MESA Banner
Global Revolution Starts with Palestine: The Japanese Red Army’s Solidarity with the PFLP
Abstract
On May 30th, 1972, three Japanese militants from the Japanese Red Army [Nihon Sekigun] opened fire in the arrivals lounge of Lod Airport in Israel. Over two dozen people died during the shootout. The attack, carried out by the Japanese Red Army, was in support of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Palestinian revolution (PFLP). In statements following the operation, the Japanese Red Army declared that the liberation of Palestine foregrounded the coming global socialist revolution. Since early 1971, members of the group had gone to Lebanon to train with the PFLP. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, members of the Japanese Red Army would attack embassies, hijack airplanes, destroy infrastructure, and take hostages at embassies across Asia and Europe to further the goals of global revolution and the PFLP. The Red Army’s militancy represented an early example of East Asian and Palestinian solidarity rooted in a shared anti-imperialist, anti-colonial, and anti-capitalist worldview. In this paper, I examine the development of the alliance between the Japanese Red Army and the PFLP as part of a larger network of anticolonialism and Marxist internationalism of the 1970s and 1980s. Drawing upon Arabic and Japanese sources such as the magazine al-Hadaf by the PFLP and memoirs like ones penned by the Japanese Red Army’s leader Shigenobu Fusako, I argue how Palestinian liberation transcended regional frameworks to become an anticolonial tenet of an internationalist left. Other materials I analyze include the 1971 newsreel film Sekigun PFLP Sekai Sensō Sengen [Red Army PFLP Declaration of World War], statements by the PFLP and the Japanese Red Army, PFLP pamphlets on their political ideology, and media interviews with members of the Japanese Red Army. I argue that the PFLP’s embrace of radical leftist politics made the group and the Palestinian cause appeal to similar leftist groups worldwide. In particular, I trace the development of the Japanese Red Army’s ideology, how it came to view the PFLP as a vanguard organization, why Palestine is the center for global revolution according to the Red Army, and the logics underpinning the need for direct action by its members for the liberation of Palestine.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
Palestine
Sub Area
None