Operation Entebbe: Israel's Fourth of July
Hostages of Flight 139 are returned after the successful conclusion of Operation Entebbe.
Air France Flight 139 took off from Tel Aviv with 260 souls aboard on June 27, 1976. Besides a crew of 12, the 248 passengers aboard the Airbus A300 were mostly Israelis and European Jews. Their itinerary included a brief stopover in Athens, where additional passengers would board the plane before service continued to their final destination in Paris.
Two of the 58 additional passengers who boarded in Athens were Wilfried Böse and Brigitte Kuhlmann. The couple were committed members of the German “Revolutionary Cells” faction of the Baader Meinhof Gang, or Red Army Faction, a revolutionary Marxist terrorist organization in Europe. They were joined by two members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-External Operations (PFLP-EO), a radical faction of the PFLP which conducted international terrorist operations against the direction of Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Taking advantage of notoriously lax security in Athens airport, the foursome managed to smuggle pistols and hand grenades on board the plane. The flight took off from Athens, but never reached Paris.
Shortly after takeoff, Wilfried Böse rushed the cockpit with a revolver and hand grenade, taking command of the flight from Captain Michel Barcos, a veteran of the French Liberation Forces who had received combat pilot training in the United States during World War II. Böse ordered Barcos to divert to Benghazi, Libya while the other 3 hijackers took over the cabin, announcing on the intercom that the plane was now under the control of the “Che Guevara Force and the Gaza Commando of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.” Their demands were extravagant: Five million dollars (the equivalent of 22.5 million dollars today) and the release of 53 revolutionary and terrorist prisoners around the world.
That same morning, Muki Betser was arriving at IDF command in Tel Aviv. Muki was a leader of the elite commando force Sayeret Matkal, which had successfully ended the hijacking of Sabena flight 571 in Operation: Isotope just four years before. During the Yom Kippur War in 1973, it became clear that the IDF needed small units of rapidly-deployable commandos for the purposes of reconnaissance and special operations. Betser and several of his colleagues in Sayeret Matkal formed the Shaldag Unit, a cohort that specialized in airdrops into foreign territory to gather intelligence and execute clandestine operations. It was in this role that Muki Betser received a call from Ehud Barak on June 27th, 1976, summoning him a secret meeting. Barak had been the commander of Sayeret Matkal’s Operation: Isotope before rising to lead the IDF’s Planning Directorate in charge of strategic and tactical operations. Muki entered the meeting with Barak and four other intelligence officers who informed him that Air France flight 139 had been hijacked by terrorists en route to Paris. The IDF and Mossad were trying to track the movement of the airplane, which had made a brief stop in Benghazi, Libya and released a handful of hostages there before continuing on to an unknown destination. It would not be known until the following day that the flight had ultimately landed at the Ugandan airport in Entebbe.
In 1976, most attendees of that secret meeting in IDF Command couldn’t find Entebbe on a map. But providentially, there was one man in the room who knew the city well. Muki Betser had spent time in Uganda in the early 1970’s as part of a IDF program to train Ugandan paratroopers. Israel and Uganda had previously enjoyed close diplomatic ties after President Idi Amin came to power in a military coup in 1971. The man who would eventually be known as the “Butcher of Uganda” was initially friendly towards the Western world and the Jewish State. But as his regime continued, Amin fell into the trap of so many despots in their transition from liberator to dictator. Becoming increasingly paranoid and authoritarian, he realigned himself with Libya’s Muammar Gadhafi and the Soviet Union. It is now known that Amin had advanced knowledge of the terrorist operation and conspired with the hijackers to facilitate their landing at Entebbe. After “welcoming” the hostages to his country, he ushered them into the airports old terminal building, which had fallen into disuse. Israeli passengers were separated from non-Israelis, after which the latter were soon released, leaving 94 hostages and 12 crew members in danger. At least four more terrorists joined the hijackers at Entebbe, which was also then guarded by elements of the Ugandan Army.
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Back in Tel Aviv, IDF officials watched on television as Idi Amin paraded around Entebbe airport and addressed the hostages daily with his media entourage. He basked in the world’s attention as his military shielded terrorists and their Israeli hostages, all-the-while playing the mediator intent on a peaceful resolution. Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin began back-channel negotiations with Amin and Yasser Arafat through the Egyptian government, but to no avail. Even Arafat’s attempts to negotiate directly with the hijackers failed, and they refused to speak with him. Rabin then authorized Ehud Barak to begin planning a military operation codenamed Thunderbolt to free the hostages. The task was daunting. Barak and Betser had to devise a strategy to rescue over 100 hostages held in a hostile foreign country in a situation about which they knew almost nothing, involving hundreds of enemy fighters. They would have to travel almost 5,000 kilometers (3,000 miles) to reach Entebbe, ten times further than any IDF unit had ever travelled to conduct an operation. But Amin’s flagrant hubris became an unexpected advantage for the Israelis when Betser recognized the old terminal building where the dictator addressed the hostages on television. Intelligence officers also conducted extensive interviews with the non-Israeli passengers who had been released from Entebbe, gaining more valuable intelligence. As June turned into July, Barak’s team pieced together a plan for one of the most creative and daring military operations in history.
