Operation Entebbe

Operation Entebbe was a counter-terrorist hostage-rescue mission carried out by commandos of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) at Entebbe Airport in Uganda on 4 July 1976. A week earlier, on 27 June, an Air France plane with 248 passengers was hijacked, by terrorists of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the German Revolutionary Cells, and flown to Entebbe, near Kampala, the capital of Uganda. The hijackers separated the Israelis and, according to some, Jews from the larger group and forced them into another room. That afternoon, 47 non-Israeli hostages were released. The next day, 101 more non-Israeli hostages were allowed to leave on board an Air France aircraft. More than 100 Israeli and Jewish passengers, along with the non-Jewish pilot Captain Bacos, remained as hostages and were threatened with death.

The IDF acted on intelligence provided by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. The hijackers threatened to kill the hostages if their prisoner release demands were not met. This threat led to the planning of the rescue operation. These plans included preparation for armed resistance from Ugandan military troops.

The operation took place at night. Israeli transport planes carried 100 commandos over 2500 mi to Uganda for the rescue operation. The operation, which took a week of planning, lasted 90 minutes. 102 hostages were rescued. Five Israeli commandos were wounded and one, the commander, Lt. Col. Yonatan Netanyahu, was killed. All the hijackers, three hostages and 45 Ugandan soldiers were killed, and thirty Soviet-built MiG-17s and MiG-21s of Uganda's air force were destroyed. 24 hours later, a fourth Israeli hostage was killed by Ugandan army officers at a nearby hospital.

The rescue, named Operation Thunderbolt, is sometimes referred to retroactively as Operation Jonathan in memory of the unit's leader, Yonatan Netanyahu. He was the older brother of Benjamin Netanyahu, who served as the two-time Prime Minister of Israel from 1996 to 1999 and from 2009–present.

Background
The PLO was ousted from Jordan after Jordanian-Palestinian civil war. The Palestinian military organizations then made South Lebanon its headquarters and enlisted militants from Palestinian refugee camps. South Lebanon was also referred to as Fatahland, due to the almost complete control of Fatah and other military Palestinian organizations over this officially Lebanese area, which they used to stage attacks against Israel, mainly targeting civilians, and to engage in international airflight terror campaign.

Hijacking
On 27 June 1976, Air France Flight 139, an Airbus A300 (Airbus A300B4-203), registration F-BVGG (c/n 019), originated from Tel Aviv, Israel, carrying 248 passengers and a crew of 12. The flight took off from Athens, Greece headed for Paris. Soon after the 12:30 pm takeoff, the flight was hijacked by two Palestinians from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – External Operations (PFLP-EO) and two Germans from the German Revolutionary Cells—Wilfried Böse and Brigitte Kuhlmann. The hijackers diverted the flight to Benghazi, Libya. There it was held on the ground for seven hours for refuelling, during which time a female hostage was released who pretended to be having a miscarriage. The plane left Benghazi, and at 3:15 pm on the 28th, more than 24 hours after the flight's original departure, it arrived at Entebbe Airport in Uganda.

At Entebbe, the four hijackers were joined by at least four others, supported by the pro-Palestinian forces of Uganda's President, Idi Amin. They demanded the release of 40 Palestinians held in Israel and 13 other detainees imprisoned in Kenya, France, Switzerland, and West Germany. They threatened that if these demands were not met, they would begin to kill hostages on 1 July 1976.

The hijackers sorted the hostages into two groups—Jews and Israelis in one, everyone else in another. In 2011, one of the survivors, Ilan Hartuv, said that the hijackers did not separate out the Jews, only the Israelis. As they did so, a Holocaust survivor showed Böse a camp registration number tattooed on his arm, Böse protested "I'm no Nazi! ... I am an idealist".

According to Ilan Hartuv, one of the hostages, the hijackers told the hostages explicitly that they are against Israel and not against Jews. Among the freed passengers there were many Jews that did not hold Israeli citizenship, including two yeshiva students from Brazil.

The hijackers held the passengers hostage for a week in the transit hall of Entebbe Airport—now the old terminal. Some hostages were released, but 106 remained captive. The hijackers threatened to kill them if Israel did not comply with their demands.

