JEWISH PRESS: July 4 Entebbe Memories I will forever remember that the French crew was offered the chance to leave with the Christians... and chose to stay. By: Paula Stern

Entebbe hostages greeting IDF soldiers, 1976.

Growing up, I lived on a main street that was closed each July 4th. We had to remember to pull the car to a side street or give up going anywhere for many hours. For the most part, we pulled out the chairs and sat right on the curb as police marched by, girl scouts, politicians, fire trucks, boy scouts, baton-twirling teams, the high-school band and more.

Some threw us candy – we threw candy back and cheered them on. This was almost always the memory I have – that and the neighbors across the street preparing for their annual barbecue and sometimes going to see fireworks over the river.

One year stands out in my mind. I was 15 years old; it was 1976. We had gone to celebrate America’s 200th birthday by watching the tall ships sail down the Hudson River. We had brought a radio with us to listen to the broadcasters describe each ship…but more, days before Palestinian and German terrorists had hijacked a French plane and landed it in Entebbe, Uganda.

I was sick thinking of how they had separated the Jewish and Israeli passengers; releasing the Christian ones. That a German terrorist was involved in this separation brought home again the knowledge that the Holocaust will never really leave us.

I will forever remember that the French crew was offered the chance to leave with the Christians… and chose to stay. The deadline was approaching. The terrorists were threatening to kill the passengers. At any moment, I expected to hear that explosions and gunfire had been heard coming from the compound.

And as we sat watching the ships…the radio broke the news – explosions and gunfire. I thought I was hearing the end of what would be remembered as a terrible tragedy…and then there was confusion. It seemed a rescue attempt had been launched by Israel. Israel? But the hostages were in Africa, in Uganda?

It was, the radio quickly pointed out, a daring operation. The Israeli air force had flown 1,500 miles under the radar, undetected. They’d landed in Entebbe, and the hostages were free. The ships sailed quietly along the Hudson but those of us listening to that radio were distracted, desperate to hear what was happening. It was the first time in days I felt like smiling, like cheering – and as I looked at the ships, I thought – this is freedom…here on the river, and there in Africa.

My ears listened to the reports – some casualties but most of the hostages, almost all of them were free and being taken back to Israel…and my eyes followed the ships gracefully glided down the Hudson. My heart sang with such joy. I remember crying – but they were tears of relief. I had expected 100 dead, not 100 freed.

Yoni Netanyahu – commander of the operation and older brother of the current prime minister, gave his life bringing the passengers home. He epitomized the Israeli army officer. Follow me, he told his men. He led them in and was the first and only Israeli army soldier to fall. He died on the plane flying home, despite desperate efforts to save his life. There is a sense of peace knowing that in his last moments, he must have known that he had succeeded. He had risked all for the freedom of others, for his people – those who no one else but Israel could have saved.

July 4 has, for the last 37 years, been entwined with that memory. The tall ships and the radio. The crackling announcements of what was happening in Entebbe and the strange feeling of being in two places – both symbolizing the very same concept – a commitment to be free and to ensure the safety and freedom of all.

Freedom comes, too often, with a price. It can, at times, be a huge and painful one. But we are free today – in the United States and in Israel, because there are brave men and women who will risk all to fight against tyranny. Those who will march against evil, stand against the tide.

May God bless the United States of America with continued strength and freedom. May it always be a land where evil is wrong; where equality and justice are honored; where life is something to be valued.

May God bless the soldiers of America and the soldiers of Israel who fight so that we can all live our lives in freedom and know that if there are those who rise up against us, who attempt to take from us that which we value, that which we love, that which we are – our soldiers will protect us, fight for us, even fall for us.

And may God bless the memory of Yonatan Netanyahu, who died 37 years ago and is remembered, to this day, for the lives he saved, for the many he brought home.

JEWISH PRESS: July 4, Day of Operation Entebbe, Israel Upgrades Uganda Airport July 4 is not only US Independence Day. It also is the anniversary of Operation Entebbe. An Israeli firm this week won a contract to return to Entebbe, ironically to upgrade its systems and security.

