(Appendix C)

The author of An Eight Part Peace Proposal for Greater Jerusalem regrets that he finds it necessary to present to his audience a conspiracy theory; he is reasonably confident that this theory, if put fully to the test, will make all of us witnesses to a monumental act of deception. The author also wishes to emphasize that, with the exception of this Appendix C, his peace proposal is basically an action programme and not a discussion paper. He shall endeavour to answer as best he can written inquiries from LIBERTY NEWS subscribers which are sent to P. O. Box 449, New York, NY 10185.

According to informed sources whose identities must remain secret for their own safety, a meeting took place between certain Syrian and Zionist representatives in the Spanish State, in Madrid, sometime prior to the Six Day War of June, 1967. The result of this meeting was an agreement whereby the Syrian conspirators, in consideration of a stupendous sum of money, promised to orchestrate a retreat of the Syrian Armed Forces from the Golan Heights against the day of an Israeli advance.

Some details of the arrangements resulting from what the author now calls "the Madrid Pact" can be found in Suqut al-Julan, or, The Fall of the Golan, which was published in Cairo in 1980 by the Dar El E’etsam Publishing House. The author, Khalil Mustapha, is said to be a former Syrian intelligence officer.

In the early spring of 1967, the very idea of Israel's easy capture of the Golan Heights, an extremely well-fortified place, was simply preposterous; for this public relations problem, the Syro-Zionist conspirators had a ruse that would give plausibility to their private real estate venture. On 7 April 1967, a limited engagement took place between the armed forces of Syria and of Israel; Syria's principal action that day was a vituperative harangue against Egypt for not coming to the aid of Damascus during the short-lived surprise attack. Thus, from this preplanned skirmish between Israel and Syria there exploded on the airwaves reports and rumors of war and hot rhetoric that were cleverly designed to place the blame on Egypt for Israel's imminent taking of the Golan Heights.

The Syrian Minister of Defense at the time, an ambitious former Air Force General named Hafez al-Asad, was also a brilliant propagandist. Born in humble circumstances, Asad’s love of western money eventually boosted him to the presidency in 1970; Asad is the only man in world history to become the leader of his nation right after losing a significant portion of its sovereign territory. He is a sure shot for the Wax Museum, close to where the brandy-brained masterminds originally concocted their plans for the Zionist expansion onto the Golan Heights.

Unforeseen complications arose as the Syro-Zionist conspirators made ready to put the Israeli flag on the Golan Heights. Egyptian intelligence had already uncovered this planned treachery against the Syrian people, which Gamal Abdel Nasser tried to forestall with diversionary tactics along Israel's southern border. Nasser hoped that the Israeli conspirators, who were apparently operating on their own with their Syrian counterparts and not within the councils of their own government, would back off from their designs on the Golan Heights to the north by making all of Israel (in fact, all the world) look warily at the Egyptian border to the south. His purpose was to thwart Israeli aggression with a show of force.

But Nasser could not, and did not, anticipate the reaction of the Pentagon in Washington, which suddenly became very paranoid about Dimona, the nuclear weapons facility in Israel's Negev desert, not far from Egypt's military buildup. Dimona represented then, and still represents today, an extreme diversion for nuclear armaments of United States and Israeli human and economic resources, which is an egregious violation of the letter and spirit of Article 26 of the Charter of the United Nations. In order to save face, the United States had to protect Dimona at all costs.

On 7 April 1967, the very same day the Syrians and Israelis briefly locked horns for the believing world to see, the "303 Committee," a United States Government interdepartmental group that supervised CIA covert operations, met and approved a sensitive Department of Defense project known as "Frontlet 615," which involved secretly placing an unregistered submarine or two inside the territorial waters of the United Arab Republic; this mission was most likely for the purpose of electromagnetic interference with radio airwaves, thereby allowing United States technical support for the defense of Dimona and of Israel to proceed undetected. Secrecy was of paramount importance both tactically and strategically; while Dimona had to be defended at any cost, if the United States had been exposed as "a party to a dispute," this great nation, under the provisions of Article 27 of the Charter of the United Nations, would have been forced to abstain from voting in the Security Council on matters pertaining to the Arab-Israeli dispute! Imagine!

