Salah Khalaf

As it reads on Wikipedia · 1 finding marked in the text · see twenty years of this article's openings

Salah Mesbah Khalaf (Arabic: صلاح مصباح خلف, romanized: Ṣalāḥ Maṣbāḥ Ḵalaf; IPA: [sˤa.laːħ misˤ.baːħ xa.laf]), also known as Abu Iyad (Arabic: أبو إياد, romanized: ʾAbū ʾIyād; IPA: [ʔa.buː ʔi.jaːd]) (31 August 1933 – 14 January 1991), was a Palestinian militant1 and the deputy chief and head of intelligence for the Palestine Liberation Organization. He was the second most senior official of Fatah after Yasser Arafat. The United States and Israel believed him to have been a founder of the Black September Organization. Suspected of having helped the CIA to break up Abu Nidal's so-called "Abu Nidal Organization", Khalaf was assassinated by a member of that organization in 1991. Palestinians, and many onlookers, generally believe Abu Nidal was responsible for his death. Some believe the order came from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

What the highlighted wording does

㉓ Reviewed in the sweep

Salah Khalaf, known as Abu Iyad, was the PLO's deputy chief and a founder of the Black September Organization. Through 2015 the opening said he had "already met Israel's most-wanted terrorist," and that he "became one of the foremost advocates for the terror campaigns conducted by PLO fighters and others during the early 1970s." Today the opening calls him "a Palestinian militant" and deputy chief of the PLO, with no mention of terror campaigns, and terror appears zero times in the opening though it survives nine times in the article. A reader today learns he was the PLO's deputy chief and intelligence head, and not that he was described as Israel's most-wanted terrorist or as a foremost advocate for terror campaigns.

the revision we audited ↗ the article today ↗

The same lead, over time

The article text above is from "Salah Khalaf" by Wikipedia contributors, reproduced unmodified under CC BY-SA 4.0. The highlights and numbered findings are ours: Shoresh, ilroot.com. Our copy of this lead was retrieved on 2026-06-20 and is held in our published data so the comparison survives any future edit.