Daring raid on Entebbe Restored Israeli Morale and
Lost Face For Amin : The rescue of 106 hijack hostages
was hailed by the Western World and outraged the Arabs
and Communists (AP)


"They were swifter than eagles, they were stronger
than lions." So King David sang the praise of the
warriors Saul and Jonathan. Modern Israel turned to
these Old Testament words to cheer its heroes, who one
day in July swooped deep into Africa to rescue hijack
victims.

David's fighters had carried bows, swords and "the
shield of the mighty." The Israeli commandos of 1976
flew into battle, not on the wings of eagles, but in
U.S.-built Hercules troop transports, loaded with
jeeps and command cars mounted with heavy machine
guns, kosher lunch boxes and two complete surgery
theaters. A fiery sun was dipping into the Indian
Ocean as the four Israeli air force planes - one of
them a Boeing 707 - headed toward their destination
2,400 miles from David's kingdom. Their target was
Entebbe Airport in Uganda, where airport in Uganda,
where pro-Palestinian hijackers were holding 94 Jewish
passengers and a 12-man Air France crew for ransom.

As the planes swung over Africa, the hostages were
settling down for the seventh night of captivity. Some
had been beaten by the the hijackers trying trying to
extract information on Israel's military disposition.
All had been threatened with death, and many turned to
prayer. None suspected that Israel's terrible sword
had already been unsheathed.

The resurgence of Palestinian hijacking caught Israel
by surprise. The guerilla movements had deeply
enmeshed in the Lebanese civil war and were on the
defensive. Terrorism against Israel had dropped
sharply since the beginning of the year.

Air France flight 139 was on a Tel Aviv - Paris run on
June 27 when it was commandeered by four hijackers -
two Palestinians and a man and woman from West
Germany.  - who baorded at the Athens stopover. After
refuelling in Benghazi, Libya, the aircraft was flown
to Entebbe. The hijackers demanded the release from
prison of 53 comrades, 40 of them held in Israel and
the others in West Germany, France, Switzerland and
Kenya. Noon of July 1 was the deadline.

The hijackers released 148 passengers before the
deadline arrived, in what they called a gesture of
goodwill. Others saw it as a move to isolate the
Israelis and point to Israel as the prime target.

When the released captives returned to Paris to tell
of their experiences, it became obvious that this was
no ordinary hijacking. There were indications of
Ugandan complicity. Evidence mounted that Uganda's
president, Field Marshal Idi Amin Dada, was more than
an impartial mediator. The hostages claimed five or
six more Palestinians joined the hijackers in Entebbe,
that Ugandan soldiers had greeted the gunmen with bear
hugs as they stepped off the plane, and were helping
to guard the hostages, that food and medical supplies
were awaiting the captured aircraft, as if the
Ugandans had known of the hijack in advance.

In Tel Aviv, army commanders had been weighing the
military chances. As the deadline approached, vital
information was still lacking. How many Ugandans ?
What was their their disposition and armament ? A
rescue operation seemed too risky. Reluctantly, Israel
announced a reversal of it's long standing policy
never to negotiate with terrorists, and agreed to
bargain for the lives of the hostages. Secretly, it
kept its military options open.

When the hijackers extended the deadline by three
days, the Israelis saw their chance. More intelligence
was added to a growing dossier. Teams of officers
honed a rescue plan. By the following day, the
commandos knew every detail of Entebbe airport and
practiced the mission again and again at the secret
base in Israel.

On the afternoon of July 3 about 20 hours before the
second deadline, the Israeli sky raiders were
airborne. The final plan had been approved by Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin's cabinet only that morning.
"When we received the final approval, a great many of
the men involved did not quite believe it," Chief of
Staff Lt. Gen. Mordechai Gur said later. "The concept
was so daring and dangerous that they were not certain
until the last minute it would get the green light."

The Israelis never disclosed exactly how they landed
with complete surprise. One version said the first
Hercules cut its engines and glided onto the runway.
Another story said Israeli agents, who had slipped
into Ugandan earlier, set diversionary explosions at a
far end of the field.

