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Australia arrested two men connected to Islamic State, Mr. Khaled Khayat and Mr. Mahmoud Khayat, and then charged them with plotting to bring down a passenger jet, without getting into too many further details.

It would now seem that this was mostly due to an Israeli spy team codenamed ‘Unit 8200’.

Information from Israeli intelligence was transmitted to the Australian government, which has now confirmed the events as they were told by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin in a speech to US Jewish leaders in Jerusalem yesterday.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Israel's Elite Intelligence Unit Helped Foil ISIS Plane Bombing in Australia, Army Reveals <a href="https://t.co/KYpSQ4Rz9e">https://t.co/KYpSQ4Rz9e</a></p>— Magnus Ranstorp (@MagnusRanstorp) <a href="https://twitter.com/MagnusRanstorp/status/966560597134467072?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 22, 2018</a></blockquote>

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Mr. Netanyahu said: "The Israeli intelligence services thwarted the downing of an Australian plane, an unimaginable slaughter."

"This would have caused major disruption in global air transport, and this is only one of dozens of terrorist attacks we have foiled around the world."

Australia's Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton confirmed what the Israeli Prime Minister told his audience: "This Etihad flight was almost blown out of the sky and it would have resulted in hundreds of people losing their lives."

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/developing?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#developing</a> Israelis helped disrupt plot to blow up airliner over Australia. ISIS managed to send military grade explosive via air cargo before plot was foiled. Incident helped prompt emergency <a href="https://twitter.com/TSA?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@TSA</a> order in Jan to increase scrutiny on air cargo: <a href="https://t.co/QLjkLV3bKe">https://t.co/QLjkLV3bKe</a></p>— Kris Van Cleave (@krisvancleave) <a href="https://twitter.com/krisvancleave/status/966431953921732610?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 21, 2018</a></blockquote>

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"We are grateful for the assistance that Israel provided in that matter and we still have a very close relationship with them and many other partners."

Source:

http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/australasia/article/2134190/israel-spy-team-called-unit-8200-foiled-plot-bring-down