Palestinians in Beirut mark 1972 attack on Israel airport

Lod Airport, 1958. The building is currently the Terminal 1 building.

Palestinian militants in Beirut on Monday marked the 50th anniversary of a deadly attack carried out by members of the Japanese Red Army at Israel’s Lod airport.

Kozo Okamoto, the only surviving member of the three-man commando that killed 26 people on May 30, 1972 at the airport near Tel Aviv, made a rare appearance at the ceremony. The short event was held at a cemetery on the edge of Shatila Palestinian refugee camp where Okamoto, now 74, laid a wreath on a grave honouring his fellow JRA members and flashed a V-sign.

The attack was planned by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which has commemorated it every year for a half a century. “He came to defend the freedom of people who had their lands stollen. He believes in their rights, he believes in justice and human freedom,” a PFLP official who gave his name as Abu Yusef told AFP. An official with the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah also attended the ceremony in honour of Okamoto, who is still wanted in Japan for terrorism.

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.

“This valiant hero suffered in the enemy’s prisons… but today his heart beats with Palestine,” Hezbollah’s Abdallah Hamoud said. The Lod attack killed one Canadian, eight Israelis and 17 US citizens from Puerto Rico who had flown in on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The bloodbath at what was later named Ben Gurion airport set off a review of global security standards in the aviation industry.

Okamoto, who was captured during the attack, was sentenced to life in prison in Israel but released in a huge prisoner exchange deal known as the Jibril Agreement in 1985.

ATTACK

At 10 p.m. the attackers arrived at the airport aboard an Air France flight from Rome. Dressed conservatively and carrying slim violin cases, they attracted little attention. As they entered the waiting area, they opened up their violin cases and extracted Czech vz. 58 assault rifles with the butt stocks removed. They began to fire indiscriminately at airport staff and visitors, which included a group of pilgrims from Puerto Rico, and tossed grenades as they changed magazines. Yasuda was accidentally shot dead by one of the other attackers, and Okudaira moved from the airport building into the landing area, firing at passengers disembarking from an El Al aircraft before being killed by one of his own grenades, either due to accidental premature explosion or as a suicide. Okamoto was shot by security, brought to the ground by an El Al employee, and arrested as he attempted to leave the terminal. Whether the attackers were responsible for killing all of the victims has been disputed, as some victims may have been caught in the crossfire of the attackers and airport security.