Ma'alot massacre

Ma'alot massacre
Part of Palestinian insurgency in South Lebanon
The attack site
Location	Ma'alot, Israel
Coordinates	33°01′00.35″N 35°17′09.90″E / 33.0167639°N 35.2860833°E / 33.0167639; 35.2860833
Date	15 May 1974
Target	Netiv Meir elementary school
Attack type	Spree killing, hostage taking, school shooting
Deaths	31 Israelis (+ 3 attackers)
Non-fatal injuries	70 Israelis
Perpetrators	Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine

The Ma'alot massacre was a Palestinian terrorist attack that occurred in May 1974 and involved a two-day hostage-taking of 115 Israeli people which ended in the murders of over 25 hostages. It began when three armed members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) entered Israel from Lebanon. Soon afterwards they attacked a van, killing two Israeli Arab women while injuring a third and entered an apartment building in the town of Ma'alot, where they killed a couple and their four-year-old son. From there, they headed for the Netiv Meir Elementary School, where they took more than 115 people (including 105 children) hostage on 15 May 1974, in Ma'alot. Most of the hostages were teenagers from a high school in Safad on a Gadna field trip spending the night in Ma'alot. The hostage-takers soon issued demands for the release of 23 Palestinian militants from Israeli prisons, or else they would kill the students. On the second day of the standoff, a unit of the Golani Brigade stormed the building. During the takeover, the hostage-takers killed children with grenades and automatic weapons. Ultimately, 25 hostages, including 22 children, were killed and 68 more were injured.

Ma'alot, located on a plateau in the hills of the Western Galilee region of Israel, six miles south of the Lebanese border, is a development town founded in 1957 by Jewish immigrants, mainly from Morocco and Tunisia. The attack was carried out by three members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) dressed in Israel Defense Forces uniforms.

The DFLP terrorists infiltrated through the Nahal Mattat Nature Reserve from south of the Lebanese village of Ramish. The group entered Israel near Moshav Zar'it on Sunday night, 13 May. They were armed with AK-47 assault rifles, grenades, and plastic explosives of Czechoslovakian manufacture. They hid until the next night in the orchards near the Druze village of Hurfeish. A border patrol unit discovered their footprints but could not follow the trail, and mistakenly reported to superiors that the footprints belonged to smugglers.