August 9, 1982
Chez Jo Goldenberg, a Jewish deli in Paris, is attacked by two terrorists wielding grenades and machine guns. Six people are killed, and 22 others are injured. The attack is believed to have been planned and carried out by the Abu Nidal organization, an international Palestinian terrorist group. The attack occurs while Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization are under Israeli siege in Beirut.
Active in the 1980s and ’90s, the Abu Nidal group was known for carrying out deadly attacks on Western, Palestinian and Israeli targets. A secular terrorist group, its goal was to derail diplomacy between the PLO and Western nations while calling for the destruction of Israel. Founded by Abu Nidal, who was born Sabri Khalil al-Banna in 1937 in Jaffa, the organization received sponsorship from Syria, Libya and Iraq. It carried out operations in nearly 20 countries, killing approximately 300 people and wounding hundreds more.
Abu Nidal’s list of high-profile attacks is long and indiscriminate, with targets ranging from civilians to Israeli diplomats and Palestinian leaders. The group’s attempted assassination of Israeli Ambassador Shlomo Argov in London in 1982 was identified as a factor leading to the First Lebanon War, which started earlier in 1982. In September 1986, Abu Nidal attacks the Neve Shalom Synagogue in Istanbul, killing 22. Attempting to thwart PLO-Israeli diplomacy at the Madrid peace talks in 1991, the group assassinates Abu Iyad, the PLO’s second in command in Tunis. In August 2002, Abu Nidal himself reportedly is killed by multiple gunshot wounds in Baghdad.