Thread by @RBrulin

40 Years Ago Today
December 31, 1981
Lebanon. A packed stadium. Bombs are positioned where PLO leaders will be seated. Bigger bombs are outside, ready to kill panicked survivors
This is Olympia 2, one crazy operation in the Greatest Terrorist Campaign You Never Heard About
THREAD

On Jan 1, PLO will celebrate anniversary of its founding. Defense Minister Ariel Sharon sees opportunity: get rid of entire leadership in one fell swoop. On Dec 20, agents recruited by Meir Dagan place remotely controlled explosive devices in the stadium. But that's not all 2/

A secret Israeli unit has 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 (more about the FLLF below) will drive & park the vehicles in front of the stadium. 3/

The vehicles will “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 a Northern Command officer, death & destruction are expected to be “of unprecedented proportions, even for Lebanon” 4/

This is a very secret operation. But word of it gets leaked to General Saguy & Deputy DM Zippori, who take the matter to Prime Minister Menachem Begin. 40 years ago today, on December 31, 1981, an emergency meeting is convened, just a few hours before the planned operation... 5/

At the meeting, Sharon, Ben-Gal & Dagan defend the operation: it represents a unique opportunity to get rid of the PLO once and for all!! Zippori & Saguy object, and note that there is a high likelihood that the Soviet Union Ambassador would be in the stadium. 6/

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” 7/

After hearing everyone, Begin “took the danger of a Russian threat seriously” and orders Sharon to abort the mission. Israel agents remove the bombs. As it turned out, Russian Ambass would not be in the stadium & Meir Dagan clearly regretted Begin’s decision to abort 8/

Years later he said: “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.” 9/

Everything we know about Olympia (&all quotes above) come fm @ronenbergman “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 this here: 10/ mondoweiss.net/2018/05/remark…

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 11/

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 12/

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 13/

These bombings were repeatedly covered in the US press at the time, including on the Front Page of the New York Times (by Thomas Friedman & others) or the Washington Post. I wrote about this in a number of Threads, for example this one 14/

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 15/

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 16/

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. 17/

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: 18/

https://twitter.com/RBrulin/status/1331610105515798528?s=20

Because of this act of censorship, the Israeli people remained unaware that several of the most senior IDF officers (&, later, Sharon, the Defense Minister!) were engaged in a deadly terrorist campaign. And the FLLF car bombs continued to kill & maim for 2 more years 19/

Crucially, 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 20/

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 21/

Ariel Sharon's OpEd can be read here: nytimes.com/1982/08/29/opi…… 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 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 23/

I have written about this silence for nearly 4 years. 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 (his NYT colleague!) revelations 24/

https://twitter.com/RBrulin/status/1092431185056288769?s=20

In November 2020, @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: 25/

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

I wrote to @reider , told him about my many Threads about Olympia & Bergman's revelations in general. The @YediotAhronot article about Operation Olympia is here (behind paywall alas). It is remarkable for what it says... and does NOT say: 26/ ynet.co.il/articles/0,734…

In this article, Bergman goes into great detail about Operation Olympia. In fact, this article is barely distinguishable from the pages devoted to this operation in the book itself. But Bergman is silent about a central aspect of Olympia: 27 /

Bergman does not once mention the words "FLLF" in this article. The entire focus is on Olympia, an operation that WOULD have killed countless people, including many civilians, BUT DID NOT because it was canceled at the last minutes by Israeli officials who had qualms about it 28/

What Bergman does NOT mention however, is all the OTHER FLLF operations that WERE secretly conducted by Eitan, Dagan, Ben-Gal and Sharon, operations that were NOT stopped and DID kill hundreds of civilians in Lebanon between 1979-1983 29/

The most remarkable revelation in his own book (senior Israeli officers created & ran #terrorist group that used car bombs & killed 100s of civilians) has simply been erased. Remarkably, this is EXACTLY the pattern that the US media has followed when reviewing Bergman's book 30/

