Israeli researchers are claiming that president of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas was once a Soviet spy.
Researchers at the Hebrew University’s The Truman Institute say they uncovered a document showing that Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas was a Soviet spy during the Cold War.
The document was allegedly smuggled out of the Soviet Union in the 1980’s by a former KGB archivist who’d become disillusioned with Soviet repression, according to a New York Times story published yesterday.
The document, which names Abbas as having been a “mole” cultivated by the KGB in 1983 in Damascus, Syria, was handed over to British intelligence agents over 20 years ago, and now lives in an archive in the United Kingdom, where the Hebrew University researchers located it and sent it to Israel’s Channel 1. The channel broadcast a report on the document last night.
Document says Abbas's KGB code name was "mole," which just seems a bit too cliche. Why not just code name him "spy"? https://t.co/rteHwqrH3O
— Joshua Davidovich (@JMDavido) September 7, 2016
Mohammed al-Madani, a member of the Fatah's central committee told the left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz that the report was merely an effort to discredit Abbas. “This is another attempt to slander him,” al-Madani said.
Twitter users poked fun at the fact that Abbas’s code name was allegedly “mole.” “They couldn't have called him something subtle like SpyDude?” one user asked.
The Truman Institute—the Israeli think tank that dug up the document—says on its website that it’s devoted to “advancing peace” in the Middle East. But one of the researchers involved in publicizing the document told The New York Times that he’d publicized the document because he opposes the recent Russian efforts to broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinian leadership.
-HS
