From Ian:
The KGB's Middle East Files: Palestinians in the service of Mother Russia
The KGB's Middle East Files: Palestinians in the service of Mother Russia
The genesis of the KGB’s developing ties with Palestinian terror organizations can be traced back to the end of the 1960s. The Soviet spy agency had code names for the different factions making up the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO): Fatah, the main movement led by Yasser Arafat, was dubbed "Kabinet" (cabinet); the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) received the name "Khutor" (which means a small village or a farm in Russian); the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) was named "Shkola" (a school in Russian); and Ahmad Jibril's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC) was dubbed "Blindage" (a fortified wooden military structure).Pro-Israel European alliance prepares to fight massive anti-Israel campaign in 2017
Arafat himself received the codename "Aref," but the Russians weren't particularly impressed with him at first. The Mitrokhin archive includes a memo that notes: "Aref only keeps promises that benefit him. The information he provides is very laconic and only serves to promote his own interests." The KGB also questioned many of the biographical details Arafat provided them with—his past as a combat soldier, his birth place, and more. Despite this, the KGB appointed a senior liaison officer named Vasili Samoylenko to "cultivate" the Fatah leader.
At the same time, the KGB planted an agent in the office of Hani al-Hassan, one of Arafat's close advisors, who later went on to become a senior official in the Palestinian Authority. This agent, who according to the Mitrokhin documents was codenamed "Gidar," was Rafat Abu Auon, who was recruited in 1968 and served in the KGB for many years henceforth.
But the interest in Fatah and Arafat was limited at that point. The Russians were a lot more interested in the PLO's other factions, particularly George Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
"One of the reasons for that is the Marxist–Leninist ideology of Habash's men," explains Prof. Christopher Andrew, one of the world's foremost historians researching intelligence services, whose second book about the Mitrokhin documents includes an extensive chapter on the KGB's activity in the Middle East.
Habash may have been the head of the PFLP, but it was his deputy, Dr. Wadi Haddad—a Christian Arab from Safed and a pediatrician like his boss—who had the brilliant operational mind. Haddad greatly improved upon a form of terrorism that was still in its infancy at the time—hijacking planes—and understood the power of international media coverage that such an attack garners.
He was the mastermind behind the hijacking of an El Al plane to Algeria in July 1968, which ended with the release of the passengers in return for 16 Palestinian prisoners and was considered by the Palestinians as a great success. (h/t Elder of Lobby)
A European organization dedicated to rallying support for Israel announced Thursday it would confront a massive anti-Israel campaign anticipated in 2017 with an initiative of its own.Seth J. Frantzman: In Mosul, With Our Real Allies
Speaking at an event at the Carlton Hotel in Tel Aviv, Swiss MP Corina Eichenberger-Walther said she had “reliable information that a network has been building itself since the middle of the past year already, a network planning a campaign throughout Europe and having started the necessary funding for that.”
The goal, she said, was to malign Israel during the year of the 50th anniversary of the Six Day War, in which the IDF captured east Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights.
Israel, she said, will be accused of “having oppressed Palestine for 50 years and occupying it contrary to international law” and be painted as an “apartheid state and unjust nation.”
Eichenberger-Walther chairs the European Alliance for Israel (EAI), of which the Israeli-Swiss Association, which hosted Thursday’s event alongside the Israel-Switzerland and Liechtenstein Chamber of Commerce, is a member. The new Swiss ambassador to Israel, Jean-Daniel Ruch, also participated.
Predicting that international organizations and governments would join the ranks of the anti-Israel network, the EAI decided to develop what Eichenberger-Walther called a “friendship campaign.”
According to the EAI, it already has some 30,000 members in 23 countries and plans to make the campaign prominent in those countries.
In a closed-door session with a small group of journalists, Eichenberger-Walther admitted that the EAI had a way to go in order to counter the force of the expected anti-Israel campaign, noting that the hostile movement comprised not just BDS supporters, but also church and humanitarian groups. (h/t Elder of Lobby)
The Kurdish region is also divided in its own politics. The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) has been in charge in Erbil throughout the war with ISIS, and it has been the face of Kurdistan abroad. But the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), historically the other major Kurdish party in Iraq, has played a key role in the war and its soldiers have served side by side with the KDP. The PUK has better relations with Iran than the KDP, as does the Gorran party, another large party in the KDP parliament. The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has bases in the region as well, a fact that has led Turkey to claim that it might intervene in Sinjar.The Far-Left is Tearing Itself Apart Over Syria
But with the possible exception of the small Islamist parties in Kurdistan, the trend among all the major parties is support for a more tolerant and open-minded society than is generally found in neighboring areas. Whereas much of the Middle East is trending towards increased sectarianism and religiosity, the Kurdish region is a reflection of more democratic and diverse values.
The war on ISIS has brought those values to the forefront in some ways, as Kurds stress their defense of minorities and women’s rights against the fanatics. But it has also postponed plans for independence and deeply harmed the economy. The international community’s support for Kurdistan has generally been part of an anti-ISIS coalition. But an emboldened Iraqi central government, fresh from successes in battle and with support from Iran, might try to roll back Kurdish gains. Just one lumbering U.S.-made battle tank is a military threat in the hands of a militia that seeks to use them against Kurds. The Obama administration made reduction of U.S. influence a centerpiece of its policy in the world, and its policymakers eschewed basing U.S. policies on shared values, preferring pragmatic diplomacy such as the Iran nuclear deal. The Kurds have been fighting and dying against extremism; the question is whether the next U.S. administration will forget their role or stand by them. That may include supporting independence when the Kurds choose to move towards it.
Today, as Syrian cities blaze, anti-imperialist writers continue to demand apologies from those who supported the liberation of Iraq, and react with jubilation to each new setback for intervention. The British former parliamentarian George Galloway, who once bent his knee before a genocidal Ba’athist tyrant in Baghdad, now appears on Iran’s Press TV to do the same before the genocidal Ba’athist tyrant in Damascus. Syrian exiles are ignored or denounced as collaborators with American imperialism just as Iraqi exiles were before them. Max Blumenthal and Electronic Intifada circulate lies about Syria in the service of a conspiratorial anti-Western narrative just as they have peddled lies about Israel in the service of that same narrative. Iran and Hezbollah and Assad are defended as an anti-imperialist “axis of resistance” to the Zionist entity. Russia’s actions are defended as a check on American power. And in the midst of all this mayhem, Iraqi and Syrian lives are no more than a talking point, and “democracy” nothing more than a cudgel with which to beat the West.
Anti-imperialism’s first and most serious error lies in the refusal to make a clear moral distinction between democracy and dictatorship, and therefore between liberty and tyranny. And in the blasted landscapes of Syria’s smashed population centers, the anti-imperialist Left’s professed concern for Arab life, which enjoyed such undeserved currency in the wake of Iraq, has finally been exposed as a squalid lie.
What divides the Left over Syria is what previously divided the Left over Iraq and the Balkans, and it is the anti-totalitarians, not the anti-imperialists, who have been the Syrian people’s most consistent advocates. The same coalition of liberal hawks and neoconservatives that supported the liberation of Iraq now support intervention in Syria for the same reasons. For activists hitherto nourished on an anti-imperialist worldview that holds the West responsible for all the world’s ills, this will take some getting used to. But by now it ought to be obvious that it is pointless to expect support for a democratic struggle from those who do not understand the value of democratic freedoms.









