פִּגּוּעַ (pigua) — terrorist attack
Etymology
On December 26, 1968, two Palestinian militants attacked an El Al aircraft at Athens airport during a stopover. One threw incendiary bottles at the plane while the other fired a submachine gun. Leon Sheridan, an Israeli engineer, was killed, and a flight attendant was wounded. Israel retaliated two days later: Sayeret Matkal and paratroopers were flown by helicopter to Beirut airport, where they systematically destroyed fourteen Lebanese civil aircraft before withdrawing without casualties.
The day after the Beirut raid, December 29, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol addressed a literary prize ceremony and referenced both events. In his remarks he used the phrase "milḥemet figua olamit" — "global war of figua." This appears to be the first attested use of the word פִּגּוּעַ in Hebrew. At the time the term did not yet mean what it means today: Eshkol used it as something closer to a synonym for פְּגִיעָה (an act of hitting or harming), with a violent connotation but not as a label for a specific type of incident.
Morphologically, פִּגּוּעַ is the verbal noun (masdar) of the Pi'el form פִּגֵּעַ. The Pi'el binyan often intensifies or makes more agentive the basic meaning of the Qal root — so where פְּגִיעָה is the noun of the Qal verb paga (to encounter, to hit), פִּגּוּעַ carries the sense of "causing harm to another" more actively. Eshkol apparently found this nuance useful for the rhetorical distinction he was drawing: the Palestinians intended to harm people, while Israel in Beirut had targeted only aircraft.
Eshkol used the phrase again two days later in the Knesset. A journalist picked it up a week after that. But the word did not immediately acquire its current specific sense. Through mid-1969 it was still used as a near-synonym for pəgi'a with a more violent shade. By autumn 1969, however, the word had crystallized in all newspapers as the label for a specific type of event — a terrorist strike. It has served that function, with grim frequency, ever since.
Key Quotes
"אין לנו לא רצון, לא עניין ולא צורך... לצאת לתחרות עם טרוריסטים במלחמת פיגוע עולמית" — ראש הממשלה לוי אשכול, 29.12.1968
"רשימת הפעולות שביצעה 'החזית העממית' באירופה כנגד יעדים ישראליים וזרים - גדלה והולכת... פיגוע במטוס 'אל-על' באתונה; פיגוע במטוס 'אל-על' בציריך" — חזי כרמל, מעריב, ספטמבר 1969
Timeline
- December 26, 1968: Palestinian attack on El Al at Athens airport
- December 28, 1968: Israeli Beirut airport raid
- December 29, 1968: Eshkol uses "milḥemet figua" at literary ceremony — first attested use of פִּגּוּעַ
- December 31, 1968: Eshkol uses the term again in a Knesset speech
- January 1969: Journalist Shmuel Segev uses the word in Ma'ariv
- Autumn 1969: The word becomes standard in all newspapers as a label for terrorist attacks
- Present: One of the most frequently used words in Israeli security discourse
Related Words
- פְּגִיעָה — a hit, strike, impact; the older and still common noun from the same root
- פִּגֵּעַ — the Pi'el verb: to attack, to strike (with intent to harm)
- טֶרוֹר — terror (loanword from international usage)
- מַחְבֵּל — terrorist (from ח.ב.ל, to sabotage/destroy)