Even before the Hercules came to a full stop, the rear
doors swung open from the plane's fat belly and began
disgorging the deadly cargo. The Boeing carrying the
army's Chief of Operations and the Air Force
commander, remained aloft to guide the mission by
radio, some sources said. On the first Hercules was
operation commander Brig. Gen. Dan Shomron,
39-year-old head of the infantry and elite Paratroop
Corps.

Within minutes the first assault troops shot two
Ugandan guards and burst through the doors of the old
terminal building, where the hostages awoke in terror
at the sound of gunfire. Mothers rolled on top of
their children to protect them, as the raiders shouted
"hit the floor" in Hebrew and French.

The fierce battle above the hostages' heads lasted 45
terrifying seconds. Four hijackers were shot dead.
Three hostages who failed to stay on the floor were
killed, either in the crossfire or by Israeli soldiers
who mistook them for terrorists. Other commandos
fanned through the building to gun down three more
guerillas, two of them found hiding in a toilet.
Support troops outside took command of the airstrip
and the control tower. Another strike force threw
explosives under a squadron of Soviet - supplied Migs
of the Ugandan Air Force, crippling about 10 of them,
and securing a safe retreat.

An Israeli assault leader, American-born Lt. Col.
Yonatan Netanyahu, was shot by a sniper outside and
fell dead on the tarmac. He was the only raider
killed. Prime Minister Rabin said later he had
expected the casualties would be much higher.

It took "20 tense minutes," General Gur said later, to
capture the terminal building and deploy the troops on
the airfield before the raiders knew the operation was
a success. Within 53 minutes - two minutes better than
the fastest practice run the day before - the hostages
were aboard the Israeli planes and on their way home.
The corpses of seven guerrillas and 20 Ugandan
soldiers littered the airport.

In King David's words : "From the blood of the slain,
from the fat of the mighty, the bow of Jonathan turned
not back, and the sword of Saul returned not empty."
The audacity and faultless precision of the raid
stunned the world. President Ford cabled Rabin his
congratulations that "a senseless act of terrorism
(had been) thwarted." Leaders of the Western warld
hailed the rescue in almost Biblical terms as "a
triumph of good over evil."

Israel was jubilant. Throngs of relatives and well
wishers welcomed the bedraggled hostages at Tel Aviv's
Ben-Gurion airport. The "shofar" ram's horn, reserved
for joyous occasions in Jewish tradition, resounded
over a delirious crowd dancing on the tarmac.

The celebration was tempered momentarily. At the grave
of Yonatan(Jonathan) Netanyahu, David's lament for his
fallen heroes was read : "Thy glory, O Israel, is lain
upon thy high places ... How are the mighty fallen in
the midst of battle !"

Predictably, the Arab and Communist world was
outraged. The Soviet news agency Tass called the
operation "the latest act of piracy by the Israeli
military." Egyptian Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmy
condemned it as "an act of agression aginst all
Africa."

Even Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim of the United
Nations apparently, at pains not to offend the
non-aligned majority, termed the action a violation of
Ugandan national sovereignty.

The rescue pulled Israel , at least temporarily, out
of a three-year depression. Israel was beset by
seemingly insurmountable economic burdens, including a
defense bill that consumed 38 per cent of the national
budget. Its government was criticized as weak and
distrusted by many. And Israel lost a series of
diplomatic battles with its arch-enemy, the Palestine
Liberation Organization. Twenty thousand Israelis were
emigrating yearly, reversing a migrant population
growth of decades.

Rabin had predicted that the raid would "restore our
self-confidence, reduce cynicism and show us what a
wonderful youth we have." Israelis reached into their
pockets to contribute $ 3 million to a voluntary
defense fund within one week after it was set up to
handle a sudden flow of donations. Workers offered to
do overtime without pay to boost national exports, and
the number of labor strikes dropped.

In Africa, the Israeli operation brought an embarassed
Idi Amin to the brink of war with neighboring Kenya,
which he accused of complicity in the raid. Jerusalem
and nairobi asserted that Kenya had no foreknowledge
of the operation. But witnesses in Nairobi said
Israeli agents had worked throughout the week at
Nairobi airport, apparently preparing preparing for
the attack. A hospital aircraft was waiting on the
tarmac when the raiders returned, and Kenya raised no
objections when the transports refuelled for the
journey home.

