Ma'alot School Massacre, 1974: PDFLP Terrorists Kill 22 Children
On May 15, 1974, three terrorists from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine seized the Netiv Meir elementary school in Ma'alot, Israel, holding 115 children hostage. When Israeli commandos breached the building, the terrorists opened fire on the children. Twenty-two students were among the 25 hostages killed, 68 were wounded, and 31 people died in total.
The Ma'alot massacre took place on Israeli Independence Day — May 15, 1974 — in the northern Israeli town of Ma'alot. It remains one of the deadliest Palestinian terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians in the pre-Oslo period, and the first designed explicitly around killing school children.
The Attack
Three members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PDFLP, a Marxist offshoot of the PLO) crossed from Lebanon into Israel on the night of May 14–15. Before reaching the school they fired on a van, killing two Israeli Arab women from Fassuta, then killed Yosef and Fortuna Cohen and their 4-year-old son Eliahu in their Ma'alot home (Wikipedia).
At 5:30 a.m. on May 15, they seized the Netiv Meir elementary school, which was being used as a temporary dormitory by approximately 115 students (ages 14–16) from the Tzfat Regional School on a field trip. The terrorists demanded the release of 23 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
After a day of failed negotiations — including through Romanian and French diplomats — Israel's Sayeret Matkal commandos stormed the school. The terrorists immediately opened fire on the hostages.
- 22 students were killed, ranging in age from 14 to 16.
- 68 students were wounded, many severely.
- All three terrorists were killed in the assault.
Significance
The DFLP deliberately seized a school full of children and threatened to kill them unless prisoners were released. Analysts describe this hostage-for-prisoners model as recurring in later attacks, including the 1978 Coastal Road massacre (38 civilians killed, 13 of them children) and the mass hostage-taking of October 7, 2023.
Palestinian organizations — PLO, PDFLP, Hamas — have targeted Israeli children not incidentally but as a deliberate tactic. This is documented across six decades of attacks.