A C-130 Hercules in front of the old terminal in Uganda's airport, where Israel carried out Operation Entebbe on the Fourth of July, 37 years ago
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

An Israeli firm won a contract this week to upgrade systems at Uganda’s Entebbe airport, where a daring IDF mission on July 4, 1976, rescued 105 hostages from a hijacked airplane

Trilogical Technologies won the bid to integrate and implement systems that cover manpower, vehicle and equipment serving the airport’s ground services,  according to Israel Defense.

It said Trilogical’s software and hardware products will be integrated for management of existing resources  and carrying out missions in its airspace. Its computer system will be installed for the first time in Entebbe’s luggage, passenger and maintenance departments.

Ironically, the control systems will be installed “for control and warning in the event of operational or security irregularities” according to the report.

“There is a great deal of symbolism in the date when we are beginning the project,” said Trilogical CEO Erez Lorber.

The ability of the Israeli commandos to land at the airport without being detected was the key to its success, which was marred by the death of the commander of Operation Entebbe, Col. Yoni Netanyahu, brother of the prime minister.

One of the officers on the mission, a neighbor of mine, recently told me that almost no one in the hand-picked units believed that they would take off for the rescue operation because the scheme was “beyond imagination.”

The hostage crisis began on June 27 when Arab terrorists, helped by a German revolutionary cell, hijacked an Air France plane en route from Tel Aviv to Paris via Athens and demanded the release of prisoners in Israel in return for releasing the Israeli hostages.

After a week of planning, Operation Entebbe began on July and lasted approximately one hour. Besides the death of Netanyahu, five commandos suffered injuries and three hostages were killed.

The commandos landed in the dark of night, killed 45 Ugandan soldiers and destroyed 30 Soviet-built MiGs to prevent them from being used against the Israeli force.

Israeli firms had helped build the Entebbe airport, and their possession of blueprints of the facility was crucial towards the operation’s success.

When the Israeli planes, a cargo plane rolled out a black Mercedes that was a duplicate of Uganda President Idi Amin’s vehicle.

The element of surprise enabled the commandos to eliminate opposition forces and rescue the hostages, except for two who were killed by IDF fire and a third who was caught in crossfire.

The raid has been attributed to putting a stop to the wave of international terrorist hijackings, but United Nations Secretary General at that time, Kurt Waldheim, condemned Israel for “a serious violation of the national sovereignty of a United Nations member state.”

Operation Yonatan

Israeli Commando Gives Insiders View on Entebbe Mission

Raid on Entebbe - 1977

Raid on Entebbe is a 1977 TV movie directed by Irvin Kershner. It is based on an actual event: Operation Entebbe and the freeing of hostages at Entebbe Airport in Entebbe, Uganda on July 4, 1976. It was the last movie to be released featuring Academy Award-winning actor Peter Finch. Actress Dinah Manoff appears in one of her very first roles.

This version of Operation Entebbe is believed to be fairly accurate. The basic facts of the rescue of hostages held when hijackers working for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine boarded and hijacked an Air France plane recounts the events and response of the Israeli government and the controversy that the rescue stirred.

This version shows the difficult deliberations held by the Cabinet of Israel to decide on a top-secret military raid on the Jewish Sabbath by commandos; a difficult and daring operation carried out over 2500 miles from home, and of course, an unwillingness of the Israeli government to give in to terrorist demands. One commando was killed (the operation commander Yonatan Netanyahu, brother of future Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu), as were three of the hostages, and 45 soldiers under the then dictator of Uganda, Idi Amin. The death of Netanyahu was moved from the beginning of the assault when it happened to the end for plot reasons. A fourth hostage, Dora Bloch, who had been taken to Mulago Hospital in Kampala, was murdered by the Ugandans on Idi Amin's orders.

Rescue at Entebbe: An interview with the lead pilot

36 years ago this week, Israel carried out a daring raid in which it rescued hostages in Entebbe, Uganda. The IDF's blog interviews Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Joshua Shani, who was the lead pilot of the Entebbe mission.

