Kozo Okamoto, a Japanese man who took part in a deadly 1972 attack on an airport in Israel, died on July 23, 2026, in Beirut, Lebanon. He was 78.

A Palestinian group called the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or PFLP, announced his death. A senior PFLP member confirmed it in a phone interview, according to Nippon.com. Okamoto died around noon on Thursday, July 23, after a period of poor health related to old age. He died in the southern suburbs of Beirut, where he had lived for decades, per The New Arab.

On May 30, 1972, three members of a small Japanese militant group called the Japanese Red Army walked into the arrivals hall of Tel Aviv's airport — then known as Lod Airport — and opened fire with machine guns. The attack killed more than two dozen people and wounded dozens more. Most of the victims were Puerto Rican Christians on a religious pilgrimage. Okamoto was the only one of the three attackers to survive. He was captured, put on trial, and sentenced to life in prison in Israel.

He served 12 years of that sentence. In 1985, Israel released him as part of a prisoner exchange — a deal in which two sides swap prisoners. After his release, Okamoto moved to Lebanon, where the PFLP gave him a place to live. The PFLP was the same group that had helped plan the 1972 airport attack alongside the Japanese Red Army. Okamoto lived in Beirut's southern suburbs, an area known as a base for several armed groups, for the rest of his life. Japan asked Lebanon to send him back to face trial for years, but Lebanon refused.

The Japanese Red Army was a tiny group, founded in 1971, with only a few dozen members at most. Instead of acting on its own, it worked mainly through partnerships with Palestinian organizations. The PFLP, founded by George Habash, was a secular Palestinian political and armed group with Marxist roots — meaning it was shaped by leftist political ideas about class struggle and opposing capitalism.

The broader context here is why Okamoto's story still matters today. His life shows how small armed groups can team up with larger, locally based organizations to carry out attacks far from their own country. Think of it like a franchise: the small group supplies the people, and the local partner provides the safe houses, planning knowledge, and ground support. In this case, three Japanese operatives and one Palestinian partner group managed to carry out an attack that killed more than two dozen people on another continent.

Okamoto's four decades in Lebanon also show how these networks can last. The infrastructure of safe houses and protection that Palestinian groups built in Beirut sheltered foreign militants from multiple countries across many years, even as politics and governments changed around them.

The fact that the PFLP announced Okamoto's death, rather than Japan or Lebanon, tells you something about which world he belonged to. He entered the PFLP's orbit through the 1972 attack and never left it. His death in the same Beirut neighborhood where he had lived since the mid-1980s marks the end of a life spent entirely within that alliance — from the attack, through prison, release, exile, and finally death.

No details have been reported about funeral arrangements or whether Japanese officials have asked for his remains to be sent back to Japan. The PFLP's announcement did not give further details beyond saying he died of age-related poor health.