Leon Klinghoffer

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Leon Klinghoffer (September 24, 1916–October 8, 1985) was a retired appliance manufacturer from New York who was disabled (from a stroke) and used a wheelchair for mobility. Klinghoffer was murdered by Palestinian terrorists who hijacked the cruise ship Achille Lauro, an attack planned by Abu Abbas.

Leon and Marilyn Klinghoffer, a Jewish couple, were celebrating their 36th wedding anniversary in 1985 by taking a cruise aboard the Achille Lauro. On the afternoon of October 8, 1985, four Palestinian militants, who had hijacked the ship, shot Leon Klinghoffer in the forehead and chest while he was sitting in his wheelchair. He was 69 years old. The militants then forced the ship's barber and a waiter to throw his lifeless body and his wheelchair overboard. His wife, who had been separated from him before this happened, had been told by the hijackers that he had been moved to the infirmary. Marilyn Klinghoffer only learned the truth after the militants had left the ship at Port Said. PLO foreign secretary Farouq Qaddumi notoriously suggested that Marilyn had killed him for the insurance money.^{[citation needed]}

The body was found by the Syrians on October 14-15 and returned to the United States around October 20. Leon Klinghoffer was buried at Beth David Memorial Park in Kenilworth, New Jersey. Four months after Leon Klinghoffer's death, Marilyn Klinghoffer died of colon cancer. Leon and Marilyn Klinghoffer are survived by their daughters, Ilsa and Lisa Klinghoffer.

After his death, his daughters established the Leon and Marilyn Klinghoffer Memorial Foundation with the Anti-Defamation League; the foundation combats terrorism through educational, political and legal means. The foundation is funded by undisclosed settlement paid by the PLO to the Klinghoffers to settle a lawsuit seeking damages for the PLO's role in the hijacking. (Klinghoffer v. PLO, 739 F. Supp. 854 (S.D.N.Y. 1990) and Klinghoffer v. PLO, 937 F.2d 44, 50 (2d Cir. 1991)). This lawsuit spurred passage of the Antiterrorism Act of 1990 which made it easier for victims of terrorism to sue terrorists and collect civil damages for losses incurred.

The hijacking was made into a television movie in 1990, Voyage of Terror – The Achille Lauro Affair starring Burt Lancaster and Eve Marie Saint. John Coolidge Adams' second opera, The Death of Klinghoffer, with a libretto by Alice Goodman, opened to great controversy in 1991. The concept for the opera was suggested by director Peter Sellars. The Los Angeles Opera shared in the works' commission but never presented it. A Prix Italia-winning television version of the opera, starring Sanford Sylvan and Christopher Maltman, and directed by Penny Woolcock, was screened by British Channel 4 in 2003.