USS Liberty conspiracy theorists love to trot out a certain Haaretz article with the sensational headline:
"'But Sir, It’s an American Ship.' 'Never Mind, Hit Her!' When Israel Attacked USS Liberty..."
as evidence that even the Israelis themselves admit that the attacking IDF pilots knew the ship was American and were ordered to attack it despite their protests.
But has anyone actually read this Haaretz article? X abounds with screen shots of the article's lead-in containing this quote, but none go further than this image, which has now become something of a kooktroid meme.
A reading of the article does tell a different story. It turns out that the basis for the lead-in is actually a mention of a BOOK which features the recollections of one Dwight Porter - it doesn't contain any attack recordings or transcripts thereof, and the Haaretz lead-in quote, "But sir...!" appears to be solely based on Porter's remembrances:
haaretz.com/us-news/2017-07-…
[...
A new book published in May in the United States (its authors include several survivors of the attack) promises that “the truth is being told as never before and the real story revealed.” The 302 pages of “Remember the Liberty!: Almost Sunk by Treason on the High Seas” include quite a number of documents, testimonies, arguments and information that were gathered in the subsequent 50 years.
[...]
...the new book quotes a story reported by former U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Dwight Porter, who recounted a conversation between an Israeli pilot and the Israel Air Force war room, which was allegedly picked up by an NSA aircraft and inadvertently cabled to CIA offices around the world...
Israeli pilot to IDF war room: This is an American ship. Do you still want us to attack?
IDF war room to Israeli pilot: Yes, follow orders.
Israeli pilot to IDF war room: But sir, it’s an American ship - I can see the flag!
IDF war room to Israeli pilot: Never mind; hit it.
...]
The problem with this is that the ACTUAL published transcript of the attack recordings contain no such exchange, and, in fact, show that the attacking IDF pilots were ordered to break off the attack when they began reading English letters off the ship's hull back to their controllers (see image). In fact, excerpts of the actual audio recordings which match these published transcripts have appeared in documentaries made by Al Jazeera and the LVA-sanctioned documentary, "Sacrificing Liberty".
How the makers of these documentaries got access to the full attack recording is unknown, but what is clear is that the IDF pilots never once identified the ship as American and attacked in on the basis that it was an Egyptian war ship.
And then they began to realize their mistake, they were ordered to withdraw, which they immediately did.