The USS Liberty was an American spy ship, jointly crewed by sailors, and NSA personnel.
During the 1967 Arab-Israrli War, it happened to cruise within 20 miles of a Gaza coastal town called Al Arish, where the Israelis were massacreing 250 Egyptian prisoners. Fearful that the electronic eavesdropping equipment aboard the spy ship would pick up radio transmissions concerning the massacre, the Israeli high command ordered that the Liberty be sunk. To that end, several Israeli torpedo boats attacked the vessel.Failing to sink it, five Mirage fighter-bombers pounced. They too failed, but the combined attacks did tear out a large piece of the hull,and killed nearly 50 US sailors and NSA personnel, and wounded some 80 more.The Israelis called off further attacks when they learned that fighters from the USS Saratoga were en route. The Liberty, despite being severely damaged, managed to limp to a port in Malta. The Israeli government claimed it was all a case of mistaken identity.
The Liberty was eventually sold for scrap metal, and the Israelis would eventually pay reparations to the dead crew members families The whole episode was then swept under the rug, to the extent that most Americans nowadays have never heard of it.

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I had the distinct pleasure to correspond with Liberty officer and author James Ennes (he's one of "us" btw, that's how we became friends). He is a most warm and remarkable man. Ennes is regularly smeared as an anti-Semite for the "crime" of providing a truthful account of the attack on his ship and murder of his fellow shipmates. He was part of the group (as a member of The USS Liberty Veterans Assoc.) that filed a war crimes complaint against Israel for the attack, which was also ignored.

[ussliberty.org]