A long conversation with Liberty survivor, Jerry Ward, was deeply moving, then I showed him the mural of another hero.

I was in the parking lot of an O’Reilly Auto Parts store in Waco, Texas, trying to replace the water pump on my 1984 Winnebago. A thin, middle-aged blonde woman passing by said, I like your hat.

I was wearing a baseball cap with “USS Liberty — June 8, 1967” embroidered on it. Thanks, I said. I noticed she was wearing a patriotic T-shirt.

My husband was on the Liberty when Israel attacked it, she said.

I stopped what I was doing. Really?

Really, she said and asked me whether she could have the cap. I gave it to her. She thanked me and went into O’Reilly Auto Parts.

Wondering at the encounter, I went back to work. Some time later, the same woman reemerged from the store with an older man.

His name was Jerry Ward and he had, indeed, been aboard the USS Liberty when Our Greatest Friend and Ally and Only Democracy in the Middle East knowingly and intentionally attacked a lightly armed US surveillance ship in international waters off the coast of Egypt during the Six-Day War in 1967.

The attack lasted for hours and was carried out by Israeli fighter jets and torpedo boats paid for by US taxpayers. The jets had their insignia covered, but the torpedo boats displayed the Star of David. Israel intended to sink the Liberty, leaving no survivors. They strafed the lifeboats, for the love of God—an internationally recognized war crime and the mark not only of a depraved inhumanity, but of criminal intent.

Before Jerry Ward joined the crew of the USS Liberty, he was a Navy Seal serving in Vietnam. Though he must be well into his 80s, now, you’d never know it by looking at him or talking to him. He retains the persona of a tough fighter. He can be seen surrounded by his shipmates in footage included in the devastating film The Day Israel Attacked America being carried off the USS Liberty on a stretcher.

We spoke for more than hour in the sweltering Texas heat in front of an auto parts store in Waco nearly 60 years after the fact. Jerry Ward described to me the horror of those hours under attack by our ally.1 He described how he and his surviving shipmates were ordered under threat of court martial and “worse” to never speak of the Israeli treachery. He described how it took a year and a half before he was able to leave the hospital, still unable to walk—i.e., unable to work. He described how it took thirty-seven years to get any kind of assistance at all from the government that had betrayed him. Thirty-seven years! Thirty-seven weeks would have been an unconscionable delay.

It is obvious to everyone except Christian Zionist dupes that the attack on the USS Liberty was intended to be a false flag event that would have been blamed on Egypt then used to manipulate us into attacking that country in the same way The Miracle of Two Airplanes, Three Skyscrapers 34 years later was used to manipulate gullible Americans into attacking Iraq. That’s why there could be no survivors of the attack on the Liberty.

But there were survivors; the Liberty did not sink, thanks to the heroic actions of the crew. Those men averted a war on behalf of poisonous, treacherous Judah against another country that, like Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Germany, Palestine, Serbia, and Iran posed zero threat to the United States and did nothing to us.

The men on the Liberty fought back against the enemies of humanity.

I asked Jerry Ward to come around to the other side of my RV. I wanted to show him another hero who fought back against the enemies of humanity.

Aaron Bushnell, too, fought back against the enemies of humanity. And he recognized exactly who they are, the level of their evil, and the complete unacceptability of their behavior for any decent human being alive on this planet. He saw that his people are complicit in genocide. He took his can of gasoline, and his matches, and he walked up to—not the White House, not the Pentagon—the Israeli Embassy, precisely the correct location. Knowing what he was about to do, he live-streamed what must have been a terrifying walk. And he addressed his final words to us, his people (you can see the agony in his face as he forced himself to go through with his plan) and he said, with Christ-like penetration into the human soul: many of us like to ask ourselves what we would have done during slavery. The answer is: you are doing it right now.

And then he doused himself with gasoline and lit the match and forced his people to look at our crimes—our cowardice—our venality—our submission to evil. We are slaughtering children y’all. Free Palestine.

The New York Times, the authoritative mouthpiece for the genocidal criminals who rule us, ended their report on Aaron Bushnell’s sacrifice (they called it a suicide) with a clever hammer blow, which was enough to effectively neuter Aaron’s monumental act—a toll free number for those suffering from mental health problems.

You see, there isn’t anything mentally unhealthy about the “most powerful country in the world” slaughtering children for the wilderness slaughter-god. We are moving toward more slaughter in Iran and, soon, the slaughter-god will rampage across North America. All of that, in the view of the New York Times and the sheep who read it, is considered healthy in our Satanic world.

But let me tell you, from the point of view of the world, from history, from humanity, and from any real God: Aaron Bushnell’s unbelievably courageous act that day makes him stand out as a beacon of sanity in this sea of treason, corruption, stupidity, false religions, and the blood of the innocent.

There are only about 50 survivors of the attack on the Liberty left alive in the world. It is absolutely amazing I happened to run into one of them in Waco where I have been stuck for over a week, now—in Texas, the heart of the evil scourge of Christian Zionism. I want to invite Mr. Ward to tell you the story he told me yesterday. Maybe it will choke you up, as it did me.

I want to use this RV and Aaron’s sacrifice and Jerry Ward’s story to help with the effort to make us realize the utter immorality of our support for Israel. I think there are more of us involved in this effort than many realize, but it has to stop by any means necessary. Yes, it will require sacrifice, but it has to stop. Each and every one of us has to say, with Aaron, I will no longer be complicit in genocide.

https://craignelsen.substack.com/p/in-a-parking-lot-in-waco-texas-i