Thread by @RBrulin

In 1981 two @YediotAhronot journalists investigated remarkable story: senior @IDF officers had created & were running #terrorist group that was behind bombings in Lebanon.
Israeli military censor killed story
Terrorist campaign continued for years
THREAD
mondoweiss.net/2019/10/it-is-…

The 2 journalists are Yigal Sarna and Anat Tal-Shir. They worked for Yediot Ahronot. The existence of this story (& of the censor's decision to kill it) was mentioned by David Remnick in his profile of Meir Dagan for the @NewYorker in 2012:

Remnick's piece is here: newyorker.com/magazine/2012/… A few days later, on the blog of
@972mag , Noam Sheizaf mentioned Remnick's story and quoted Sarna as agreeing that "the censorship [on these stories] has been on for years. Horrifying things were done there, not just planned"

Sheizaf's story is here: 972mag.com/what-covert-op…
In 2016, in Haaretz, Michael Oren wrote yet another profile of Meir Dagan where he referred to the same story, and added a number of remarkable details about this secret operation

As Oren put it, an Israeli officer claimed that the IDF was, "under cover of the Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners," (FLLF) secretly conducting a series of "deadly strikes" in Lebanon, including strikes that had killed civilians

The complaint reached the press, and the story was killed by the military censor. It also reached Prime Minister Begin, who, faced with an upcoming election, decided not to do anything about it. As Oren also explained, the complaint named several senior Israeli officials:

The four officials named were Raphael Eitan, the IDF chief of staff; Avigdor Ben-Gal, the head of Northern Command; his intelligence officer, Shlomo Ilya; and Meir Dagan.

The Haaretz story is here: haaretz.com/israel-news/.p…
Two years later, a book published in the US confirmed that the FLLF, a "terrorist" group that claimed responsibility for dozens of car bombings in Lebanon betw 1979 and 1983, was indeed created & ran by senior Israeli officials

The book is entitled "Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations." Its author is Ronen Bergman, a former journalist for Yediot Ahronot & now a reporter for @nytimes penguinrandomhouse.com/books/209254/r…

As I wrote at length in May 2018, this book described in great detail (over 5 pages) how the FLLF was set up by Dagan, Eitan and Ben-Gal in order to "sow chaos" in Lebanon while hiding Israel's hand in these attacks mondoweiss.net/2018/05/remark…

The book also reveals how, in 1981, Defense Minister Ariel Sharon used the FLLF to conduct "terrorist" bombings in Lebanon in order to provoke the PLO into using "terrorism," which would justify Israel's invasion of Lebanon as a response to... "terrorism"

Indeed, over a period of just two weeks, in late September / early Octobre 1981, the FLLF / Sharon conducted a series of "terrorist" car bombings that killed anywhere between 120 and 300 civilians, and wounded countless more

As I documented in one of my many Threads on the topic of the FLLF, several of these bombings were covered in the international press, including in the pages of the New York Times:

https://twitter.com/RBrulin/status/1179358000911458305

In the summer of 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon in the name of fighting the evil of "terrorism." Remarkably, while he was secretly conducting his own campaign of "terrorism," Sharon took to the pages of the @nytimes to make precisely such a case: nytimes.com/1982/08/29/opi…

In that OpEd, Sharon insisted that what separates Israel from the Palestinians is that the former never targets civilians, indeed makes every effort to avoid civilian casualties, a policy that "stands in vivid contrast to the P.L.O.'s practice of attacking only civilian targets."

To repeat: When Sharon wrote this OpEd, he had been using the FLLF as a cover to conduct car bombings against purely civilians targets for more than a year! During that time, the FLLF bombs killed hundreds of civilians. And they would continue to do so until the end of 1983.

It is difficult to ascertain with any precision how many civilians lives this Israeli "terrorist" campaign claimed. Still, a few points should be highlighted. First, over a dozen attacks are included in the "terrorism databases" compiled by RAND and START

Several attacks mentioned in one database are not included in the other however. And a comprehensive analysis of press reports from that time period make quite clear that both RAND and START widely undercount the number of attacks by the FLLF.

In a RAND report from April 1983, a few FLLF attacks that took place in September 1981 are mentioned. The death toll for these attacks was around 120. By comparison, that same RAND report notes that in 1980 and 1981 combined Palestinian "terrorists" killed 16 civilians.