How did the operation begin?

We began our journey from Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, which at the time was under Israeli control. The takeoff from Sharm was one of the heaviest ever in the history of this airplane. I didn’t have a clue what would happen. The aircraft was crowded. I was carrying the Sayeret Matkal assault team, led by Yonatan Netanyahu. I was also carrying a Mercedes, which was supposed to confuse Ugandan soldiers at the airport, because Idi Amin, the country’s dictator, had the same car. And I also found room to pack Land Rovers and a paratrooper force.

I gave the plane maximum power, and it was just taxiing, not accelerating. At the very end of the runway, I was probably two knots over the stall speed, and I had to lift off. I took off to the north, but had to turn south where our destination was. I couldn’t make the turn until I gained more speed. Just making that turn, I was struggling to keep control, but you know, airplanes have feelings, and all turned out well.

The flight to Entebbe is about 2,500 miles (4,000 km). How’d you do it?

We had to fly very close to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, over the Gulf of Suez. We weren’t afraid of violating anyone’s air space — it’s an international air route. The problem was that they might pick us up on radar. We flew really low — 100 feet above the water, a formation of four planes. The main element was surprise. All it takes is one truck to block a runway, and that’s all. The operation would be over. Therefore, secrecy was critical.

At some places that were particularly dangerous, we flew at an altitude of 35 feet. I recall the altimeter reading. Trust me, this is scary! In this situation, you cannot fly close formation. As flight leader, I didn’t know if I still had planes 2, 3 and 4 behind me because there was total radio silence. You can’t see behind you in a C-130. Luckily, they were smart, so from time to time they would show themselves to me and then go back to their place in the formation, so I still knew I had my formation with me.

What was going through your head as you approached the runway in Uganda?

My biggest fear was not being shot at from the ground, but making a mistake as a pilot. All I could think the entire time was “Don’t screw this up!” True, the risks to my life were real, but I was more worried about botching the landing and endangering the success of the entire operation. Think about it — how many people would have died at Entebbe if I had made a mistake?

In case something did go wrong, though, I was prepared for the worst. I was wearing a helmet, a bullet-proof vest, and I had an Uzi. I was also given a thick wad of cash in case I needed to use it to escape Uganda. Luckily, I never had to use it. I returned the cash after returning to Israel.

What happened after you landed?

I stopped in the middle of the runway, and a group of paratroopers jumped out from the side doors and marked the runway with electric lights, so that the other planes behind me could have an easier time landing. The paratroopers went on to take the control tower. The Mercedes and Land Rovers drove out from the back cargo door of my airplane, and the commandos stormed the old terminal building where the hostages were. While coordinating the assault, Yonatan Netanyahu, Sayeret Matkal’s commander, was fatally shot by a Ugandan soldier.

When the hostages were freed, what was your next move?

We had a little problem: We needed fuel to fly back home. We came on a one-way ticket! We had planned for a number of options for refueling, and I learned from the command-and-control aircraft flying above us that the option to refuel in Nairobi, Kenya, was open. After about 50 minutes on the ground in Entebbe, I gave the order: “Whoever is ready, take off.” I remember the satisfaction of seeing plane number 4, with the hostages on board, taking off from Entebbe — the sight of its silhouette in the night. It was then that I knew. That’s it. We did it. The mission succeeded.

Read the whole thing.

IDF Chief of Staff: 'Entebbe's Yoni Netanyahu Was a Hero'

IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz and President Shimon Peres both spoke at last week’s memorial service for Yoni Netanyahu, brother of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who was killed 35 years ago during an IDF operation to rescue passengers from a hijacked Air France flight in Entebbe, Uganda.

“Unfortunately, I never met Yoni, since I am the first chief of staff that joined the army after Yoni fell,” said Gantz, adding, “Even though I didn’t know him, I knew of him. As a 17-year-old boy, about a year before I volunteered for the paratroopers, I looked up, like many others had done, to the celebrated commander who fell as he led one of army’s greatest operations.

