No Star for Okamoto

Two of the three young Japanese "Red Army" terrorists who shot up Tel Aviv's Lod International Airport two months ago died in the grim massacre that claimed 26 other lives. Ever since, Survivor Kozo Okamoto, 24, has pleaded for the opportunity to join his comrades, either through suicide or a death sentence from the Israeli military court trying him on charges growing out of the bloodbath. Okamoto insisted to the court's three lieutenant colonels that the dead become stars, and that he himself hoped to enter the constellation Orion.

Israel's liberal, independent newspaper, Ha'aretz, last week headlined the court's decision: OKAMOTO WILL NOT BE A STAR IN ORION. Instead he was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. Prosecutor David Israeli, citing "the moral weakness of the defendant and those who sent him" and "our own moral strength," had asked for restraint, and the court agreed. In words intoned slowly to allow simultaneous translation into Japanese, Court President Abraham Frish said: "There is no punishment befitting the seriousness of the crime you have committed. This crime imprints the mark of Cain upon you and your employers and you shall never be cleansed of it."

Reactions to the verdict were mixed. Okamoto was visibly disappointed. He wrote a request--later handed to Japanese Ambassador Eiji Tokura--that was scarcely likely to be granted: extradition to Japan, retrial, and the death penalty there. Some editorialists applauded Israeli justice, but Ha'aretz's military commentator, Ze'ev Schiff, pointed out a disturbing argument for executing Okamoto after all: "As long as the Japanese murderer is in Israeli hands, he becomes an operational objective, an invitation for murder and extortion against Israel and its citizens. In order to free Okamoto the Red Army is liable to kidnap Israeli hostages."

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