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Dec 31, 1981: Tomorrow Beirut stadium will be bombed, PLO leadership decimated, Arafat dead. Along w/ countless civilians
This is the story of the kind of #terrorism we never hear about: where Palestinians are victims, not perpetrators. Israelis perpetrators, not victims
THREAD
This is the story of the kind of #terrorism we never hear about: where Palestinians are victims, not perpetrators. Israelis perpetrators, not victims
THREAD
On Jan 1, PLO would celebrate anniversary of its founding. Defense Minister Ariel Sharon saw opportunity to get rid of whole leadership in one fell swoop. In late Dec., agents recruited by Meir Dagan placed remotely controlled explosive devices in stadium. But that was not all
A secret Israeli unit had also prepared “three vehicles - a truck loaded with a ton and a half of explosives and two Mercedes sedans with 550 pounds each.” On Jan 1, members of the FLLF would drive & park the vehicles in front of the stadium.
The vehicles “would be detonated by remote control about a minute after the first bombs, when panic was at its height & survivors were trying to get away.” Acc to Northern Command officer, death & destruction were expected to be “of unprecedented proportions, even for Lebanon.”
Word about the secret operation was leaked to Gen Saguy & Deputy DM Zippori, who took the matter to Prime Minister Menachem Begin. An emergency meeting was convened on December 31, 1981. A few hours only before the planned operation.
At the meeting, Sharon, Ben-Gal & Dagan defended the operation, which represented a unique opportunity to get rid of the PLO once and for all. Zippori & Saguy objected, and noted that there was a high likelihood that the Soviet Union Ambassador would be in the stadium.
Later Saguy explained: "I told Begin it was impossible to kill whole stadium like that. What would happen next day after such massacre? Whole world would pile on top of us. It would make no difference if we never admitted responsibility. Everyone would know who was behind it.”
After listening to everyone, Begin “took the danger of a Russian threat seriously” and ordered Sharon to abort the mission. As it turned out however, the Russian Ambassador was not present in the stadium on that day, and Meir Dagan appeared to regret Begin’s decision to abort.
Years later he explained: “In the end it turned out that I was right & there was no Soviet ambass or any other foreign diplomat there.”“But what could we do?” he lamented. “The PM said abort, so we abort.There was a very complicated business afterward,getting the explosives out.”
Everything we know about Olympia (&all quotes above) come fm Ronen Bergman’s “Rise & Kill First,” book published in 2018 & based on first-hand accounts by Israeli officials involved in or who knew about the op at the time. I wrote about revelations here: https://mondoweiss.net/2018/05/remarkable-disappearing-terrorism/
Olympia 2 was canceled. However, Bergman’s book also reveals that the FLLF, the group that would have parked the car bombs in front of stadium, was created & run by senior Israeli officials & did conduct dozens of “terrorist” attacks that killed hundreds of civilians
Between 1979 and 1983, a mysterious group calling itself the Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners (FLLF) would call the media and claim responsibility for dozens of car bombings that killed hundreds of civilians.
Nobody knew who the FLLF were, but Palestinians & Lebanese leaders repeatedly insisted that the group was fictitious, and used by Israel to hide its hand. Israeli officials rejected such claims & insisted that the bombings were a form of “Arabs vs Arabs” violence.
These bombings were repeatedly covered in the US press at the time, at the times on the Front Page of the New York Times (by Thomas Friedman & others) or the Washington Post. I wrote about this in the following Thread: https://twitter.com/RBrulin/status/1179358000911458305?s=20
As Bergman’s book makes quite clear, the Palestinians were right all along. The FLLF was in fact a creation of very senior Israeli officers (Ben-Gal, Dagan and Eitan) and, after August 1981, would repeatedly be used by Ariel Sharon to sow chaos in Lebanon.
Remarkably, Bergman reveals that in late 1981 Ariel Sharon used the FLLF & its car bombs (ie "terrorism") to provoke the PLO into using "terrorism" against Israeli civilians, so that Israel would have an excuse (the fight against "terrorism"!!) to invade Lebanon.
Arafat saw the trap however, and for several months ensured that the PLO did not respond to Israel’s provocations. This was the context for Operation Olympia described above.