“If I had to choose one of Yoni’s sayings which especially touched me at the time,” continued Gantz, “I’d go back to that letter he wrote as a young officer and which read: ‘The responsibility lays on me, on us, the youth in Israel, to guard the state’s welfare. It’s a heavy responsibility which matures us ahead of time. It seems though Israelis belong to a special kind of people. It’s hard to explain it but easy to feel it.’

"This sentence expresses a feeling which is felt by almost every fighter and commander: the burden and the privilege inherent in the duty to guard the people and country. This feeling accompanied me throughout my years of service, as a sort of reminder which hovers above the daily routine. This is also the feeling which accompanies the IDF’s fighters and commanders today.

“In the last few years we hear more and more sayings that the youth of the 2000s has developed a blanket of indifference and is reluctant to volunteer, to contribute and to make a difference,” added the Chief of Staff. “But as someone who sees the fighters in the field, as someone who has looked into their eyes and has seen in them that special race which Yoni was talking about, I can tell you that they are ready for any challenge and any task because they are committed and imbued with a sense of mission no less than Yoni.”

President Peres, who served as Israel’s Minister of Defense during the operation, recalled finding out that Yoni Netanyahu had been killed.

“At 3 a.m. I heard a knock on the door,” he said. “[Then IDF Chief of Staff] Motta Gur stood there, pale as a sheet. ‘Shimon, Yoni is gone. A bullet hit him in the back and pierced his heart.’ I couldn’t stop my tears. Yoni for me was a representative of the strong and the beautiful within us.”

Turning to the Netanyahu family, Peres said: “Yoni was a hero. Yoni was a man of spirit. The first to join a mission and, this time, also the first to die.”

Yoni Netanyahu HY"D (may God avenge his blood)

This past week marked the 35th anniversary of the raid on Entebbe in which four Israeli hostages (out of more than 100) and the commander of their rescue operation - Yoni Netanyahu, the brother of our present Prime Minister - were killed. There were some nice tributes to Yoni published this week, and I'd like to point you to two of them.

One is a reprint of an article about Yoni that appeared in the Harvard Crimson shortly after Netanyahu was killed. It includes interviews with some of his friends from Harvard, where he spent a year and a summer. Netanyahu could not tear himself away from the IDF and ultimately did not finish his degree there.

Netanyahu’s Harvard friends, like Seamus P. Malin ’62, his adviser in 1967-68 and the current director of financial aid, are wary that their eulogies be mistaken for run-of-the-mill posthumous praise, and they offer eerily similar descriptions of Netanyahu’s extraordinary qualities.

“This place does attract some pretty unusual individuals,” Malin says, “so it is not therefore a big deal to say you’ve come across somebody who is going to be a future senator or a bigwig in national or international life. But there are few people that you do meet whom you genuinely feel add to you as a person and really make being here and being associated with them in some way a fuller development of your own life.”

In that sense, Malin adds, Netanyahu’s death left an “emptiness because he was a person who lived a kind of exemplary personal life, without being schmaltzy about it, that made you kind of feel warm when you were with him. A conversation with him always made you think about your own life in a way you wouldn’t have thought about it if he hadn’t popped in to see you.”

Read the whole thing.

The other article is this one from the Daily Caller, which talks about some of Yoni's letters to his father, his brother the Prime Minister, and his wife.

Writing to brother Benjamin after the 1973 Yom Kippur war, Jonathan wrote about how he refused to become part of the “wandering Jewish people.”

“I would rather opt for living here in continual battle than for becoming part of the wandering Jewish people.,” he declared. “Any compromise will simply hasten the end. As I don’t intend to tell my grandchildren about the Jewish State in the twentieth century as a mere brief and transient episode in thousands of years of wandering, I intend to hold on here with all my might.”

In another letter to Benjamin in 1974, Jonathan expressed his anxiety about Israel’s long term prospects for survival.

