Japanese Red Army

The Japanese Red Army (JRA) was a 1970s terrorist group famous for its actions on behalf of Palestinian nationalism, including a 1972 massacre at Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport.

The JRA arose from the Japanese student protest movement of the mid-to late 1960s. Protests were directed not only at the Japanese government, which students felt was corrupt, but also at the U.S. military presence in Japan and against the Vietnam War. As the decade progressed, rampant factionalism overtook the Japanese student movement, with intergroup violence often more deadly and more frequent than student clashes with the police. The Japanese student movement was also marked by a certain militarism; students arrived at protests equipped with color-coded helmets and staves strikingly similar to the helmets and batons of the riot police. The end of the decade saw hundreds of student groups, many of which espoused radical strains of ...