If there is an international inquiry into what is now being called the flotilla “massacre”, passengers on board will no doubt be called to give their eyewitness accounts and that could include Dr. Hani Suleiman, a member of the flotilla’s Lebanese delegation.
What light will Dr. Suleiman be able to shed on the alleged massacre?
Well, he represented – free of charge - Kozo Okamoto, one of the three Japanese terrorists who carried out the Lod Airport massacre - the term used to describe that atrocity in contemporary news reports immediately after it was perpetrated.
During that massacre thirty-eight years ago, three terrorists from the Japanese Red Army arrived at Lod Airport via an Air France flight. As they passed the ticket counter area they opened their cases, which contained nothing but machine guns and hand grenades. They proceeded to fire at the crowds in the arrivals terminal, killing twenty-six people, among them sixteen Christian missionaries from Puerto Rico. One of the terrorists ran out of ammunition and was shot, the second committed suicide by pulling the pin on a grenade and detonating it against his body, and Okamoto was captured while trying to escape.
Since Dr. Suleiman felt able to defend Okamoto from charges of having committed indiscriminate, unprovoked, large-scale slaughter, we can rest easy in the knowledge that, if called upon, he would surely tell an inquiry that no massacre took place aboard the Mavi Marmara.