Why Japanese spilled blood for Palestinian life: The solidarity and secrets of the Lod Airport operation

This article debunks more than half a century of Zionist misinformation and illuminates the reasons Japanese spilled blood for Palestinian life. In 1972, three Japanese participated in a covert operation at Al Lydd (Lod) Airport planned with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Through an analysis of news reports about the mission, the article exposes how Zionists have constructed the spectre of Palestinian ‘terrorism’ through a deceptive discursive formula. This article discloses the long-kept secret targets of the operation and critiques how ‘embedded academics’ reinforce western media’s pathologized construct of ‘the terrorist’. In contrast to dominant imperial forms of narrativization as lexical warfare, we revisit the revolutionary reportage film Red Army–PFLP Declaration of World War (1971) to reflect on the political stakes of armed struggle. Through our illumination of the undisclosed stakes at the core of this operation, the blood spilled at Al Lydd will take on new significance as a multivalent site of Palestinian liberation and anti-imperialist solidarity.