Lod Airport Massacre

Lod Airport massacre
The attack site
Location	Lod Airport outside Tel Aviv, Israel
Coordinates	31°59′42.4″N 34°53′38.65″E / 31.995111°N 34.8940694°E / 31.995111; 34.8940694
Date	May 30, 1972 12:04 – 12:28
Attack type	Shooting spree
Weapons	Kalashnikov assault rifles and grenades
Deaths	26 (+ 2 attackers)
Non-fatal injuries	79 (+ 1 attacker)
Perpetrators	Three members of the Japanese Red Army (guided by PFLP-EO)

The Lod Airport massacre was a terrorist attack that occurred on May 30, 1972, in which three members of the Japanese Red Army recruited by the Palestinian group called the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-External Operations (PFLP-EO), attacked Lod airport (now Ben Gurion International Airport) near Tel Aviv, killing 26 people and injuring 80 others. Two of the attackers were killed, while a third, Kōzō Okamoto, was captured after being wounded.

The dead comprised 17 Christian pilgrims from Puerto Rico, a Canadian citizen, and eight Israelis, including Professor Aharon Katzir, an internationally renowned protein biophysicist, head of the Israeli National Academy of Sciences, and a popular scientific radio show host, who was a candidate for the coming Israeli presidency, and whose brother, Ephraim Katzir, was elected President of Israel the following year instead.

Because airport security was focused on the possibility of a Palestinian attack, the use of Japanese attackers took the guards by surprise. The attack has often been described as a suicide mission, but it has also been asserted that it was the outcome of a larger operation (the particulars of which remain unpublicized) that went awry. The three perpetrators—Kozo Okamoto, Tsuyoshi Okudaira, and Yasuyuki Yasuda—had been trained in Baalbek, Lebanon; the actual planning was handled by Wadie Haddad (a.k.a. Abu Hani), head of PFLP External Operations, with some input from Okamoto. In the immediate aftermath, news magazine Der Spiegel speculated that funding had been provided by some of the $5 million ransom paid by the West German government in exchange for the hostages of hijacked Lufthansa Flight 649 in February 1972.