It was announced by the hijackers that the airline crew and non-Jewish passengers would be released and put on another Air France plane that had been brought to Entebbe for that purpose. The flight captain Michel Bacos then told the hijackers that all passengers, including those remaining, were his responsibility and that he would not leave them behind. Bacos's entire crew followed suit. A French nun also refused to leave, insisting that one of the remaining hostages take her place, but she was forced into the waiting Air France plane by Ugandan soldiers. A total of 85 Israeli and non-Israeli Jewish hostages remained, plus 20 others, most of whom were the crew of the Air France plane.

Operational planning
In the week before the raid, Israel tried a number of political avenues to obtain the release of the hostages. Many sources indicate that the Israeli cabinet was prepared to release Palestinian prisoners if a military solution seemed unlikely to succeed. A retired IDF officer, Baruch "Burka" 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, without success. The Israeli government also approached the US government to deliver a message to Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, asking him to request Amin to release the hostages.

On the 1 July deadline, the Israeli government offered to negotiate with the hijackers in order to extend the deadline to 4 July. Amin also asked them to extend the deadline until 4 July. This meant he could take a diplomatic trip to Port Louis, Mauritius, in order to officially hand over the chairmanship of the Organisation of African Unity to Seewoosagur Ramgoolam. This extension of the hostage deadline would prove crucial in allowing Israeli forces enough time to get to Entebbe.

On 3 July, the Israeli cabinet approved the rescue mission, under the command of Major General Yekutiel "Kuti" Adam with Matan Vilnai as the Deputy Commander. Brigadier General Dan Shomron was appointed to command the operation on the ground.

Attempts at a diplomatic solution
As the crisis unfolded, attempts were made to solve the crisis by negotiating the release of the hostages. According to declassified diplomatic documents, the Egyptian government under Sadat tried to negotiate with both the PLO and the Ugandan government, and special envoy Hanni al Hassan was sent to negotiate in Uganda. Negotiations, however, were made futile as the operation proceeded.

Raid preparation
Eventually President Idi Amin allowed more Palestinian hijackers to join the hostages, some accounts claim that all non-Israelis including Jews where allowed to leave other hostage accounts claim that the hijackers kept both Jews and Israelis hostage. At this point the Israeli authorities felt no other option but to formulate a plan of attack.

Lt. Col. Joshua Shani, the lead pilot for the hostage rescue, said that the Israelis had had a previous plan that involved dropping naval commandos into Lake Victoria and letting them rescue the hostages. The commandos would have then ridden in rubber boats to the airport, located on the edge of Lake Victoria. After killing the terrorists and freeing the hostages, they would have asked Ugandan leader Idi Amin for a free passage home. However, this plan was later abandoned because the Israelis ran out of time.

Shani also said about the operation, “The entire operation was planned over 48 hours. Planning an operation like this might take another military a month, two months, six months or more, but we had two days, so we probably covered only 2 percent of the plan, leaving 98 percent to improvisation."

Mossad built an accurate picture of the whereabouts of the hostages, the number of militants, and the involvement of Ugandan troops from the released hostages in Paris. Additionally, Israeli firms were involved in building projects in Africa during the 1960s and 1970s and while preparing the raid the Israeli army consulted with Solel Boneh, a large Israeli construction company which happened to have built the terminal where the hostages were being held. While planning the military operation the IDF erected a partial replica of the airport terminal with the help of civilians who had helped build the original.

During planning of the raid it became apparent that although several nations within East Africa may have been sympathetic to the plight of the hostages, no single territory would risk incurring the wrath of their neighbour, Idi Amin (at the time, Uganda was militarily superior to all its neighbours) by aiding Israel in any potential action or incursion on Ugandan soil. The Lockheed C130 Hercules aircraft the IDF would be using to carry out the raid lacked the range required (given payload and operational considerations) to reach Kampala and back without refueling; Nor was there the logistical capacity of conducting aerial refueling for 4-6 aircraft so distant from Israeli airspace. Moreover, the IDF would and could not cross the airspace of a sovereign nation under arms without the express permission of the government in question as this could be misconstrued as an act of open aggression against the nation they intended to transit through. It was clear that the raid would not proceed without the assistance of at least one government in the East African region, but although several including the logistically obvious choice—Kenya—were sympathetic, no one wished to incur the wrath of Idi Amin or the Palestinians. It is likely that at this stage a prominent Jewish hotelier in Kenya and owner of the Block hotels chain, along with other members of the Jewish/Israeli community in Nairobi, used their considerable political and economic influence with Kenya's then President, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, to bolster negotiations by the Israeli diplomatic mission in Nairobi. The result was that the Israeli government managed to secure permission for the IDF task-force to cross Kenyan airspace and land and refuel at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.