As I wrote back in May 2018, this is reminiscent of Noam Chomsky's concept of "worthy and unworthy victims" (where "worthiness" is determined by the extent to which reporting on specific victims will conform to or contradict the official narrative) mondoweiss.net/2018/05/remark… 31/

It should be noted that Bergman's silence about these revelations from his own book might be explained by censorship: it is possible he is NOT allowed to write about FLLF. This might be why neither his article nor his book mention that Sarna & Tal-Shir were censored in 1981 32/

But of course: There is NO CENSORSHIP in the US. Since 2018 I have asked countless journalists to explain how exactly they came to the conclusion that revelations that very senior Israeli officers were personally engaged in a terrorist car bombing campaign was NOT newsworthy 33/

I never got an explanation. To make sense of this, I did Thread on variety of possible explanations (incl. self-censorship etc) for US media's absolute refusal to talk about Israeli terrorism & thus to seriously interrogate the worst GWOT's practices 34/

https://twitter.com/RBrulin/status/1448272497393164296?s=20

That last point is, I think crucial: what is at stake here is not simply historical truth. Not simply that Israeli citizens should have the right to know what very senior Israeli officers did, in secret, in their name. That they should know why that 1981 story was censored 35/

What is at stake is not simply that of course that the hundreds of Palestinian and Lebanese victims of this extraordinarily deadly terrorist campaign DESERVE to know the truth, deserve to see see that truth OFFICIALLY ACKNOWLEDGED by Israel 36/

What is at stake is ALSO that as long as we continue to erase the undeniable fact that "we" (the US, Israel, France etc) have used terrorism too, we will be UNABLE to get out of the destructive, never-ending cycle of violence & counter-violence, terrorism & counter-terrorism 37/

That is so because silences about our terrorism BLIND us to central fact: we would NEVER accept arguments about legitimacy of use of force, of bombings, drones & targeted killings IF these arguments were made by those who are victims of OUR terrorism 38/

https://twitter.com/RBrulin/status/1474013424157921284?s=20

We must find a way out of deadly cycle of "terrorism" & "counter-terrorism." ONLY way we will do so is by ending silence about "our" (US, ISR, France etc) "terrorism" & by realizing that DISCOURSE on "T" (& on our uses of force v "T") is pure ideology & profoundly destructive
END

Note: this thread focuses on Israel & the hypocrisy of the discourse of terrorism as it relates to Israel/Palestine. But of course the problem is MUCH broader than this: see this interview w/ @fails_when : carnegie-mec.org/diwan/85878

There is so much more to be said about these revelations, about silence about them in US media & about what that silence shows about role that media has played & continues to play in ensuring that the discourse of terrorism remains unchallenged. Let’s end with one more example:

In August 1980, there was an assassination attempt ion against Gunther Dean, the US Ambassador to Lebanon. Dean was in favor of negotiating with the PLO. And could be very critical of Israel. The attackers who ambushed Dean’s motorcade used light anti tank weapons (LAWs.)

After attack, Lebanese intelligence services found empty canisters for these weapons. Dean had them traced: a few years earlier these weapons had been sold by the US to…. Israel. Dean, till the day he died (last year) remained convinced that Israel had tried to kill him.

In his autobiography, Dean wrote that he had concluded, after years of investigating, that Israel had done so in collaboration with militias in Lebanon. This is why this is relevant here: in 1980, the assassination attempt was claimed by a mysterious group named… the FLLF!!

Bergman makes no reference to Dean’s assassination attempt in his book. But he conclusively demonstrates that the FLLF was created & ran by Israeli officers! I wrote about this in May 2018, & called on US journalists to investigate. Nothing happened…:

https://twitter.com/RBrulin/status/1001815647842652161?s=20

Note: This column by Gideon Levy might be a watershed moment, might mark the day when some US journalists felt that they had some “cover” to FINALLY write critically about the discourse of terrorism, and about Israeli terrorism…. Or not…

https://twitter.com/RBrulin/status/1478103165685932034?s=20