Misapprehensions and mistaken assumptions

Conspiracy theories weaken bonds we should be working to make stronger

Rabbi Mark Wm. Gross

I walked into a figurative hornet’s nest, years back, when I served the Monterey Peninsula Jewish community prior to coming to South Florida in 1986. In the early ’80s, the congregation had not yet funded and built its current beautiful synagogue in Carmel Valley; we were still meeting in a recycled 1920s-era school building in Monterey, a few blocks from the Naval Postgraduate School. It was our proximity to the Naval School that prompted one of the instructors there to invite me to substitute-teach his seminar one day.

It quickly became obvious that the naval officers arrayed around the room represented two polarized constituencies. One group regarded their Israeli colleagues as trusted comrades-in-arms and reliable allies defending U.S. interests in the Mediterranean. The others clearly disliked Israel, and mistrusted the Israeli military, due to the Liberty incident 15 years earlier.

It was on June 8 of 1967, which was Day Four of the Six-Day War, that the U.S.S. Liberty (AGTR-50), an N.S.A. electronic reconnaissance ship monitoring the conflict in international waters off El-Arish, was mistakenly identified by the Israeli military as an Egyptian command post and attacked over the period of more than an hour by a combined Israeli force of fighter jets and PT boats.

By the time the mistake was discovered and the Israeli assault broken off, 34 Americans had been killed and 171 wounded, making the incident the worst loss of U.S. naval personnel from hostile action since the end of World War II. Both the U.S. and Israel immediately acknowledged this “friendly fire” tragedy to be the lamentable consequence of a cascading series of procedural and communications blunders, for which both the Israel Defense Forces and the Pentagon accepted equal responsibility.

As such, although Liberty’s skipper, William McGonagle, was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, President Johnson and Secretary of Defense McNamara and the Navy otherwise made every effort to minimize the incident to preserve the integrity of the U.S.-Israel strategic alliance.

The tragic paradox is that these steps, intended to save face for all concerned, served not to close the Liberty episode, but rather to reinforce dark assertions of a treacherous conspiracy. Years after the episode, groups ranging from Arab enemies of Israel to surviving members of the ship’s crew asserted pressure down the chain of command as a whitewash of what they insist was a malicious and intentional Israeli assault on a U.S. flag vessel.

Fifty-four years later, it is good to remember the Liberty. All else being equal, the stubbornly grim allegations of Jewish malice and American cover-up serve as a reassurance that the kind of conspiracy theories that get far too much traction in our internet era are really nothing new. More to the point, the tragic errors underlying the incident create a context to appreciate the availability today of computer and communications technologies that keep all of us (not just military personnel and law enforcement, but you and me as well) safe and accounted for.

Most important, this long-ago military incident serves as a metaphor for our interpersonal relationships. We’ve all seen (and related to and laughed at) sitcom plots driven by the consequences of misapprehensions and mistaken assumptions.

But in real life, it is always important to remember that conclusion-jumping is not an Olympic event; that acting without information is a dubious strategy; and that lashing out at those we claim to care about, stresses and weakens bonds we should be working to make stronger instead. Because hornet’s nests are no fun, and friends deserve better from each other.

Rabbi Mark Wm. Gross serves at Jewish Congregation of Marco Island.