“Just who shot down that Apache AH–64 over the Hormuz Strait?”

That handy old question, Cui bono?

Remember the Liberty! When the Israelis were done with it, 9 June 1967. (Naval History & Heritage Command/ Wikimedia Commons.)

This piece has been edited to amend certain dates in it and to state Thomas Massie’s home state correctly. It is Kentucky.

10 JUNE—Thomas Massie, the admirably self-possessed congressman from Kentucky, just lost the Republican primary, and so his seat in the House, to a conjured-from-thin-air creature of A.I.P.A.C. and the other Zionist lobbies, which spent a record $32 million to defeat this dedicated critic of Washington’s profligately irresponsible support of Israel. This was a shameful display of how thoroughly “the Jewish state” and the wealthy American Jews who act in its behalf have corrupted American politics. Massie made light of this—bitter, pointed light—during his concession speech: “I tried to call Ed Gallrein to congratulate him on his victory,” he told his gathered constituents on election night, “but I had trouble reaching him in Tel Aviv.”

That is Massie, never short of aplomb. And he now has shown us the intelligence, bravery, honor, and compassion with which he will make his exit from the House.

On Monday Massie spoke for eight and a half minutes on the House floor in honor of the hundreds of victims of the Zionist state’s 1967 attacks, by air and sea, on the U.S.S. Liberty, an espionage vessel collecting intelligence off the north coast of the Sinai during the Six–Day War. This was his way of reminding Americans of what we talk about when we talk about Israel as a faithful, always-on-our-side ally meriting the multiple billions of dollars in aid and military matériel Washington showers upon it amid its genocides, tortures, sniper-murders, starvation regimes, village burnings, and all the rest.

In the early hours of Tuesday local time, to suggest where I am headed here, a U.S. helicopter gunship was attacked while flying over the Strait of Hormuz off the coast of Oman. There are multiple indications that the Israelis downed the Apache AH–64 and its crew of two, and none suggesting the Iranians had anything to do with it. They had been observing a ceasefire until Israel violated it. Given the U.S. Central Command has now renewed its aggressions against the Islamic Republic, the Apache attack may prove the incident that sparked a return to the all-out war Israel is bent on drawing the U.S. into.

I must stop short of unambiguous assertion, but the circumstantial evidence available at this early time is compelling enough to conclude we have all but certainly witnessed a variation of the Liberty incident Massie just marked on its 59^th anniversary: The Apache gunship went down as yet another of the Zionist terror state’s uncountable false flags, this one to prevent the Trump regime from reaching any kind of accord with Tehran that would cause peace to break out.

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Even in the land of incessant evasions, concealments, dissimulations, whitewashes, and hush-ups—even in the land of the Epstein files, let’s leave it—the cover-up of what happened in the Mediterranean on 8 June 1967 must be counted exceptional. Those then alive and sentient were treated to the spectacle of the U.S. government lying to protect a foreign power that had murdered 34 unarmed American sailors and intel personnel and wounded 174 others. As Massie pointed out in his speech Monday, this was a casualty rate of more than 70 percent of a crew that numbered 294. “Unheard of,” as the member from Kentucky put it. “This was an effort to kill everyone on board.”