Republican Congressman Thomas Massie has urged the United States to reopen its investigation into a 1967 Israeli attack on a US Navy ship, the USS Liberty, that killed 34 service members and injured 171 others.
Monday marked the 59th anniversary of the attack, and Massie honoured the occasion by delivering a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, in the presence of survivors.
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The Israeli government has long maintained the incident was a “friendly fire” accident. But some crew members from the USS Liberty have disputed that assessment, calling the attack deliberate.
Massie highlighted their testimonies in his speech, which questioned the official version of the events.
“While they’re still alive, they need closure,” Massie said of the survivors.
“Let’s give them closure. Let’s have an investigation. Let’s pass a resolution honouring them. It’s long overdue. And then they can have their justice.”
The House floor speech represented a rare congressional acknowledgement of the lingering questions surrounding the attack.
It also comes at a time of growing opposition to the US’s policy of giving unconditional aid to Israel.
In the wake of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza and the joint US-Israeli war against Iran, public opinion polls have shown that the US ally is becoming increasingly unpopular among the American public.
Critics have argued for decades that the USS Liberty incident and the alleged cover-up that followed illustrate a lopsided alliance with Israel that does not serve Washington’s interests.
The war on Iran and horrific atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon have renewed scrutiny of that partnership, as well as of the 1967 attack itself.
Massie is among those sceptical of the US-Israeli relationship. He has opposed the war on Iran, as well as efforts to further integrate the US and Israeli militaries.
The outgoing congressman ultimately lost his primary last month to a challenger backed by US President Donald Trump and pro-Israel groups.
In Monday’s speech, he cast doubt as to whether Israel could have unintentionally targeted the USS Liberty.
“The visibility was unlimited. The American flag was flying proudly on the USS Liberty,” he told the House, describing the ship as being “viciously attacked”.
Israel’s supporters, however, insist that the assault was a misidentification accident not uncommon in war.
At the time, Israel was locked in the Six-Day War with several Arab countries. The USS Liberty had been sent to international waters nearby for observation and intelligence collection.
But on June 8, 1967, Israeli jets opened fire and dropped napalm on the USS Liberty, before torpedoing the vessel.
“The Israelis were intent on leaving no survivors,” Massie said in his speech, noting that Israeli jets had been seen surveilling the vessel the day prior to the attack.
To back up his argument, Massie cited statements from several top diplomatic, intelligence and military officials, including former US Secretary of State Dean Rusk and ex-top General Thomas Hinman Moorer, both of whom have said they believe the attack was deliberate.
“None of these distinguished men think this was an accident,” Massie said. “They think it was intentional murder by the country of Israel, either as a false flag operation or because they simply didn’t want anybody observing what they were doing that day.”
Israel illegally seized the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza and Syria’s Golan Heights by the end of the conflict in 1967.
Decades later, in 2003, Ward Boston — a US Navy official who served as an adviser to the court of inquiry that looked into the attack — released sworn testimony that lead investigator Isaac Kidd had faced pressure to rule the incident as a case of mistaken identity.
But an assessment from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that was released in 2006 claimed that Israeli pilots “failed to identify” the USS Liberty as a US ship.
Congressman Dan Crenshaw criticised Massie, a fellow Republican, on Sunday for his plans to speak about the attack on the vessel.
“The USS Liberty incident is a tragic one, but it’s an incident with a clear conclusion if one uses any objective analysis of the facts,” Crenshaw wrote on the online platform X.
But the USS Liberty Veterans Association praised Massie in a social media post. The group, composed largely of survivors, has been calling for accountability in the case.
“A dynomite [sic] telling telling of our story in such a short amount of time,” the group said of Massie’s speech. “The story NO other member of Congress will even listen to.”