Furthermore, Pentagon heads knew that any fighting between Egypt and Israel would have put the nuclear weapons facility at Dimona in jeopardy in more ways than one. If the Egyptians had captured Dimona, their discovery would have been a major embarrassment to the USA; for only a few years before, it was the USA that had so righteously forced the USSR to remove its nuclear weapons from Cuba. The Pentagon did not want any surprises at the United Nations for their colleagues across the Potomac at the Department of State, who were apparently unaware, or pretended to be unaware, of the nuclear weapons facility at Dimona. Dean Rusk, then the US Secretary of State, recently said of those days: "We were especially concerned about the Israelis. If they ever developed and deployed nuclear weapons, nuclear proliferation in the Middle East could not be far behind. Fearful of this, we repeatedly urged Israel not to be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East. If they did, we told them they'd lose the United States and the protection of our nuclear umbrella." (As I Saw It, W. W. Norton & Co., New York, 1990, pp. 342-343)

Whatever the case back then in the 1960s, we know now -- thanks to one Mordechai Vanunu and The Sunday Times of London (5 October 1986) -- that Israel has nuclear weapons and also rockets to deliver them; true to Rusk's sober reflections, this ominous development predated Iraq's acquisition of weapons of mass destruction as a deterrent force. Unlike Iraq, however, Israel's nuclear facilities have never been open for international inspection under any circumstances.

The official attitude of the United States Government with respect to Israel's nuclear weapons capability remains a mystery to this day. Questions such as "Who knew what about Dimona and when did they know it?" remain unanswered. Was President John F. Kennedy opposed to Israel's nuclear weapons program? If so, how far were the Israelis willing to go to circumvent his objections? (Wasn’t President Kennedy the son of a pro-Nazi United States Ambassador to the Court of St. James?) Why was the systematic theft of weapons-grade uranium from a US Government contractor located in the State of Pennsylvania never properly investigated? These concerns do not fall exclusively within the domestic jurisdiction of Israel and the United States; the conspiracy of silence in both countries is a danger to international peace and security.

Nasser’s noble bluff was unfortunately destined to fail. War erupted and, despite all the inflammatory rhetoric of the previous weeks, Syria stayed in a defensive posture as Israel's attention was focused on several objective points in the south and the east. In a classic illustration of "peace through strength" vying with and prevailing over "peace through understanding," Dean Rusk recollects: "But we were shocked as well, and angry as hell, when the Israelis launched their surprise offensive. They attacked on a Monday, knowing that on Wednesday the Egyptian vice-president would arrive in Washington to talk about reopening the Strait of Tiran." (As I Saw It, p. 386) The closure of the Strait of Tiran had been declared a casus belli by Israel, and its reopening would have lessened tensions in the region considerably. Maybe a telephone call to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara or his assistant at the Pentagon, Cyrus Vance, would have helped immeasurably too.

With a key opportunity for a diplomatic solution lost forever, the outcome was disastrous for both Egypt and Jordan; with the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza and Sinai now under Israeli control and with the action all but finished on these fronts largely because of US aerial photographic reconnaissance that was made available to the Israel Defense Force, the Israeli conspirators soon resumed their original preparations for a northern invasion into Syria.

But at the last moment, another obstacle presented itself to the Syro-Zionist conspirators: an audio-electromagnetic surveillance ship, the USS Liberty, arrived off the coast of Gaza. According to James M. Ennes, Jr., who was an officer aboard this US Navy "spy ship" at the time, the USS Liberty was in a position to learn a great deal about the tactics, procedures, morale, discipline, order-of-battle and the military objectives of both sides of the conflict. Ennes raises a number of important questions that still need answers in his well researched book, Assault on the Liberty, which was published by Random House in New York in 1980.

Clearly, the USS Liberty's sudden and unexpected visit to the eastern Mediterranean put the Golan operation in jeopardy; secrecy could no longer be assured with this intelligence-gathering platform floating nearby. A bold move was called for; Israel launched a carefully coordinated air and sea attack that was calculated to sink the USS Liberty and leave no survivors -- an extraordinary measure that remains controversial even to this day largely because the demolished ship refused to go under and the surviving crew vehemently rejects Israel's claim that the attack was an unfortunate case of mistaken identity. Thus, the Israel Defense Force, whose ranks were already thinned over the newly conquered West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza and the Sinai Desert all the way to the Suez Canal, was finally free to take the virtually impregnable Golan Heights in less than 24 hours! (This feat is indeed wondrous when compared with the PLO's tenacious defense of Beaufort Castle with rifles and mortars against a fully concentrated thrust by the Israel Defense Force in 1982.)

