aka Arab Revolutionary Brigade; Black June; Black September; Fatah Revolutionary Council

The Palestinian terrorist group Abu Nidal Organization (ANO) was the best-organized, best-funded, and most active terrorist network of the late 1970s and 1980s.

Sabri al-Banna, better known by his nom de guerre Abu Nidal (meaning “Father of Struggle”), founded the ANO in 1974. Previously a high-ranking member of Yasir Arafat's Fatah, a part of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), al-Banna broke with that group in 1974 over what he perceived to be its abandonment of armed struggle for Palestinian liberation in favor of political settlement. Both al-Banna and the ANO have been influenced by the ideology of the Ba'th party, which called for the unification of the Arab peoples into a single state. The ANO saw the elimination of Israel as a necessary precursor to Arab unity and hoped that fighting a common enemy (the ...