In October 1981, Fred Schiff, a journalist for UPI who reported from Beirut, wrote that during the preceding 2 weeks as many as 308 people had been killed by the FLLF bombs. upi.com/Archives/1981/…

Finally, in October 1983 Lee O'Brien wrote in MERIP that, based on media accounts from the French and Arabic press in Lebanon, the number of civilians killed by the FLLF between 1979-1983 was undeniably in the hundreds, with countless more wounded merip.org/1983/10/campai…

Recently several activists in the area have done some tremendous work putting together more precise lists of attacks claimed by the FLLF (or attacks in which members of the FLLF were likely involved): see :

https://twitter.com/RBrulin/status/1327624915139375107?s=20

The FLLF "terrorist" campaign took place exactly as Israel was conducting an (ultimately very successful) "harsbara" campaign aimed at convincing the world (& esp the US) that its fight vs the Palestinians was a fight vs the evil of "terrorism," a moral fight that all should join

At the heart of this discourse was the following, and deeply essentialist, claim: Israel was the main victim of "terrorism" around the world, and never its perpetrator. The Palestinians were the main perpetrators of "terrorism" in the world, and never its victim.

As Ronen Bergman's book & his revelations about the FLLF car bombing campaign makes quite clear, this discourse was based on a lie. A lie that was protected by the Israeli censor when the decision was made, in 1980, to kill the story by Sarna and Tal-Shir.

Bergman's book was published nearly 3 years ago. It received rave reviews, and is a major bestseller. And yet, remarkably, the US press has remained fully SILENT, during these 3 years, about his revelations regarding the FLLF & this Israeli campaign of "terrorism" in Lebanon

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

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

Just 2 weeks ago, @reider Tweeted about an upcoming article in @YediotAhronot by @ronenbergman
. Reider was clearly shocked ("Jesus") at the revelation that Israel had planned to bomb a stadium in the heart of Beirut in order to kill Arafat.

https://twitter.com/reider/status/1326815743019782144?s=20

The operation described here was Operation Olympia. It is described in detail in Bergman's 2018 book. I wrote about that operation in my first article on the FLLF in 2018 &, as I tweeted to Reider, I did a long Thread about that Operation over a year ago:

https://twitter.com/RBrulin/status/1212429497351462912?s=20

The @YediotAhronot article about Operation Olympia is here (behind a paywall alas): ynet.co.il/articles/0,734…
I will write about this article at much greater length soon. But for now, here is one important take-away:

In this article, Bergman focuses solely on Olympia, that is to say an operation that WOULD have killed dozens, maybe hundreds of people, including countless civilians, BUT DID NOT because it was canceled at the last minutes by Israeli officials who had qualms about it.

What Bergman does NOT mention however, is all the OTHER FLLF operations that WERE secretly conducted by Eitan, Dagan & Sharon, were NOT stopped and DID kill hundreds of civilians in Lebanon between 1979-1983.

In fact, Bergman does not once mention the words "FLLF" in this article. The most remarkable revelation contained in his own book (again: senior Israeli officers created & ran a fake terrorist group that used car bombs & killed hundreds of civilians) has simply been erased here.

It should be noted that this silence might be explained by censorship: it is possible that Bergman is NOT allowed to write about the FLLF. This might be why his article does NOT mention how Sarna & Tal-Shir were censored back in 1981.

But the US system is different. There is no censorship. US journalists can & must critically assess Israel's practices. If "terrorism" is wrong, it is wrong regardless of the identity of its victims. And of its perpetrators.

Since 2018 I have asked countless journalists, pundits, members of think tank & "terrorism experts" about these revelations & about the absolute SILENCE with which they have been received in the US. As I document below, the answer has usually been: silence

https://twitter.com/RBrulin/status/1187153793135321088?s=20

As I have asked many times before: What would it take for the US media & US pundits to talk about Israeli #terrorism IF revelations that Eitan, Dagan & Sharon were directly, personally involved in a deadly car bombing campaign that killed hundreds of civilians IS NOT ENOUGH?

The discourse on terrorism is, & has always been, pure propaganda. It has served to justify violent, criminal policies that also happen to be profoundly counter-productive. The war on terrorism must end. It starts with deconstructing the discourse that has enabled it for too long

Update:

https://twitter.com/RBrulin/status/1367454972909084673?s=20

A THREAD on a variety of obstacles (military censorship in Israel, self-censorship in US media etc) that continue to make it near impossible to talk about Israeli state crimes & Israeli terrorism, & thus continue to prevent accountability for such crimes

https://twitter.com/RBrulin/status/1450835770722463749?s=20