Thirty years have passed since 20 high school students on a field trip were murdered and dozens wounded in the northern Israeli town of Maalot.

May 15, 1974 – Yom Haatzmaut, Israel Independence Day, the 26th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel – was a day of horror and mourning for the people of Israel. The news of Maalot – of the teenagers slain in the Netiv Meir School by Arab terrorists who’d made their way from the Lebanese border – hit like a bolt of lightening.

Prime Minister Golda Meir had the grim task of relating the news to a stunned nation. She stated that the terrorists exploded grenades before Israeli soldiers entered the building. The terrorists opened fire upon the ninety children held hostage as they tried to escape. She announced the death toll – 20 children – and declared that Israel “will do everything in its power to cut off the hands that want to harm a child, an adult, a settlement, a town, or a village.” An Israeli military spokesman put it aptly when he stated, “There is no retaliation for the lives of 20 children.” Indeed, their tragic deaths were beyond reprisal.

As the victims were being buried – in the same cemetery where young victims of a school bus ambush had been laid to rest three years earlier – thousands converged upon the northern Galilee town to mourn, grieve, and express their outrage.

The reaction to Maalot from the Arab world was silence. But Arab leaders were quick to condemn Israel following its retaliatory raids against terrorist bases the following day. Egypt’s foreign minister, Ismail Fahmy, who for weeks had been threatening Israel with a military strike if it continued to retaliate for acts of terrorism, labeled the Israeli retaliation for Maalot as “terrorism.”

In the United States, “disengagement” was (then as now) the commonly used term for Israeli withdrawal. Plans were proposed suggesting that Israel relinquish portions of the Golan Heights to Syria. Just days before Maalot, the Israeli cabinet had convened for four and a half hours to discus territorial concessions to Syria in light of recent disengagement proposals. Shuttling from the Soviet Union to various Arab countries, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was urging the Israelis to make concessions.

Kissinger and President Nixon offered scathing condemnations of the Maalot massacre, while the U.S. Senate adopted a resolution urging all nations to “take appropriate action” against terrorists. Still, the talk of “disengagement” and the pressure on Israel to make concessions continued.

Golda Meir expressed the hope that the “international community would once and for all recognize the true nature of the so-called Palestinian liberation movement.” Of course, the world community had already witnessed an abundance of ghastly acts of Arab terror and had failed to draw that conclusion.

Since Maalot there have been countless more funerals for victims of Arab terror, countless more grieving survivors. Israelis continue to ask themselves how many more tears must be shed while the world continues to lionize the Palestinian cause and demand more concessions from Israel.

Thirty years later, the young victims of Maalot must be remembered. Their deaths should remind us that the menace of Arab terror that has afflicted us for decades must be attacked and defeated.

In their memory, may terrorism finally be eradicated from the face of the earth.