On the evening of July 3, 1976, four C-130 Hercules cargo planes and two Boeing 707 aircraft took off from Sharm el-Sheikh near the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula. The large aircraft flew barely 30 meters (100 feet) from the waters of the Red Sea to avoid radar detection, eventually flying over Nairobi, Kenya, where one of the 707’s which had been fitted as a medical station would land temporarily. The other five planes continued on toward Uganda. The fleet arrived at Entebbe airport under cover of darkness at 11 PM Jerusalem time. The remaining 707 continued circling overhead, acting as the command post, where Brigadier General Dan Shomron would oversee the operation. The four C-130’s landed on the airfield with their cargo doors open, almost taxing off the runaway into a ditch for lack of knowledge of the airfield. They carried the assault team made up of elements of the famed Golani Brigade and Sayeret Matkal. Their leader was Yonatan “Yoni” Netanyahu, deputy commander of Sayeret Matkal, and a decorated veteran of the Yom Kippur War. Muki Betser was his second-in-command. Dressed in Ugandan military uniforms, Netanyahu’s team drove toward the old terminal in a black Mercedes resembling Idi Amin’s presidential car. They were accompanied by several black Land Rovers, also typical in Amin’s convoy. The Golani unit remained behind in armored personnel carriers to secure the C-130’s for hostage rescue, while a different Matkal unit prepared to sabotage the Ugandans.
As the faux presidential procession approached the Ugandan military checkpoint at Entebbe airport, the rouse appeared entirely convincing, except for one important detail. The team drove a black Mercedes, but Amin had recently traded his black Mercedes for a white model. Although the Israelis did not know this, the Ugandans did, and ordered the convoy to stop. Netanyahu ordered the guards to be shot with silenced pistols. The Ugandans fell, but were not immediately killed. One of them rose back up as the convoy moved on, prompting a team member to fire back at him with an un-suppressed rifle. Fearing that the element of surprise was lost, the strike team dismounted the vehicles and moved quickly toward the old terminal. Upon entering, they used a megaphone to order the hostages to stay down in both English and Hebrew. A French-Israeli passenger stood up in the confusion and was mistaken by Betser for a hijacker. Tragically, the young man was shot dead, the first of three hostages to die in the crossfire of rescue. Wilfried Böse arrived soon afterwards, and after momentarily pointing his Kalashnikov rifle at the hostages, he ordered them to seek shelter and began firing at the Israeli commandos. He was killed by their return fire. The Israelis inquired about the location of the other terrorists, after which they pursued and engaged them, killing all of them in the ensuing firefight. The surviving hostages were led out of the terminal and onto the airfield, where the Ugandan army was waiting for them.
The other Sayeret Matkal unit had successfully disabled the 11 Ugandan MiG fighter jets at the airport, preventing them from pursuing the C-130’s as they withdrew. But the firefight in the old terminal had alerted the Ugandans, and the Israelis encountered intense fire as they returned to their awaiting cargo planes. A rifle shot from the control tower struck Yoni Netanyahu, mortally wounding him. He died minutes later, with Betser taking command of the raid. Between 33-45 Ugandan soldiers were also killed by Israeli return fire, which provided enough cover for the team to complete the extraction with no further Israeli casualties. 102 surviving hostages boarded the C-130’s, which took off just before midnight, a mere 53 minutes after they had landed.
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On July 4, 1976, Operation Thunderbolt, popularly known as Operation Entebbe, landed safely in Nairobi, Kenya. The hostages and their rescuers were greeted by jubilant family members at the Nairobi airport. The body of Yoni Netanyahu was returned home to Israel and laid to rest in Jerusalem’s military cemetery on July 6. The fallen commando was eulogized by then Defense Minister Shimon Peres, who mourned that “a bullet had torn the young heart of one of Israeli’s finest sons, one of its most courageous warriors, one of its most promising commanders - the magnificent Yonatan Netanyahu.” Operation Thunderbolt was later renamed Operation Yonatan in his honor. Yoni’s younger brother Bibi, also a member of Seyeret Matkal and a veteran of Operation Isotope, would later be catapulted into a successful political career, serving as prime minister between 1996-1999 and again between 2009 and the present day.
The Entebbe raid was generally praised by Western governments, calling it “an impossible operation” and an “act of self-defense” by the Israelis. American media took note that the hostages had been freed on the 200th anniversary of the signing of America’s Declaration of Independence. The Soviet-leaning Organization of African Unity, which had been organized by Amin, called the raid an “act of aggression” in the United Nations, while the UN Secretary-General both condemned the raid as a violation of a member state’s sovereignty while also admitting the complexity of dealing with international terrorism. A UN resolution which both affirmed territorial sovereignty and condemned international terrorism failed to garner enough votes for passage, however. Air France pilot Michel Barcos was awarded the French Legion of Honor, the highest order of merit in France.
Ugandan president Idi Amin, furious about the Israeli raid, ordered the execution of the last remaining hostage, who had been hospitalized in Uganda before the rescue operation. Dora Bloch, a 74-year-old British-Israeli dual-citizen, was dragged from her hospital bed and shot to death by Ugandan security agents. Amin then ordered general reprisals against Kenyans in Uganda due to the Kenyan government’s cooperation with the Israelis. Over 300 Kenyans were killed and over 3,000 more displaced in the ensuing violence. Amin was later deposed and exiled in 1979 after a failed war with neighboring Tanzania. He died in Saudi Arabia in 2003 of kidney failure.
After renewing diplomatic ties in the following decades, the Ugandan and Israeli governments held a joint commemoration of their respective fallen at the old Entebbe Airport in 2012. Each government renewed its commitment to partner against international terrorism. Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu was present to honor the memory of his fallen brother, Yoni.