Unfortunately this came at a high price as The Norfolk hotel, then property of Block Hotels, was bombed by the PFLP/PLO in retaliation for the perceived involvement of the Block family and Kenyan Jewish/Israeli business community on 31 December 1980. The bombing was the first act of foreign terrorism perpetrated on Kenyan soil and resulted in 13 fatalities and 87 casualties of several nationalities.

According to a 5 July 2006, Associated Press interview with raid organizer Muki Betzer, Mossad operatives extensively interviewed the hostages who had been released. Betser reports that a French-Jewish passenger with military training and "a phenomenal memory", allowed him to give information about the number and arms of the hostage-takers which proved very useful in the investigation. After days of collecting intelligence and planning by Netanyahu's deputy Muki Betser, four Israeli Air Force C-130 Hercules transport aircraft flew secretly to Entebbe Airport, by cover of night, without aid of Entebbe air traffic control.

Task force
The Israeli ground task force numbered approximately 100 personnel, and comprised the following:
 * The Ground Command and Control Element
 * This small group comprised the overall ground commander, Brig. Gen. Shomron, and the communications and support personnel.


 * The Assault Element
 * A 29-man assault unit led by Lt. Col. Netanyahu, this force was composed entirely of commandos from Sayeret Matkal, and was given the primary task of assaulting the old terminal and rescuing the hostages. Major Betser led one of the element's assault teams; Matan Vilnai led another.


 * The Reinforcement Element
 * 1) Securing the area, and preventing any hostile ground forces from interfering with the C-130 Hercules aircraft and the actual rescue.
 * 2) Destroying the squadron of MiG fighter jets on the ground, to prevent any possible interceptions by the Ugandan Air Force.
 * 3) Providing protection for and assisting in the loading of the hostages aboard the transports.
 * 4) Assisting in the ground refuelling of the air transports.

Attack route
The task force's route flew over Sharm al-Sheikh and down the international flight path over the Red Sea, mostly flying at a height of no more than 30 m (100 ft) to avoid radar detection by Egyptian, Sudanese, and Saudi Arabian forces. Near the south outlet of the Red Sea the C-130s turned south and passed south of Djibouti. From there, they went to a point northeast of Nairobi, Kenya, likely across Somalia and the Ogaden area of Ethiopia. They turned west, passing through the African Rift Valley and over Lake Victoria.

Two Boeing 707 jets followed the cargo planes. The first Boeing contained medical facilities and landed at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, Kenya. The commander of the operation, General Yekutiel Adam, was on board the second Boeing, which circled over Entebbe Airport during the raid.

The Israeli forces landed at Entebbe at 23:00 IST, with their cargo bay doors already open. A black Mercedes and accompanying Land Rovers were taken along to give the impression that the Israeli troops driving from the landed aircraft to the terminal building were an escort for a returning Amin, or other high-ranking official. The Mercedes and its escort vehicles were quickly driven by the Israeli assault team members to the airport terminal in the same fashion as Amin. Along the way, two Ugandan sentries, who were aware that Idi Amin had recently purchased a white Mercedes to replace his black one, ordered this procession of vehicles to stop. The commandos shot the sentries with silenced pistols, but did not kill either of them. As they pulled away, an Israeli commando in one of the Land Rovers that followed the Mercedes noticed that the sentries were still alive, and immediately killed them with a burst from his unsuppressed assault rifle. Fearing premature alerting of the hijackers, the assault team was quickly sent into action.

Hostage rescue
The Israelis sprang from their vehicles and burst towards the terminal. The hostages were in the main hall of the airport building, directly adjacent to the runway. Upon entering the terminal, the commandos were shouting through a megaphone, "Stay down! Stay down! We are Israeli soldiers," in both Hebrew and English. Jean-Jacques Maimoni, a 19 year-old French immigrant to Israel who chose to identify himself as an Israeli Jew to the hijackers even though he also had a French passport—stood up and was killed when Israeli company commander Muki Betzer and another soldier mistook him for a terrorist and fired at him. Another hostage, Pasco Cohen, 52, the manager of an Israeli medical insurance fund, was also fatally wounded by gunfire from the commandos. In addition, a third hostage, 56-year-old Ida Borochovitch, a Russian Jew who had emigrated to Israel, was killed in the crossfire.

