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The deadly drama began with - footprints.
On Monday, May 14, 1974, a patrol of the Israeli army discovered in the border strip to Lebanon, which was regularly raked, prints of apparently three men who, despite the heavy load, had swiftly moved south, i.e. into Israel.
Smuggling on foot between the two states was rather unusual, so the discovery initially triggered an alarm: the nearby Jewish settlements in Western Galilee were guarded by soldiers.
But after no further evidence of the intruder's whereabouts could be found by Tuesday afternoon and nothing else happened, the local commander withdrew his men.
One was satisfied with the explanation that it must have been smugglers after all.
A mistake with consequences - after all, it was the 26th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel, and of course the risk of an attack increased on such a date.
The Galilean Mountains near Ma'alot (photo from 1998)
Source: picture-alliance / dpa
Because the three men had only hidden while the search was ongoing - in the orchards of a nearby village.
They wore Israeli military uniforms, but in reality they were members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), a particularly radical splinter group of the PLO.
Its declared goal (like that of the PLO under its leader Yasser Arafat) was the annihilation of the state of Israel by all means - including terror.
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On the night of May 14th to 15th, 1974, the three set off for their destination, the Ma'alot settlement - a planned town built since 1957 on a high plateau about ten kilometers south of the border, which was mainly used by Jewish immigrants from Romania as well as the Maghreb was inhabited.
Defense Minister Moshe Dayan (with hat and the black ribbon on his eye patch) just before the attack began
Source: IDF Spokesperson's Unit / CC BY-SA 3.0
Released under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license
On the way there, they met a delivery truck that was bringing Christian-Arab women home from the late shift.
One of the three terrorists opened fire on the vehicle, killing a woman and wounding both the driver and other inmates, one of whom later died from her wounds.
Nevertheless, the driver managed to escape.
The attackers took advantage of the fact that the noise could of course also be heard in Ma'alot.
When they got there, they knocked on the doors shouting that they were soldiers and were looking for fugitive terrorists.
The Cohen couple opened the front door and the Palestinians shot them and their four-year-old son;
the five-year-old daughter was wounded.
Of the family, only one 16 month old son survived.
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From the Cohen house, the terrorists went to Netiv Meir Elementary School.
More than a hundred students who were on a two-day excursion stayed there.
It was around 3:15 a.m. on May 15 when the hostage drama began here, one of the worst defeats for the State of Israel in its fight against terrorism.
A Dayan employee (r.) Helps a refugee hostage ...
Source: IDF Spokesperson's Unit / CC BY-SA 3.0
Released under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license
... Immediately afterwards Dayan (with a cap) goes towards the firefight;
the freed hostage lies in front of the man with the megaphone
Source: IDF Spokesperson's Unit / CC BY-SA 3.0
Released under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license
“I heard someone knock on the glass front door of the school.
When we opened the door, the Arabs stood in front of us, threatened us with their weapons and declared in Hebrew that nothing would happen if we obeyed, ”said a student who was still able to escape after the hostage situation began.
A 16-year-old described the course of the bloody attack: “The terrorists stood some distance away in the room and kept their machine guns pointed at us.
We asked what they wanted.
One of them wanted to know where the prison was.
When we asked them: 'What kind of prison?', They began to curse in Arabic. ”This 16-year-old was also able to escape:“ I jumped out of the window.
When you see the faces of these guerrillas, their eyes and their weapons, then you are not afraid of jumping into the depths. ”Other students rushed out of the school door in a hail of bullets and ran for their lives to the next house.
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Three of the four teachers who had stayed with their students in elementary school also fled.
In doing so, however, they left more than a hundred young people (and their colleagues) to fate.
The hostage-takers soon demanded the release of 23 Palestinian terrorists from Israeli prisons, otherwise they would kill the students.
Surprisingly, the government of Golda Meir, which had already announced its withdrawal from politics for the beginning of June 1974, initially responded to this demand: “We do not wage war on the backs of children,” said the Prime Minister: “That is why we accepted them Demand from the terrorists. ”But it was probably an attempt to buy time.
But the terrorists' ultimatum remained at 6 p.m. local time.
At 5:25 p.m., the Sayeret Matkal special unit of the Aman Army Intelligence Service, which had been transferred to Ma'alot immediately after the hostage-taking became known, was ordered to end the hostage-taking by force.
An argument in favor of such an attack was that the elite soldiers only faced three opponents;
against the fact that the terrorists booby-trapped the school building and had many hostages under their control.
The school building shortly after the disaster
Source: IDF Spokesperson's Unit / CC BY-SA 3.0
Released under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license
Shortly before the end of the ultimatum, one of the perpetrators shouted to the Israelis through a megaphone: “It will soon be 6 pm.
Have mercy on your children.
Think of your children. ”A typical rhetorical phrase for a terrorist: They always hold their opponents responsible for their own crimes.
The plan for the attack was in itself well thought out: at the moment of the attack, snipers should target at least one, better two, of the Palestinians.
At the same time, three attack teams were supposed to penetrate the school - two through the ground floor and one directly through a narrow window into a classroom on the first floor.
Most of the hostages were on the second floor.
But the access developed into a catastrophe: Only one of the snipers used hit his target, but did not kill this terrorist either, only injured him.
The first attack team was shot at on the stairs to the second floor and threw a smoke bomb, but this disrupted the second attack team.
In this way, under the protection of the surprise effect, only one terrorist could be killed.
The second grabbed a student, held his Kalashnikov to his head and died the next moment when both the attack team at the school and a sniper hit him from a distance.
Grief and pain after the unsuccessful mission
Source: IDF Spokesperson's Unit / CC BY-SA 3.0
Released under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license
But that gave the third perpetrator, the leader, who had already shot at the truck, enough time to flee into the room with the hostages and shoot the students with his Kalashnikov.
When an Israeli hit him in the left hand, he threw two hand grenades at a group of schoolgirls with his right hand before he was shot.
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The result was terrible: a total of 22 dead and almost 70 injured students, plus six other dead outside the school, namely the Cohen family, the two women in the truck and a 27-year-old onlookers who had just been shot at by a terrorist.
Israel's legendary Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and his closest associate, General Motti Hod, were on the scene during the assault.
After the access began, both helped fleeing students to take cover, as a photographer who was present happened to note.
After the massacre, Israeli soldiers have to protect the defense minister
Source: IDF Spokesperson's Unit / CC BY-SA 3.0
Released under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license
Even so, the anger of those parents who had lost their children was particularly directed at Dayan.
At the funeral on May 16, a man yelled, “Where was your army?
Where is our safety? ”A woman stepped forward and said:“ My daughter is dead. And it's your fault, Moshe! ”
Dayan in a white, short-sleeved shirt and green peaked cap on his square head stood in a group and was silent.
For the first time, Israeli soldiers had to protect their defense minister from his compatriots.
A committee of inquiry invalidated all allegations against Dayan, but he was no longer a member of the new government under Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin;
Shimon Peres was his successor.
For the Sayeret Matkal, the unsuccessful action in Ma'alot was the worst defeat in their history.
It was only through the successful liberation of more than a hundred hostages from three innocent victims at Entebbe airport in 1976 that the unit was able to regain its reputation as the most effective anti-terrorist force in the world.
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