Survivors of the USS Liberty formed their very own veterans association and actively seek ways to bring the whole truth about the attack on their ship before the American public. (Please see http://www.ussliberty.org.)  Despite strong hindrance brought to bear on these courageous men by American Jewish organizations, the Liberty survivors are quite determined to end the cover-up that has been perpetrated for 24 years now by the governments of Israel and the United States. Largely because of their self-sacrificing dedication and diligent supererogation that carry on in their retirement years, the United States Navy changed course in 1989 and finally admitted that the original Navy Court of Inquiry focused only on certain military communication problems prior to the attack and the heroic efforts of Liberty's crew in controlling damage caused by the attack. Clearly, the presiding officer, Admiral Isaac Kidd, never carried out in good faith President Lyndon Johnson's order to investigate all the circumstances of the attack. Or, maybe Kidd's real instructions came to him between the lines.

The United States Navy now maintains that sensitive international issues arising from Israel's attack on the USS Liberty were best left for diplomatic and political consideration. But for 24 years, the Congress of the United States, because of sheer lack of integrity, has failed to face this issue honestly and forthrightly. The House of Representatives has a Constitutional mandate "To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations." (Article I, section 8) But in the case of the USS Liberty, this assembly refuses to recognize and carry out one of its enumerated powers. In fact, the case of the USS Liberty represents the only major incident at sea involving a US Navy ship that has not been fully investigated by Congress.

Political expediency is by no means the only reason American politicians have for ducking responsibility when it comes to the USS Liberty. Other factors include the demagogic character of the major American Jewish organizations. For example, an excellent TV documentary, called "Days of Rage," produced by Jo Franklin Trout, was nearly kept off the air through their highly skilled and organized protests across the United States. The film was finally aired on 6 September 1989 thanks to an emerging Arab-American constituency, but even so, a very controversial statement evoked by Ms. Trout from retired Israeli Major General Mattiyahu Peled, that the conquest of the Golan Heights was the "private venture of the then Defense Minister Moishe Dayan and a few generals who were very much interested in this adventure," drew no comment whatsoever from Hodding Carter’s discussion panel or any other member of the press, the government or academia except this writer. The shrill Jewish protestors caused PBS executives to "wrap" the documentary with two others more to their liking, and placed one at the beginning and the other at the end of "Days of Rage," thereby wearing down the attention span of most TV viewers. How Peled's remarkable statement can still be ignored in public fora for so long remains to be explained fully. Certainly there is a "chilling effect" on certain topics that are unflattering to Israel, from the halls of Congress even to one's own living room.

Another reason for American politicians to shun the just cause of the USS Liberty Veterans Association is the strenuous effort by American Jewish lobbyists to persuade government officials to believe that the attack was an accident and that any statement to the contrary is merely Arab propaganda or out and out anti-Semitism. Indeed, most Congressmen are more familiar with the Israeli version of the attack than the well-researched accounts that their own fellow citizens are trying to offer against all odds. Unrelenting pressure has been applied to those who ask questions too much.

One must also consider the fears that normally attend espionage and blackmail. Israel's official version of the attack, a Preliminary Inquiry known as the "Yerushalmi Report," makes clear reference in its opening paragraphs (establishing time, place, etc.) to the officially "unconfirmed" existence of a submarine in the vicinity of the USS Liberty on the day of the attack. It is quite easy to conjecture that such prominent mention of an unconfirmed sighting of a submarine was a warning to the United States Government that any rigorous investigation into the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty would also result in exposure of the "Frontlet 615" project, which, as already mentioned, involved secretly placing at least one submarine inside UAR territorial waters -- a clear violation of international law, and an especially serious one by an avowed neutral nation that was in fact controlling the course of an ongoing war.

A thorough investigation into all the circumstances of Israel's premeditated attack on the USS Liberty will, of course, consider the question of motivation, and such an inquiry will inevitably lead not only to a realistic appraisal of the "miraculous" Golan operation, which just happened to proceed apace a day after Liberty's electronic eavesdropping capability was neutralized by Israeli jet fighters and torpedo boats, but also to a frank and objective discussion of the Pentagon's key role in Israel's aggression against its Arab neighbors. The stakes are indeed quite high: The duplicity, the lies, the ruthlessness and corruption will be exposed for all to see. But with the removal of the facade and all the false pretenses associated with "bargaining chips" and "land for peace" and "limited autonomy" (Give me limited autonomy or give me death, already!?!?) and with proper measures for accountability and responsibility finally taken, the consequences can be dealt with justly and expeditiously and the United Nations will be free to move on the Arab-Israeli agenda without so many hidden obstacles.