According to hostage Ilan Hartuv, the only hijacker that entered the hall where the hostages were assembled after the start of the operation, was Wilfried Böse. At first he pointed his Kalashnikov rifle at hostages, but "immediately came to his senses" and ordered them to find shelter in the restroom. According to Hartuv, Böse fired only at Israeli soldiers and not at hostages.

At one point, an Israeli commando called out in Hebrew, "Where are the rest of them?", referring to the hijackers. The hostages pointed to a connecting door of the airport's main hall, into which the Israeli commandos threw several hand grenades. They then entered the room and shot dead the three remaining hijackers, thus completing their assault. Meanwhile, the other three C-130 Hercules had landed and unloaded armoured personnel carriers, which were to be used for defense during the anticipated hour of refuelling, to destroy Ugandan MiG fighter planes at the airport to prevent them from pursuing the Israelis after they left Entebbe Airport; and for intelligence-gathering.

Departure
After the raid, the Israeli assault team returned to their aircraft and began loading the hostages on board. Ugandan soldiers shot at them in the process. The Israeli commandos returned fire with their assault rifles, inflicting casualties on the Ugandans. During this brief but intense firefight, Ugandan soldiers fired at them from the Airport control tower. Israeli commander Yonatan Netanyahu was killed after being shot in the chest, possibly by a Ugandan sniper. He was the only Israeli commando killed in the operation. At least five other commandos were wounded. Israeli commandos fired light machine guns and an RPG back at the control tower, suppressing the Ugandans firing upon the Israelis. The Israelis finished evacuating the hostages, loaded Netanyahu's body into one of the aeroplanes, and then left Entebbe Airport. The entire operation lasted 53 minutes—of which the assault lasted only 30 minutes. All seven hijackers present and around 33–45 Ugandan soldiers were killed. About 11 Ugandan Army Air Force MiG-17 fighter planes were destroyed on the ground at Entebbe Airport. Out of the 106 hostages, three were killed, one was left in Uganda, and approximately 10 were wounded. The 102 rescued hostages were flown to Israel via Nairobi, Kenya, shortly after the raid.

Dora Bloch killing
Dora Bloch, a 75-year-old British Jewish immigrant, had been taken to Mulago Hospital in Kampala, and was killed by officers of the Ugandan army, as were some of her doctors and nurses for apparently trying to intervene. In April 1987, Henry Kyemba, Uganda's Attorney General and Minister of Justice at the time, told the Uganda Human Rights Commission that Bloch had been dragged from her hospital bed and killed by two army officers on Idi Amin's orders. Mrs Bloch had been shot and her body dumped in the trunk of a car which had Ugandan intelligence services number plates. Bloch's remains were recovered near a sugar plantation 20 miles (32 km) east of Kampala in 1979, after the Ugandan–Tanzanian War led to the end of Amin's rule.

Killing of Kenyans
Idi Amin ordered the killing of hundreds of Kenyans living in Uganda in retaliation for Kenya's assistance to Israel in the raid.

Aftermath
The government of Uganda, led by Juma Oris, the Ugandan Foreign Minister at the time, 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, condemning neither Israel nor Uganda. In his address to the Council, 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."

- Chaim Herzog.

Israel received support from the Western World for its operation. West Germany called the raid "an act of self defense". Switzerland and France also praised Israel for the operation. Significant praise was received from representatives of the United Kingdom and the United States both of whom called it "an impossible operation". Some in the United States noted that the hostages were freed on 4 July 1976 which was 200 years since the signing of the US declaration of independence. In private conversation with Israeli Ambassador Dinitz, Henry Kissinger sounded criticism for Israeli use of US equipment during the operation, but that criticism was not made public.

UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim described the raid as "a serious violation of the national sovereignty of a United Nations member state" (meaning Uganda). Dozens of Ugandan soldiers were killed in the raid. The Arab and Communist world condemned the operation calling it an act of aggression.

For refusing to depart (and subsequently leave some of his passengers as hostages) when given leave to do so by the hijackers, Captain Bacos was reprimanded by his superiors at Air France and suspended from duty for a period.

Captain Bacos was later awarded the National Order of the Legion of Honour, the highest decoration in France, and the other crew members were awarded the French Order of Merit.

In the ensuing years, Betser and the Netanyahu brothers—Iddo and Benjamin, all Sayeret Matkal veterans—argued in increasingly public forums about who was to blame for the unexpected early firefight which caused Yonatan Netanyahu's death and partial loss of tactical surprise.

