air controller Kislev ordered another flight, this time of two Super Mysteres to take up the attack. ‘You can sink her,' he told them. They raked the decks and the antennas and dropped canisters of napalm, which exploded throwing out burning jelly and clouds of thick black smoke. Fuel tanks on the ship's whaler exploded. At 1414 one of the pilots asks about the ship's nationality. They had read the ship's markings which were marked in Western numbers, not Arabic ones. Kislev says twice that it is ‘probably American'. Twelve minutes later, at 1426, three Israeli motor torpedo boats arrived. The
Liberty
is identified again as Egyptian and they attack it with five torpedoes. From the bridge Captain McGonagle screamed a warning into the public address system. Gary Brummett was below decks. ‘When we received word that a torpedo was going to hit us starboard side and stand by to abandon ship, I personally knew I would never see my friends in Louisiana again or drink another cold beer. At twenty, those are important events. I blew my life vest up … and awaited what I thought would be somewhat like a crawfish boil and [we] were the crawfish.' Only one torpedo hit, which probably saved the ship. The force of the explosion picked the
Liberty
out of the water. When it came down it was listing to starboard with a huge hole in its side. The five-feet-by-eight stars and stripes that the
Liberty
was flying was shredded with most of the ship. It was replaced five minutes before the torpedo attack by an even bigger one, seven feet by thirteen.