@Shoshana51728 Celebrated!

"Thirty-one years before the 9/11 terror attacks, Haddad had already managed to carry out an attack that included the simultaneous hijacking of several jet airliners. This attack was one of the triggers of Jordan’s big confrontation against terror organizations—known as “Black September”—and changed the course of history in the Middle East. Later, the Russian weapons were used to murder Americans in Lebanon and Israelis in Europe and to blow up oil reservoirs. They were also used in an attempt to sink an Israeli tanker in the Red Sea and were meant to be used in a planned large-scale attack on the Israel Diamond Exchange in Ramat Gan. Several of the guns from those crates were also used by the hijackers of an Air France plane to Entebbe in June 1976. This shipment was yet another link in the long chain of deep cooperation between the Eastern Bloc’s intelligence services, led by the KGB, and Palestinian terror organizations. Classified KGB documents reveal that the Soviet spy agency aided Haddad and his men by providing them with training, funding and arms, as well as help in the preparations for specific attacks. In other instances, the KGB itself initiated attacks that were carried out by Haddad and his men. And Haddad’s terror organization was not the only one operated by Moscow. *** Chapter one of “The KGB’s Middle East Files,” a special series of articles which brings to light information mined from some 6,000 KGB documents smuggled to the West in the early 1990s, recounted the story of how Vasili Mitrokhin used his senior position at the spy agency’s archive to copy the top secret documents—with the Soviets being none the wiser. Special ties were also forged between the KGB and the Western Sector—a Fatah unit under the command of Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad), who was responsible for the 1975 Savoy Hotel attack and the 1978 Coastal Road massacre, among others. The Mitrokhin documents only reach 1986, but according to other sources, the KGB’s contact with Abu Jihad continued until he was assassinated by Israel in 1988. In 1973, the KGB decided to change its attitude towards Yasser Arafat and his Fatah faction as the Palestinian organization’s standing in the international arena strengthened. The KGB’s operational and intelligence cooperation with the PLO was mainly conducted through Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad), who was responsible for countless terror attacks against Israel. Abu Iyad, whose codename was “Kochubey,” received a significant amount of weapons, intelligence, assistance and training for his men from the KGB. In return, the KGB directed some of Fatah’s operations and received “information about Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Algeria.” In other words, the Fatah spied on Arab nations for the KGB. Abu Iyad was highly valued by the KGB, unlike some of his men. KGB specialists who were training Fatah men in Moscow met with quite a few difficulties and complained to their superiors that many of the cadets were characterized by “low standards, alcoholism and sexual offenses.” Out of the 194 Fatah men who were sent to train in the USSR, 13 were expelled and sent back home. According to a senior official at the KGB’s academy, the number of expelled would’ve been closer to half of the cadets had they been required to meet the same standard as ordinary cadets. Infiltrating the Mukataa The two most important KGB recruitments from the PLO during the second half of the 1970s were of people who still play a major role in Palestinian politics today. According to the Mitrokhin documents, the KGB had an agent at the heart of the PLO whose file describes him as “a member of the PLO’s executive committee and a member in the politburo of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP).” This was none other than Yasser Abed Rabbo, one of the top officials in the Palestinian Authority, who held a number of senior roles in the PA over the years, was a chief negotiator in talks with Israel, and one of the architects of the Geneva Initiative. Abed Rabbo was fired by Mahmoud Abbas when the latter was elected, but stayed on as a senior advisor to the Palestinian president. 📷Yasser Abed Rabbo (Photo: AFP) For the most part, the Mitrokhin documents don’t provide details about the information with which the agents provided the KGB, instead merely stating the fact that they were agents. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note the way Abed Rabbo is defined in the documents—as an “informant,” who is ranked below “agent” in the level of importance to the KGB. This means that Abed Rabbo’s contact with the KGB was done without the knowledge of the organization he belonged to. The second and more important KGB recruitment was of the agent “Krotov” (mole), who was described in the KGB’s files as “born in 1935, Palestinian, prominent figure both politically and socially. Lives in Syria, a member of the PLO Central Council.” As reported on Channel 1, based on research conducted by Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez, agent “Krotov” is