As a result of the operation, the United States military developed highly trained rescue teams modeled on the Entebbe rescue. One notable attempt to imitate it was Operation Eagle Claw, a failed rescue of 53 American embassy personnel held hostage in Tehran during the Iran hostage crisis.

Nationalities
The aircraft was carrying 248 passengers and 12 crew members —of which four passengers were killed and ten injured. From the total of 260 people on board, 256 returned home safely.

The four passengers killed were:
 * 1) Jean-Jacques Maimoni—a 19-year-old French Jew who stood up while the Israeli commandos were shooting the hijackers. They may have mistaken him for a hijacker.
 * 2) Pasco Cohen—a 52-year-old manager of an Israeli medical insurance fund, who was killed by the commandos.
 * 3) Ida Borochovitch—a 56-year-old Russian Jew who had immigrated to Israel, was killed in the crossfire.
 * 4) Dora Bloch—a 75-year-old British immigrant to Israel, was killed by the Ugandan government as a reprisal for the raid while she was receiving treatment at Mulago Hospital in Kampala for a condition unrelated to the raid. Her remains were recovered near a sugar plantation 20 mi east of Kampala in 1979.

According to a list by Air France, most of the passengers were Israeli, French, American, and British citizens. The complete list is as follows:

Commemorations
In August 2012, Uganda and Israel commemorated the raid at a somber ceremony at the base of a tower at the Old Entebbe Airport, where Yonatan Netanyahu was killed. Uganda and Israel renewed their commitment in the fight against terrorism and to work towards humanity. In addition, wreaths were laid, a moment of silence was held, speeches were given, and a poem was recited. The flags of Uganda and Israel waved side by side, demonstrating the two country's strong bilateral relations, next to a huge plaque with a history of the raid. The ceremony was attended by Ugandan State minister of animal industry Bright Rwamirama and the Israeli deputy foreign affairs minister Daniel Ayalon, who laid wreaths at the site.

Dramatisations and documentaries
The incident was the subject of several films, two of which were U.S. productions with American/British casts; a third was produced in Israel with mostly Israeli actors in the key roles. The hijacking of Air France Flight AF139 and the subsequent rescue mission is featured in the documentary Operation Thunderbolt: Entebbe. Below follow a complete list of films on the subjects:
 * Victory at Entebbe (1976): with Anthony Hopkins, Burt Lancaster, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Dreyfuss, Director: Marvin J. Chomsky.
 * Raid On Entebbe (1977): with Peter Finch, Horst Buchholz, Charles Bronson, John Saxon, Yaphet Kotto, and James Woods, Director: Irvin Kershner, Producer: Edgar J. Scherick.
 * Mivtsa Yonatan (English title: Operation Thunderbolt) (1977): Israeli Yehoram Gaon played Col. Netanyahu, Austrian Sybil Danning and German Klaus Kinski played the hijackers. Director: Menahem Golan.

The incident is the subject of Cohen on the Bridge a documentary by director Andrew Wainrib, who gained unprecedented access to the surviving commandos and hostages. An animated short of the documentary won the St. Louis International Film Festival's Festival Prize, was an Award Winner at the Palm Springs Short Fest and played many festivals in 2010 including Big Sky, and Santa Barbara International. The feature length documentary is slated for release in 2011, the 35th anniversary of Operation Entebbe.

Other depictions include:
 * In The Delta Force (1986) the hostage rescue operation was inspired by Operation Entebbe.
 * The incident was also featured in Rise and Fall of Idi Amin (1980) and The Last King of Scotland (2006).
 * The 1988 arcade game Operation Thunderbolt was loosely based on the events of Operation Entebbe.
 * "Assault on Entebbe", an episode of the National Geographic Channel documentary Situation Critical featured this incident.
 * To Pay the Price is a 2009 play by Peter-Adrian Cohen based in part on Yonatan Netanyahu's letters. The play, produced by North Carolina's Theatre Or opened off-off Broadway in New York in June 2009 during the Festival of Jewish Theater and Ideas.
 * In the Simpsons episode "The Greatest Story Ever D'ohed" (2010) the Israeli tourist guide (voiced by Sacha Baron Cohen) offers Marge an Uzi submachine gun saying "You can hold my gun. I used it in Entebbe, I killed three Ugandans!".