Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine

PFLP

12/12/2006

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, known as the PFLP was founded by George Habash, a member of the PLO. Dr. Habash would inspire some of the most gruesome terrorist acts in modern history. He would also train and promote "Carlos the Jackal," an animal whose life we will examine up close and personal.

The PFLP began life as a Marxist organization and over time became Muslim. Like the PLO, the PFLP was an outgrowth of the Arab League. As such Habash's organization was originally called the Arab National Movement. It was formed in Lebanon, where George Habash had studied medicine at the American University in Beirut.

The ANM formed underground branches in Libya, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. In June 1967, the ANM merged with Youth for Revenge, the Palestinian Liberation Army, and Ahmed Jibril's Syrian-backed Palestine Liberation Front to form the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

By early 1968, under Dr. Habash's leadership, the PFLP trained several thousand terrorists, most of them Islamic jihadists in bases in Syria and Jordan. And they did not let this training go to waste. The timeline which follows is punctuated with horrid acts of PFLP terrorism. Their bloody hands would soon reach across the world.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the PFLP conducted a series of high-profile terrorist attacks around the world, pioneering the use of airplane hijackings to bring attention to their uncivil and murderous nature. In 1970, the group hijacked four commercial airliners, forcing them to land in Jordan, and eventually blowing them up after evacuating the hostages. This attack led to the "Black September" massacre of tens of thousands of Palestinians in refugee camps by the Jordanian King Hussein in 1970. The dictator expelled all Palestinian organizations from Jordan and created a mass exodus of refugees into Lebanon - ultimately destroying that nation.

In the early 1970s, George Habash's deputy, Wadi Haddad, was recruited by the KGB as an agent. The USSR became a significant money and arms supplier to the PFLP. It was during a time that Marxist Muslims controlled much of the Middle East.

In 1976, despite a PLO agreement to end terrorism outside of Israel, PFLP operatives and German Baader-Meinhof terrorists hijacked an airliner that was famously rescued by Israeli commandos in Entebbe, Uganda. That story, which features Idi Amin, the maddest Muslim murderer on the planet at the time, is featured in the 1976 Islamic Terror Timeline.

But the secular nature of the PFLP was its undoing. Over time, Islam became much more fundamentalist with the jihadists carrying the day. So the PFLP was forced to merge into Yasser Arafat's PLO in late 1968, becoming the organization's second largest faction behind Fatah. The PFLP partially withdrew from the PLO in 1974 but rejoined in 1981.

As an independent entity, the PFLP essentially ceased to exist after the First Intifada called by Fatah and the subsequent Oslo Accords. They became just another acronym to which Yasser Arafat could outsource terror without implicating himself. By the 1996 Palestinian elections, the PFLP was irrelevant because the fundamentalist Islamic HAMAS was winning converts at an alarming pace. Their ever-popular suicide bombings and Saudi/Kuwaiti social services had been irresistible.

What's ironic about the PFLP, and its stated desire to "liberate Palestine" from the Jews, is that there never would have been a Jewish state in Israel had the Islamic leadership (the Grand Mahdi (also known as the Mufti) of Jerusalem) not sided with the Nazis. He cut a deal with Adolf Hitler to supply Muslims for service in the Satanic order of the SS, so long as Hitler agreed to prevent Jews outside of Germany from leaving those countries. This action doubled the Holocaust death toll. As a consequence, the world (with the Islamic fiefdoms voting against and the UK abstaining) voted to establish the state of Israel.

George Habash, the PFLP's founder was known as "al-Hakim," meaning the Doctor or Sage. He was born in 1926 in Lydda, in today's Israel. His family, Greek-Orthodox merchants, heeded the Arab League's call to flee the new state of Israel in 1948 so that Muslims could wipe out Jews more easily during the Israeli War of Independence. Habash fled to Beirut, where he studied medicine. Inspired by the Lyon of Egypt, the Marxist Muslim dictator Nasser, Habash believed that pan-Arab unity was the key to the confiscation of Israel from the Jews. This led him to create the Marxist Muslim Popular Front to Liberate Palestine in 1967.

As secretary-general of the PFLP, Habash supported the PLO in 1970 while the Jordanian government was murdering Palestinians by the thousands - so much for Arab unity. The Sage also worked with the PLO in the destruction of Lebanon during the Lebanese unCivil War. But Dr. George violently opposed the PLO-sponsored Oslo Accords, forever dividing Arafat and Habash.

PFLP member, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, known around the world as Carlos the Jackal, was one of the most famous modern terrorists. His career took him from South America to the Middle East, Europe and Africa. He was implicated in some of the most gruesome and effective terrorist attacks in the 20th century. His story is detailed in earlier timeline segments. Somewhere along the way, the Marxist murderer became a Muslim murderer. The Jackal converted to Islam and has since written a book on Islam in which he praises Osama bin Laden and 9/11.

Another PFLP heavyweight, albeit briefly, was Mustafa al-Zibri, also known as "Abu Ali Mustafa." He assumed control of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in May, 2000, when George Habash retired. He was killed in an Israeli rocket attack in August, 2001. In retaliation for his death, the PFLP assassinated Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi.

Ahmed Sa'dat became the PFLP's Secretary General after the death of Abu Ali Mustafa. He was arrested by the Palestinian Authority in 2002, suspected of involvement in the assassination of Israeli Minister Rehavam Zeevi. His arrest came after an intense series of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, as mediated by the United States and the United Kingdom. Israel wanted the PA to hand over Sa'dat for trial, but the PA refused. Eventually a compromise was reached where Sa'dat would be jailed in the West Bank with U.S. and U.K. supervision.

Another interesting PFLP player was Abdel Rahim Mallouh. Born in Jaffa in 1945, the would-be terrorist moved to Kuwait while he was a teenager to further his Islamic indoctrination. Mallouh joined his first "we hate Jews club" in Baghdad and then found the PFLP to his liking in the late 1960s.

Rahim Mallouh claimed to have earned Jihad Credits when he was injured in the battle of Karama, a firefight between Israeli and PLO forces in March, 1968. However this is dubious, because the PFLP retreated from Israel before the skirmish. The Palestinian/Kuwaiti/Iraqi Mallouh was close to Mustafa al-Zibri, and was made military commander by him in 1972.

Because the Jordanian crown, like all Islamic dictators, only tolerate Palistinians so long as they are killing Jews, Rahim Mallouh was imprisoned by the Jordanian government in 1977. But when he was released and exported in 1978, he resumed his role as commander of PFLP forces, this time in Beirut. He requested and foolishly obtained permission from Israel to return to the West Bank in 1998. There he was wounded by a rubber bullet to his shoulder when Israeli troops fired on Palestinian rioters near Nablus, in March of the same year. Undeterred, Mallouh became head of PFLP's political department in 2000. After the death of Mustafa al-Zibri he ran for Secretary General of the PFLP but was defeated by Ahmed Sa'dat, becoming deputy Secretary General. He was arrested by Israeli forces on June 12, 2002.

In March 2006, citing security concerns, U.S. and U.K. security forces pulled out of the West Bank. Almost immediately, Israeli forces launched a raid on the jail in Jericho where Sa'dat was being held. The Israeli government was fearful that the newly elected HAMAS government would set him free. As such, the Israelis captured Sa'dat along with several other suspects in the murder, and brought him to Israel for trial. A second-generation PFLP member, Sa'dat has already spent ten years in Israeli prisons stemming from various terrorist charges. But his incarceration really doesn't matter, because the Marxist Muslim PFLP has been eclipsed in favor of salafi Islamist groups. You just can't beat religion when it comes to deceit, destruction, and death.