How the PLO became the richest liberation movement on earth | WHO KILLED THE PEACE? Part 2

History Onion · Part 2 · 2:59

Every payday in 1970s Kuwait, up to five percent of Palestinian workers' salaries went to the PLO — deducted at source by Kuwait itself. Add the oil kings' quarter-billion a year and a conglomerate that began with six sewing machines, and a stateless movement became the richest liberation movement in history. How rich? When US investigators tried to count it in 1995, the books never opened. Part 2. Follow for Part 3 — Proven or Debunked: Moscow, the billions, and the CIA, tested against the evidence. Numbers & sources: the 3.5–7% "liberation tax" (~5% in Kuwait, deducted at source by the Kuwaiti government) and the PLO's revenue streams and expense categories — US GAO report NSIAD-96-23 (1995). The 1969 "voluntary" cable — US State Department telegram 62432, 23 April 1969 (FRUS 1969–76 vol. XXIV). Why the Arab states paid — US National Security Council country paper on Saudi Arabia, 21 November 1969, same volume. The ~$250M/yr Arab-state share — the 1978 Baghdad summit allocations and PLO finance chairman Jaweed al-Ghussein's account to AP. Samed's ~$40M gross in 1980 — Christian Science Monitor, October 1981. Roughly three-quarters of the Lebanon-era budget went to social and administrative programmes — Rex Brynen, "Sanctuary and Survival" (1990). Palestinians as nearly half of Kuwait's public-sector workforce in 1965 — Shafeeq Ghabra, "Palestinians in Kuwait" (1987). The "$10 billion" claim — a February 1994 briefing by Britain's National Criminal Intelligence Service, a domestic police body with no terrorism remit, whose author declined to give the GAO any supporting data; British intelligence proper declined to meet the auditors at all. The $3–5 billion figure is al-Ghussein's, given after he left the post. Some scenes are cinematic reconstructions of documented events. All quotes, dates, and sources are historically verified.