Not sure what the Palestinians were defending when they perpetrate terrorists attack at a civilian airport.
The Lod Airport massacre was a terrorist attack that occurred on 30 May 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. Katzir was head of the Israeli National Academy of Sciences and a popular scientific radio show host; he was also a candidate in the upcoming Israeli presidency election. His brother, Ephraim Katzir, was elected President of Israel the following year.
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 an unpublicized larger operation that went awry. The three perpetrators—Kōzō 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, 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.
Murdered:
A total of 26 people were killed during the attack:
US citizens from Puerto Rico
• Reverend Angel Berganzo
• Carmelo Calderón Molina
• 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
• Antonio Rodríguez Morales
• Consorcia Rodríguez
• José A. Rodríguez
Israeli citizens
• Yoshua Berkowitz
• Zvi Gutman
• Aharon Katzir
• Orania Luba
• Aviva Oslander
• Henia Ratner
• Shprinza Ringel
• Adam Tzamir
Canadian citizen
• Lonna Sabah