“I feel profoundly apprehensive about the future of the Jewish State. Shedding illusions, I see that the process aimed at annihilating us is gathering momentum and the noose is tightening. It won’t be a rapid process, though our strength will diminish from one war to the next,” he wrote.

Read the whole thing.

Anniversary of Operation Entebbe

35 years ago today Operation Entebbe was carried out.

In what quickly became known as one of the most daring counter-terrorism operations in history, the Israeli army sent a strike team thousands of kiolmeters away from home, to the Entebbe Airport in Uganda to conduct a daring raid to rescue the Jewish hostages of an Air France flight that had been hijacked. The successful mission was marred by the death of team leader Lt. Col. Yonatan (a.k.a. Yoni) Netanyahu, along with the death of 3 of the hostages (and a fourth was killed in the hospital by a Ugandan officer).

The Entebbe Hostage Rescue_Operation Thunderbolt

Entebbe's message 35 years later: Leave no man behind

ENTEBBE’S MESSAGE 35 YEARS LATER: LEAVE NO MAN BEHIND

By Doron Almog

Thirty-five years ago today (July 4, 1976), an Air France flight was hijacked and diverted to Entebbe Airport in Uganda. Shortly after landing, all of the non-Jewish passengers were released and the remaining Jewish passengers were held hostage. One week after the hijacking, I commanded the first task force to land in Entebbe as part of a daring mission that freed 105 hostages.

Faced with immense challenges, we pulled off a thrilling (yet bittersweet) victory. At the time, we saw the feat as an illustration of the strength and vitality of the Israeli army and the Jewish spirit. Upon reflection (so many years later), it is clear that it also highlighted the importance of standing up for those who cannot stand up for themselves.

It should be noted that my participation in Entebbe was voluntary. After my brother, Eran, was killed in the Yom Kippur war (he was injured in the Golan Heights and bled to death after sitting untreated for seven days), I was given the choice of leaving my combat unit as a bereaved soldier. However, I chose to remain in the military in order to change the ethos of the IDF and make absolutely sure that no soldier would ever be left behind again.

It was this philosophy that drove me to participate in the Entebbe raid and numerous other military operations throughout my career and, ultimately, set the stage for the next phase of my adult life.

After our son was born – and we named him Eran after my late brother – he was diagnosed with severe physical and cognitive disabilities. In an instant, my world was turned upside down. At first, I had a very hard time coming to terms with the fact that my beloved son would never speak or hold down a job, and would always be dependent on others to provide his every need. But my "no man left behind" philosophy prevailed, and I found the strength to be the father that Eran needed me to be.

In fact, my time with Eran allowed me to develop my philosophy even further, and I became committed to changing the way society views the disabled. I realized that it is not enough to make sure that these wonderful children don't get left behind. We must ensure that they are given every opportunity to excel and reach their greatest potentials.

For the Entebbe raid, our IDF battalions travelled 2,500 miles to fight for those who could not fight for themselves. It is time for us to harness that bravery, resolve and dedication to our fellow men, to turn our sights inward and focus on the urgent rescue missions in our own neighborhoods. These "hostages" are in very real danger every day of their lives and are often abandoned. They are the weakest members of our society and are completely dependent on the kindness of others. We don't need to launch a complex tactical mission to set them free. We simply need to wrap them in love and help them integrate into our social fabric.

Make no mistake: our commitment to care for the disabled members of society remains immeasurably more difficult than any military campaign I have ever led. But we must stand up and fight to provide them with the care that they deserve. Because, in the end, our generation will be judged by how well we complete this mission.

Major General (Res.) Doron Almog is the founder and Chairman of Aleh Negev – Nahalat Eran, a village named in memory of his son, that provides a continuum of residential care for children with severe disabilities as they grow from adolescents into young adults. Learn more about Aleh at www.aleh.org.

Raid on Entebbe

Here's another July 4th treat. Since this is the 35th anniversary of the IDF raid on Entebbe, in which IDF commandos rescued over 100 passengers who were being held hostage at the Entebbe Airport in Uganda, here is the full-length feature movie Raid on Entebbe.