It also appears that, in 1980, two Israeli journalists did investigate the possibility that Israeli officials were behind the FLLF bombings. Their story was killed at the time by the Israeli military censor. I wrote about this here a few months ago: https://twitter.com/RBrulin/status/1331610105515798528?s=20
The FLLF "terrorist" campaign took place at the EXACT same time that Israeli officials (eg Benjamin Netanyahu) were engaged in a "hasbara" (propaganda) campaign to convince the world (esp the US) that it was waging a righteous war on the "evil terrorists" in Lebanon
Most remarkable of all perhaps? In August 1982, Ariel Sharon took to the pages of the NYT to denounce the absolute immorality of the "Palestinian terrorists." By then, he had, through the FLLF, been conducting his OWN murderous campaign of "terrorism" for one full year
Ariel Sharon's OpEd can be read here: https://nytimes.com/1982/08/29/opinion/gains-from-the-war-in-lebanon.html… Note that all the arguments at the heart of Israel's discourse on "terrorism" today are already present here ("they" are entirely evil, "we" only defend ourselves, "we" respect human life whereas "they" don't, etc…)
Bergman’s book was published in Feb 2018. It received raved reviews. Bergman was repeatedly interviewed & gave talks about his research. Yet his revelations about FLLF (ie about huge campaign of “terrorism” conducted by senior Israeli officials) have NOT BEEN MENTIONED ONCE since
I have written about this media silence for months: https://twitter.com/RBrulin/status/1079436735333969920?s=20… I have also highlighted the remarkable case of
@tomfriedman, who personally covered several FLLF bombings in 1983 &yet remains SILENT, to this day, about Bergman's revelations https://twitter.com/RBrulin/status/1092431185056288769?s=20
@tomfriedman, who personally covered several FLLF bombings in 1983 &yet remains SILENT, to this day, about Bergman's revelations https://twitter.com/RBrulin/status/1092431185056288769?s=20
I have also noted that Bergman's revelations appear to confirm accusations made by former US Ambassador to Lebanon Gunther Dean that Israel had been behind an attempt on his life in the summer of 1980: https://twitter.com/RBrulin/status/1001815647842652161?s=20
Many "terrorism experts" have praised Bergman's book here on twitter. Yet they have remained completely silent about his revelations about the FLLF. When I have asked them about this, they have answered me with (you guessed it) silence.
Or, sometimes, they have simply blocked me: https://twitter.com/RBrulin/status/1344295575135670273?s=20
Here is a link to an article I wrote on the central role that "terrorism experts" played in erasing the very existence of the FLLF "terrorist" campaign and, consequently, in constructing the discourse on "terrorism" : https://www.academia.edu/40448415/The_Front_for_the_Liberation_of_Lebanon_from_Foreigners_and_the_Erasure_of_Israeli_Terrorism_A_Case_Study_in_the_Role_of_Silences_in_the_Construction_of_Terrorism_
And, as I have noted before, the absolute silence about Israeli "terrorism" and Israel's ability to claim that it "of course has the right to defend itself & use force vs the evil terrorists" are intimately linked. I did a THREAD about this here: https://twitter.com/RBrulin/status/1212948096931565569?s=20
A few weeks ago Ronen Bergman published a long, detailed article in @YediotAhronot (in Hebrew) about Olympia. Just before the publication, a few journalists treated the story as a revelation (even though Olympia is described in Bergman's 2018 book): https://twitter.com/reider/status/1326815743019782144?s=20
I myself was VERY excited at the idea that Bergman, in Yediot, appeared to be ready to break the media silence about Israel's #terrorist campaign in Lebanon: https://twitter.com/RBrulin/status/1326947900627308544?s=20
Still, I remained weary: Olympia is a special case, an example of op that would have amounted to terrorism BUT that was canceled by the Israel leadership. Was the Yediot article really going to break silence about the countless ops that WERE implemented? https://twitter.com/RBrulin/status/1327233841174634496?s=20
First, I noticed that Haaretz had run a summary of the Yediot piece. It mentioned Olympia, but it said NOTHING about all the other FLLF operations that DID go ahead & killed HUNDREDS of civilians. Funny how that works.... https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-report-israel-planned-to-kill-arafat-plo-leadership-by-blowing-up-lebanese-stadium-1.9306439
But the worst was to come: Yediot piece is framed as story of Israelis who planned operation that could have killed countless innocents but were thankfully stopped by other Israelis. & it is SILENT about FLLF, ie about ALL operations that DID go ahead & killed 100s of civilians
This is truly remarkable: by far the most stunning revelation in Bergman's book is the one about the FLLF. After all, it clearly puts the lie to decades of discourse about terrorism, about Israel's absolute opposition to terrorism, about Israel's claim to the moral high ground
In his countless media appearances since his book was published in 2018 Ronen bergman, who now writes for the NYT, has never once mentioned these revelations. He has never been asked about them. And, with this long article about Olympia, he continues to be silent.
