To whom shall I hire myself out?
What beast should I adore? What holy image attack? What hearts break? What lies uphold? In what blood tread?
Rather steer clear of the law. The hard life, simple brutishness, to lift with withered fist the coffin's lid, to sit, to suffocate. And thus no old age, no dangers.
—A Season in Hell, Rimbaud
THE unassuming young Japanese carrying Rimbaud's memoirs in his pocket—as police discovered later—was elaborately polite as he debarked with two companions from Air France Flight No. 132 at Tel Aviv's Lod International Airport last week. "Where are you from?" an elderly woman asked. "I am from Japan, madam," was the reply, "and I am very excited about my trip to the Holy Land." The woman answered: "I hope you have a pleasant stay." Minutes later, both were dead, along with 24 others, and 78 persons were wounded in one of the most callous and grotesque terrorist attacks in the Middle East's tortured history.
Once past the police booths, the three Japanese had headed for the luggage conveyor belt, and removed their jackets. Their baggage was among the first to arrive, because they had been the last to board the flight at Rome. In seconds, they opened a suitcase and pulled out Czech-made VZ 58 lightweight submachine guns from which the butts had been removed and half a dozen grenades of a new type whose shrapnel bursts with devastating effect after the initial explosion. Standing spread-legged and back-to-back, they coldly began firing from the hip into the crowd of deplaning passengers and bystanders, sweeping the hall from side to side. When they had emptied their first magazines, they lobbed the grenades at groups of tourists and airport attendants, then reversed the magazines in their guns and began firing again.
Travelers were blown apart by the exploding grenades. At least six people were decapitated; other bodies were later found without limbs. A child of seven or eight was cut through in two places. Near by a corpse fell onto the luggage rack, which was still running, and traveled macabrely around its oval course with the bags, dripping blood along the way.
More than half of the dead were Puerto Ricans arriving for a long-planned tour of the Holy Land. Another victim was renowned Israeli Biophysicist Professor Aharon Katzir-Katchalsky, 58, who was returning from a symposium at M.I.T. Also among the dead: two of the three Japanese. One had apparently been shot by a companion who accidentally swung his gun too far. The second had dashed out, and either tossed his grenade at a parked jetliner, and was killed when it exploded on the rebound, or held the grenade in his hand and committed suicide; he was decapitated. The third Japanese was captured by an El Al employee as he dropped his gun and tried to flee the airport. In jail he pleaded: "Execute me as soon as possible, or let me kill myself."