Amin and Kenya's Jomo Kenyatta accused each other of
massing troops along their common border. As the
charges grew louder, the United States sent a six-ship
task force to the Indian Ocean and a reconnaissance
plane to Kenya to avert trouble.

Reports began filtering out of Uganda that Amin's
troops were slaughtering hundreds of Kenyan nationals.
Amin's background lent credibility to the stories.

Amin "is an international tyrant . . . who doesn't
hesitate to liquidate opponents and who has killed at
least 100,000 Ugandans since he came to power" in
1971, said America's last ambassador to Kampala,
Thomas P. Melady.

Israel had also tasted Amin's wrath. After Jerusalem
refused to supply him with arms to invade Tanzania in
1972, Amin accused the 400-strong Israeli mission in
Uganda of spying, threw out his advisers and severed
diplomatic relations. He once praised Hitler's
extermination of the Jews and promised to turn over
any Israelis found in his country to Palestinian
guerrillas.

An aftermath of the raid was the case of Mrs. Dora
Bloch, a 75-year-old hostage left behind in Uganda by
the Israli raiders. Mrs. Bloch was in a hospital when
the rescue planes landed. A British citizen by
marriage, she was a matriarch of one of Israel's
pioneering families. A British diplomat visited the
woman soon after the raid. When he returned late, he
found his entrance barred by Ugandan soldiers. Mrs.
Bloch had disappeared. One report sid Mrs. Bloch had
been dragged from her bed. Another said her half
burned body was seen discarded in a Ugandan forest.

The fate of Mrs. Bloch became a central issue in the
U.N. Security Council meeting called by the 48-nation
Organization of African Unity. The OAU protested what
it called Israel's "flagrant violation of Ugandan
national sovereignty."

The United Staes, Israel, Britain and West Germany
joined forces to turn the session into debate on
terrorism, and hoped that after years of frustration,
they could pass a resolution condemning air piracy.

In an emotional appeal to the Council, Israel's chief
delegate, Haim Herzog, said : "I stand here as an
accuser of this world organization, the United
Nations, which has been unable by use of the
machinations of the Arab delegates and their
supporters to coordinate effective measures to combat
the evil of world terrorism . . .

"For once, have the courage of your convictions and
speak, or be damned by your silence, Herzog said.

U.S. Ambassador William Scranton, charging that Uganda
violated its own treaty obligations by cooperating
with the hijackers, said Israel "invoked one of the
most remarkable rescue missions in history, a
combination of guts and brains that has seldom if ever
been surpassed."

The debate squeezed some African nations in an
uncomfortable dilemma. Most reportedly held Amin in
contempt and felt his tyrannical rule was a blot on
the entire continent. Amin's 20,000- man army had been
bullying Uganda's neighbors for years. Despite the
unanimous OAU condemnation of the raid, some African
diplomats privately told Israeli collegues they
admired the rescue, and they took little trouble to
hide their glee that Amin had been embarassed.

Thirty Black African nations had broken ties with
Israel in the previous four years in hopes of winning
Arab oil aid. But they were disappointed with the
Arabs' failure to share their wealth, and there were
hopes in Jerusalem that Africa might drift away from
the Arab camp.

"Who has besmirched Africa ?" Herzog demanded of the
Security Council, " Israel for exercising its right to
save its citizens in accordance with international law
? Or that racist regime in Uganda ?" But the African
delegates were fearful that the Israeli raid might set
precedents. Tanzania's Ambassador Salim A. Salim
declared that it was not Uganda on trial but Israel's
violation of the principles of territorial integrity.

"The only way small countries can defend themselves is
by firm adherence to principles," Salim declared.

The Secretary Council adjourned after four days of
debate without taking action. An African resolution,
facing a certain U.S. veto, mustered only eight
supporters, and was never put to a vote. Only six
nations favored a U.S.-British draft condemning air
piracy. Israel considered the outcome as a rare
victory in the world body.


© The Associated Press (AP),  "The World in 1976 -
History as we lived it"