And finally, an investigation of the USS Liberty incident is such a hot political potato because the Bush Administration, which stood so vigorously on principle in the Arabian Gulf crisis, would be compelled to admit US involvement in Israel's willful aggression against Egypt, Jordan and Syria in 1967. The White House, having poured its armed forces into Saudi Arabia, has reminded Arabs of what could have been done for Palestinians if President Bush or any other President of the United States since Eisenhower had so chosen. In stark contrast, the White House's niggling veto in May 1990 of a United Nations Security Council Resolution calling for United Nations observers in the Israeli-occupied territories leaves a very bitter aftertaste. What good was the UN coalition against Iraq if there cannot be a UN coalition for peace between Israel and the Palestinian people?

Some readers will believe without a doubt that collusion between Israel and Syria is just too far-fetched an idea to imagine. They would be well advised to read Jimmy Carter's Blood of Abraham (p. 79) where he describes at some length "the peculiar confluence of some Syrian and Israeli interests." This book, published by Houghton Mifflin in New York in 1985, contains plenty of food for thought.

The "Madrid Pact" not only explains certain events in the past such as the USS Liberty incident but also offers a ready explanation of the current impasse in the Arab-Israeli dispute. Take for example this cryptic statement by Shimon Peres, which is from a Rosh Hashanah radio address that he made when he was still the Prime Minister of Israel and which appeared as a news item inside the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner:

In straight talk, Peres's message is that United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 has no bearing at all insofar as the Golan Heights are concerned. Israel refuses to implement this resolution and Israel will not even attempt to negotiate the content of this resolution with Syria. Avoiding an international peace conference is Israel's way of avoiding discussions about 242 and the Golan Heights. Simply put, there is no need for negotiations where an agreement already exists! Never mind that this secret agreement was sealed with the blood of the Liberty crew.

This Syro-Israeli "understanding" is, in effect, an agreement, and, as such, it violates Article 102 of the Charter of the United Nations, which stipulates that every treaty and international agreement "shall as soon as possible be registered with the Secretariat and published by it."

Furthermore, this failure on the part of Israel and Syria to honor Article 102 effectively prevents the United Nations Security Council from exercising its responsibilities under Section 2 of Article 36 of the Charter of the United Nations, which enjoins the Security Council to "take into consideration any procedures for the settlement of the dispute which have already been adopted by the parties." Such a procedure is the secret agreement or understanding between Israel and Syria which this writer calls the "Madrid Pact."

Shimon Peres's "understanding" with the Syrians, which was cited above, has impaired his own thinking process to such an extent that he dares to assert, in an article published on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times of 21 December 1988, that a "comprehensive settlement" can be negotiated with a Joint Palestinian-Jordanian delegation. He hopes in vain to isolate Syria from negotiations by not mentioning Syria in his article! The editors of the New York Times are playing in the same key with Peres. Reading this newspaper, one can easily get the impression that the West Bank and Gaza are the only occupied territories. A semantical shift makes occupied Lebanon a "security zone." And Jerusalem, east and west, is just a dot conveniently straddling the 1967 green line. But the Golan Heights? Where seldom is heard a discouraging word, all is calm; all is quiet! No problem. Not even those diagonal lines that denote "occupied by Israel" on their maps; they are for the West Bank and Gaza only.

Common sense of course tells us that a comprehensive peace plan for the Arab-Israeli dispute will ultimately be implemented only by all the parties involved in the dispute. Any separate arrangements by Israel and Syria with the weaker entities, Jordan and Lebanon, will only preserve the Syro-Israeli understanding, which will sooner or later undermine any efforts to make peace. Unfortunately, this is the direction that we seem to be taking as the superpower sponsors of Israel and Syria prepare to take matters into their own hands at a "regional peace conference" in October 1991.

Only an international peace conference sponsored by the United Nations with the participation of the five permanent members of the Security Council can offer authenticity and balance to Middle East peace negotiations; without such a unified approach one must question the variable commitment of the USA to the UN as it runs hot in the case of Iraq but freezes on issues concerning Israel. With the balance and authenticity that only the United Nations can bring to the negotiations, imaginative solutions are possible, including one that features a legal mechanism for conflict resolution patterned after the only provision of the Constitution of the United States that has never been exercised. Article 4, Section 3 is the inspiration and basis for the territorial arrangements called for in this work, An Eight Part Peace Proposal for Greater Jerusalem.

Copyright 1991 Stephen M. St. John, All rights reserved.

This article appeared in the official newsletter of the USS Liberty Veterans Association, Liberty News, Volume 9 for March/June 1991, on pages 49 through 52.  (Please see http://www.ussliberty.org/newsletters.htm.)