This is especially remarkable since his article was published in Yediot, ie the very newspaper that was about to break the story about the role of Dagan, Eitan & Ben-Gal in the FLLF's terrorist campaign back in 1980-81, a story that was killed by the Israeli military censor
Is there still a ban on this story in Israel today? Are Israeli newspapers still unable to publish anything about the role that several IDF officers played in this extraordinarily deadly terrorist campaign? But even so: how can the silence of the AMERICAN media be explained?
Rights to Rise & Kill First were bought by @HBO . I wonder: will the series focus on the FLLF operation? Or will it stick to usual narrative, where Palestinians are perpetrators, never victims, and Israelis victims, never perpetrators, of terrorism?
I'd love to be wrong, but...
I'd love to be wrong, but...
Yesterday I did a Thread about Pollard's role in giving Israel info that was used to bomb the PLO headquarters in Tunis in 1985. For countless people around the world, that bombing (about 70 people killed, many of them civilians) WAS an act of terrorism https://twitter.com/RBrulin/status/1344384074786500609?s=20
Defining terrorism is of course tricky. eg: should the term be used to refer to acts by state agents or armed forces of a state OR should it be limited to acts by non-state actors? If the latter, what level of support/sponsorship by a state is enough to make an act a state act?
As I have written repeatedly, for decades the US has provided very contradictory answers to these questions based on the contexts or forums in which these questions were asked. See for example: https://www.e-ir.info/2018/01/25/constructing-terrorism-contradictory-discourses-of-the-reagan-years/
But this is PRECISELY why the FLLF case is so important: it is NOT a complicated case. This is about car bombs. Often vs civilians targets. In fact, since the 1980s a number of bombings claimed by the FLLF have been included in the main "terrorism databases" (RAND, START etc...)
Said differently: contrary to the bombing of Tunis, there is actually NO argument that I can think of that one could use to argue that the FLLF bombings were not acts of terrorism. By any definition of terrorism, Eitan, Dagan, Ben-Gal & Sharon WERE undoubtedly terrorists.
That these Israeli officers did ALSO, undeniably, fight vs & try to defeat Palestinians who themselves WERE terrorists is simply irrelevant:
These Israeli leaders were BOTH fighting enemies who at times used terrorism AND engaged in a campaign that at times amounted to terrorism
These Israeli leaders were BOTH fighting enemies who at times used terrorism AND engaged in a campaign that at times amounted to terrorism
This of course is the big lie at heart of discourse on terrorism. It is essentialist. It makes broad claims about "them" (the evil, immoral terrorists) & "us" (the pure enemies of the immoral terrorists.) On this, see the great Edward Said back in 1986: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/essential-terrorist/
Needless to say (I hope), the hypocrisy & mendacity at the heart of the discourse is not exclusive to Israel. Here is an article I wrote about US support for death squads in Central America as an obvious example of state sponsored terrorism: https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/08/20/terrorism-is-terrorism/
In this article I was critical of US terrorism experts & esp of Bruce Hoffman for excluding US support for such actors from their work on terrorism. Hoffman's was not to engage with my arguments but to block me! Hoffman is editor in chief for a major terrorism studies journal...
I also wrote about US policies in Guatemala and how declassified documents show that starting in the 1960s several CIA, USAID & State Dept analysts were aware that US weapons & training were going to death squads AND called them "terrorists": https://www.academia.edu/12999739/Bringing_the_States_Discourses_Back_In_The_United_States_and_Terrorism_in_Guatemala
Over the last few months a number of activists & researchers have been diving into archives in order to document more exhaustively the FLLF (ie Israel's) bombing campaign. This great (& still evolving) database is the result: https://dl.orangedox.com/qxw30L
