Ma'alot massacre

The Ma'alot massacre (also called the Ma'alot disaster) was a brutal Arab "Palestinian" terrorist attack that occurred in Ma'alot, Israel, on May 15, 1974. The attack began when terrorists murdered a female passenger in a civilian vehicle near Moshav Tzuriel. They then infiltrated Ma'alot, where they murdered three local residents, including a pregnant mother and her young son. The attack subsequently developed into a hostage crisis in which students from Safed, staying overnight in Ma'alot during a school trip, were taken hostage. During the rescue attempt, 22 hostages were murdered by the terrorists, and an IDF soldier was killed by terrorist gunfire. The three terrorists were ultimately killed by IDF forces. A total of 68 civilians and soldiers were wounded.

The massacre became one of the most traumatic terrorist attacks in Israeli history. Particularly etched into the national memory is a photograph showing a young man carrying his wounded sister in his arms. This atrocity, which occurred amid a broader wave of cross-border terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, is widely regarded as a catalyst for the establishment of the Israeli Civil Guard and the YAMAM, Israel's elite counter-terrorism and hostage rescue unit.

The infiltration of terrorists

On the night between May 12 and 13, 1974, a three-man terrorist squad belonging to the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine infiltrated Israel from Lebanon in the Zar'it area.

At the time, no border fence existed along the sector, allowing the terrorists to cross into Israeli territory with relative ease. Although the infiltration was detected by a Border Guard patrol and an alert was declared, the terrorists evaded capture.

On the following night, the terrorists advanced toward Ma'alot along Highway 89. Near Moshav Tzuriel, they ambushed a civilian vehicle carrying female workers from Kiryat Ata to Pasuta. At approximately 11:00 p.m., they opened fire, murdering one woman and wounding several others. Despite being wounded himself, the driver continued to Moshav Al-Kush, where he reported the attack. Israeli police and IDF forces immediately launched searches for the terrorists but were unable to locate them.

In the early hours of May 15, the terrorist squad reached the outskirts of Ma'alot. At approximately 3:30 a.m., they knocked on the door of the Cohen family home, falsely identifying themselves as police officers searching for terrorists. Once inside, they brutally murdered Joseph (Joshua) Cohen, his pregnant wife Fortuna, and their four-year-old son Moshe. Their five-year-old daughter was wounded. Another child, approximately eighteen months old, survived only because his mother managed to hide him before the terrorists entered.

After leaving the apartment, the terrorists encountered Yaakov Kadosh, who was waking residents for morning prayers. After briefly speaking to him in Arabic, they shot and wounded him. Believing him dead, they left him behind; he survived by pretending to be dead.

The terrorists initially intended to ambush local students arriving for school. Upon reaching the "Nativ Meir" school, however, they discovered a large group of students from Safed who were spending the night there as part of a Gadna educational trip. The group consisted of 102 students from grades 9–11 of the State Religious High School in Safed, accompanied by approximately ten teachers. Despite the security alert, organizers had received permission to proceed with the trip, and the students arrived at the school on the evening of May 14.

The kidnapping of students

The terrorists entered the "Nativ Meir" school shortly before dawn. A vehicle belonging to one of the teachers was parked outside and contained weapons carried by the trip's security personnel. Under security regulations in force at the time, these weapons were not permitted inside the sleeping quarters.

The terrorists awakened the teacher sleeping in the vehicle and forced him to help them gain access to the building. At approximately 4:00 a.m., after a teacher inside opened the door, the terrorists entered the school, awakened the students, and assembled them in the first-floor corridor.

Several students and teachers managed to escape by jumping through windows before the terrorists discovered what was happening. The terrorists opened fire on the fleeing students and forced the remaining hostages into a classroom. They ultimately held 85 students, two paramedics, and two teachers hostage, placing explosive charges and a grenade inside the room.

Negotiations and hostage crisis

The terrorists released one student and used him to deliver their demands: the release of 20 imprisoned terrorists held by Israel. They threatened to murder the hostages if their demands were not met and set a deadline of 6:00 p.m. that day. Later, they released one of the paramedics, Narcis Stern, carrying additional demands and documents. They also insisted on the involvement of the French and Romanian ambassadors as intermediaries.

By early morning, substantial Israeli military forces had already arrived in Ma'alot. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan arrived at 7:00 a.m., while forces from Sayeret Matkal were simultaneously deployed to the scene. Israeli leaders faced an impossible dilemma: negotiate with terrorists who had already murdered civilians and children, or risk a military rescue operation with the hostages' lives hanging in the balance.

Throughout the day, the terrorists attempted to increase psychological pressure by firing weapons from the building while forcing frightened students to appear at windows. As negotiations continued, Israeli forces surrounded the school and prepared contingency plans for a rescue operation.

Lasting trauma

• The Legacy of the Maalot Massacre. Tablet Mag, May 14, 2024. Fifty years ago today, Palestinian terrorists attacked a school in northern Israel, taking hostages and murdering 22 students. The memories endure for those who survived, and the lessons learned in 1974 resonate anew for a country facing another hostage crisis."

Related

PLO's Farouk Qaddoumi who admitted the Arab Palestinians supported the Nazis seeing both were against Zionism, days after the massacre, as Israel hit terror targets in Lebanon, he was the first "Palestinian" to hurl the fake "genocide" accusation.

• Palestinianism recurring pattern is to accuse the victim of the very crime that the accuser attempted to commit but failed to carry out. Just sayin', June 05, 2026.

Notes

• Maalot at massacre, The Morning Record, May 17, 1974, p.6

• Maalot, Badly Scarred, Is Still in Limelight. NYTimes, Jul 13, 1974 — This raw development town near the Lebanese border is still grappling with the emotional and political effects of the massacre that occurred here eight weeks...

• Maalot massacre. Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the ... Congress. (1974). United States: U.S. Government Printing Office.

• This week in Jewish history | Palestinian terrorists kill 25 hostages in Ma'alot massacre. WJC, May 11, 2021.

• Ma'alot: When Terrorists Came For The Children. Unpacked for Educators, Mar 8, 2026

References

"The Mufti.. concocted a new kind of antisemitism that combined traditional Muslim antisemitism, like the anti-Jewish verses you find in the Koran, with the Nazi antisemitism that demonised Jews... His whole ideology was antisemitic and from the very beginning he targeted Jews, not Zionists."

The difference between lies and reality is sometimes just a color on a map

Lord Peel to W. Ormsby-Gore as he was preparing the royal commission report, "Though I knew there was ill-feeling between Jews and Arabs, I had not realized the depth and intensity of the hatred with which the Jews are held by the Arabs..."

"It is not Israel's settlement blocks but rather the Palestinian ideological blockade that constitutes the biggest barrier to peaceful arrangements . The Jew-hatred in this region must no longer be played down as a kind of local custom ..."

The only tweet (July 2014) on the Twitter account of the late American Elan Ganeles - murdered by Arab-Islamist "Palestinian" on Feb 27, 2023 hy"d: "I think you're always going to have tension in the Middle East, when there's [are] people who want to kill Jews, and the Jews don't want to be killed, and neither side is willing to compromise."