Operation Entebbe
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Image:OJ entebbe airport.gif Entebbe Airport, Uganda, scene of Operation Entebbe Operation Entebbe took place on the night of July 3 and early morning of July 4, 1976. It was actually called Operation Thunderbolt by the Israeli military operatives who planned it and carried it out, and it was subsequently renamed Operation Yonatan after the raid commander, Col. Yonatan "Yoni" Netanyahu, the only Israeli soldier to die in the raid.
HijackOn June 27, 1976 Air France Flight 139, an Airbus A300, carrying 244 passengers and a crew of 12 took off from Athens, Greece, headed for Paris, France. Soon after a 12:30 takeoff, the flight was hijacked by four terrorists. These terrorists, two from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and two from the German Red Army Faction also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang commandeered the flight diverting it to to Benghazi, Libya. There it was held on the ground seven hours for refueling and the release of a single female hostage, taking off again for a 03:15 arrival at Entebbe International Airport in Uganda. In Entebbe, the four hijackers were joined by three additional terrorists and supported by the Ugandan regime of pro-Palestinian President Idi Amin. Led by Wilfred Böse (and not, as occasionally reported, by Ilich Ramírez Sánchez a/k/a "Carlos the Jackal"), they demanded the release of 40 Palestinians held in Israel and 13 other detainees in prisons in Kenya, France, Switzerland, and Germany. The passengers were held hostage in the Old Terminal's transit hall. The hijackers later released a large number of them, keeping only Israelis and Jews, who they threatened to kill if the Israeli government did not comply with their captors' demand to release Palestinian prisoners. Upon the announcement by the captors that the crew and the non-Jewish passengers would be released and put on another Air France plane that was brought to Entebbe for that purpose, Flight 139 Captain Michel Bacos announced to the captors that all passengers, including the remaining ones, were his responsibility, and that he would not leave them behind. His entire crew, down to the most junior flight attendant, followed him of their own free will (upon their return to Paris, Bacos was reprimanded for this by his superiors at Air France, and suspended from duty for a period). A French nun also refused to leave, and insisted that one of the remaining hostages take her place, but was forced into the awaiting Air France plane by Ugandan soldiers. Israeli raidImage:OJ Mercedes.gif Black Mercedes The government of Israel refused to negotiate with the terrorists. They decided to undertake a military rescue mission to free the remaining hostages. After days of collecting intelligence and careful planning, four Israeli Air Force Hercules transport aircraft flew down secretly from Israel and night-landed without any aid from the ground-control at Entebbe airport. They were followed by an air force jet with medical facilities flying into Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, Kenya. Over a hundred IDF troops, including members of the elite Sayeret Matkal team, arrived to conduct the assault; some Mossad troops might have taken part in the assault as well. They had the complete support of the Kenyan government who were bitter foes of the Amin regime. Image:Airkz 20040217 yoni netanyahu.jpg Israeli Col. Yoni Netanyahu, ground commander during Operation Entebbe The Israeli forces landed an hour before midnight, with cargo bay doors already open. A black Mercedes with accompanying Land Rovers were brought along to avoid suspicion while the Israeli troops drove from the landed plane to the terminal building: this would look like a company of Idi Amin or another high official with escort. The Mercedes was owned by an Israeli civilian and was apparently spray painted black for the raid, on the understanding it would be returned to the owner in its original colour. The Ugandan air traffic controllers were obvoiusly confused by this deception, since they let the Mercedes and its jeeps to procede almost to the door of the terminal. The hostages were sitting in the main room of the building, directly adjacent to the runway. The Israelis sprang from their vehicles and burst into the terminal yelling in Hebrew, "Get down! Get down!". One hostage ran toward the commandos and was shot down. Three hijackers in the room aimed their weapons toward the Israelis and were immediately taken down by their automatic weapons. One of the solders called out in Hebrew, "Where are the rest of them?", apparently meaning the terrorists. The hostages pointed to a connecting door, upon which the Israelis pulled the pins on some flashbangs, kicked in the door and threw the grenades in. Right after the resulting explosions, the commandos tore into the room and shot three more hijackers sitting at a table, stunned by the explosions. The