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Lod Airport massacre
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The Lod Airport massacre was a terrorist attack that occurred on May 30, 1972, in which three members of the Japanese Red Army, on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, (PFLP) killed 24 people and injured 80 others at Tel Aviv's Lod airport (now Ben Gurion International Airport).
Because airport security was focused on the possibility of a Palestinian attack, the use of Japanese terrorists took the guards by surprise, and their commitment to a suicide mission simplified the planning.
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Encyclopedia
The Lod Airport massacre was a terrorist attack that occurred on May 30, 1972, in which three members of the Japanese Red Army, on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, (PFLP) killed 24 people and injured 80 others at Tel Aviv's Lod airport (now Ben Gurion International Airport).
Because airport security was focused on the possibility of a Palestinian attack, the use of Japanese terrorists took the guards by surprise, and their commitment to a suicide mission simplified the planning. Kozo Okamoto, Tsuyoshi Okudaira, and Yasuyuki Yasuda had been trained in Baalbek, Lebanon.
Attack
The men arrived at the airport aboard an Air France flight from Paris. Dressed conservatively and carrying slim violin cases, they attracted little attention. Entering the waiting area, they opened up their violin cases and produced Czech Vz 58 assault rifles with the butt stocks removed. Immediately afterwards, they began to fire indiscriminately at airport staff and visitors, killing twenty-four people and injuring seventy-eight others. The victims included sixteen Christian pilgrims from Puerto Rico, and professor Aharon Katzir, an internationally renowned protein biophysicist, whose brother, Ephraim Katzir, would be elected President of Israel the following year. Yasuda and Okudaira died at the scene, Yasuda from Israeli fire and Okudaira by his own hand—he had moved from the airport building onto the landing area, after firing at passengers disembarking from an El Al aircraft—and committed suicide using a grenade. Okamoto was severely injured but survived and was captured.
Aftermath
The Japanese public initially reacted with disbelief to initial reports that the perpetrators of the massacre were Japanese until a Japanese embassy official sent to the hospital confirmed that Okamoto was a Japanese national. Okamoto told the diplomat that he had nothing personal against the Israeli people, but that he had to do what he did because, "It was my duty as a soldier of the revolution." Okamoto then asked the diplomat, "Hasn't my father committed suicide yet?" (He had not). Okamoto was tried by Israeli courts and sentenced to life imprisonment in June 1972.
In the letter claiming official responsibility for the attack carried out by the Japanese Red Army, the PFLP referred to it as Operation Deir Yassin. This was to portray it as revenge for the 1948 Deir Yassin massacre by Jewish Irgun members. The letter also stated that the operation was carried out by the Squad of the Martyr Patrick Arguello. Patrick Arguello had been killed two years earlier, on September 6, 1970 on an Israeli El Al jet he had attempted to hijack together with PFLP member Leila Khaled.
Okamoto was released in 1985 with over a thousand other prisoners in an exchange for captured Israeli soldiers. He settled in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. He was arrested in 1997, but in 2000 was granted political refugee status in Lebanon. Four other JRA members arrested at the same time were extradited to Japan.
In June 2006, a legislative initiative by Puerto Rico Senator José Garriga Picó, Senate Project (PS) 1535, was approved by unanimous vote of both houses of the Legislative Assembly of Puerto Rico, making every May 30th "Lod Massacre Remembrance Day". On August 2, 2006, the Governor of Puerto Rico, Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, signed it into law as . The purpose of "Lod Remembrance Day" is to commemorate those events, to honor both those murdered and those who survived, and to educate the Puerto Rican public against terrorism. On May 30, 2007, the event was officially memorialized in Puerto Rico after 35 years.
On 8th July 1972 Ghassan Kanafani, Palestinian short story writer and spokesperson for the PFLP, was killed in retaliation for the attack. His niece also died in the Beirut car bomb.
Victims
The names of the US citizens of Puerto Rico murdered at the Lod Airport Massacre are:
- Reverend Angel Berganzo
- Carmela Cintrón
- Carmen E. Crespo
- Vírgen Flores
- Esther González
- Blanca González de Pérez
- Carmen Guzmán
- Eugenia López
- Enrique Martínez Rivera
- Vasthy Zila Morales de Vega
- José M. Otero Adorno
- Antonio Pacheco
- Juan Padilla
- Consorcia Rodríguez
- José A. Rodríguez
- Antonio Rodríguez Morales
The names of the Israeli citizens murdered at the Lod Airport Massacre are:
- Yoshua Berkowitz
- Zvi Gutman
- Aharon Katzir, brother of then Israeli president Ephraim Katzir
- Orania Luba
- Aviva Oslander
- Henia Ratner
- Shprinza Riegal
- Adam Zamir
The name of the Canadian citizen murdered at the Lod Airport Massacre is:
- Lonna Sabah
See also
List of massacres
Books
External links
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