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Lod Airport Massacre Traditional Cache

Hidden : 5/30/2015
Difficulty:
2 out of 5
Terrain:
3 out of 5

Size: Size:   small (small)

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Geocache Description:

This is part of a series of caches along the Great River Ridge Trail. Please respect private property and stay within the trail right away. For more information the trail and places to park see the Trail Cache.



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 Tel Aviv's Lod airport, 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 that went awry. The three perpetrators—Okamoto, Tsuyoshi Okudaira, and Yasuyuki Yasuda—had been trained in Baalbek, Lebanon; the actual planning was handled by Wadie Haddad, head of PFLP-EO, 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.

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