Israelis retired in good order back to their Hercules and began loading the hostages on board. Several Ugandan solders began to fire at them from the cover of the airport, killing two hostages. The Israelis returned fire without sustaining any casualties of their own and finished the loading. As the commander of the operation, Col. Netanyahu, ran up the ramp in the plane last in the line, he turned for a moment and was shot in the face. He dropped to the floor of the Hercules, dead. The raid lasted only about thirty minutes and six hijackers were killed. One hostage was killed when he leaped at the Israeli forces. Of the 103 hostages, three died. It is speculated that Israeli forces captured some of the hijackers but there is no confirmation of that. Ugandan forces also opened fire on Israeli troops killing Col. Jonathan Netanyahu, the Israeli ground commander and the only known Israeli military casualty during the operation (and, incidentally, the elder brother of Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel from 1996 to 1999). A total of 45 Ugandan soldiers were killed during the raid and the Ugandan fighter planes sitting on the ramp were put into non-flying condition. The rescued hostages were flown out shortly after the fighting via Nairobi to Israel. There was one other civilian fatality: Dora Bloch, a 75-year-old hostage, was recovering from a choking episode in a Kampala hospital when the Israelis struck. In April 1987, Henry Kyemba, who was Uganda's Health Minister at the time of Entebbe, told Uganda's Human Rights Commission that Dora Bloch had been dragged from her hospital bed and murdered by two army officers on Amin's orders. Bloch's remains were recovered in 1979 following the Tanzanian-Ugandan War that led to the end of Amin's rule of Uganda. AnalysisImage:OJ Rescued Hostages.gif Rescued hostages One of the reasons that the raid could be so well planned was that the building in which the hostages were being held was built by an Israeli construction firm. It was very common for Israeli firms to be involved in building projects in Africa in the 1960s and 1970s. The firm which had built the building still had the blueprints and supplied them to the government of Israel. In addition many of the released hostages were able to accurately describe the interior of the building, the number of hijackers, the involvement of Ugandan troops and many other important details. While planning the military operation the IDF built a partial replica of the airport building. Some Israeli civilians who worked on this had worked on the original project in Uganda. It has been claimed by researchers that after arriving at the military base to begin work on the replica building (not having been told what work they were to do before arriving) the civilian Israeli contractors were invited to dinner with the commander of the base. At dinner it was indicated the civilians would be guests of the military for a few days following completion of the replica, in the interests of national security. During the entire operation an extremely high level of security was maintained. In the week prior to the raid, Israel had tried a number of political avenues to obtain the release of the hostages. Many sources indicate the Israeli cabinet was prepared to release Palestinian prisoners if a military solution seemed unlikely to succeed. A retired IDF officer, General Chaim Bar-Lev, had known Idi Amin for many years, and was considered to have a strong personal relationship with him. At the request of the cabinet he spoke with Amin on the phone many times, attempting to obtain the release of the hostages, but had had no success by the time of the raid. AftermathThe government of Uganda later convened a session of the United Nations Security Council to seek official condemnation of the Israeli raid, as a violation of Ugandan sovereignty. The Security Council ultimately declined to pass any resolution on the matter. In his address to the Council, the Israeli ambassador Chaim Herzog said: "We come with a simple message to the Council: we are proud of what we have done because we have demonstrated to the world that a small country, in Israel's circumstances, with which the members of this Council are by now all too familiar, the dignity of man, human life and human freedom constitute the highest values. We are proud not only because we have saved the lives of over a hundred innocent people - men, women and children - but because of the significance of our act for the cause of human freedom." (Source: Heroes of Israel by Chaim Herzog, p. 284) TV and Feature Film dramatizationsThe incident was the subject of three films, two of which were US productions with American/British casts; the third was produced in Israel with mostly Israeli actors in the key roles.
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de:Operation Entebbe he:מבצע יונתן ja:エンテベ空港奇襲作戦 pl:Operacja Entebbe zh:恩德培行动 |
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