It's been thirty-five years since the vaunted and gutsy raid to rescue the Jewish hostages and flight crew of an Air France flight in 1976. For complete details, check out this Wikipedia article. A few quick thoughts of my own:
- The IDF is not just an Israeli Defense Force defending the Israel and the Israeli borders, they are in the business of defending every single Israeli (i.e., Jew) worldwide.
- This operation took balls of steel. Now we know where Bibi must have gotten his pair from: emulating his heroic brother Yoni Netanyahu who lost his life saving the lives of others.
- Quite literally, failure was not an option. The planes only had enough fuel for a one way trip, so one part of the hostage rescue operation was to take over the refueling trucks and refill the planes which took one hour.
- In addition to the audacious and chutzpadik (in a good way) details of the raid (see the complete, if dry, Wikipedia article), I read somewhere (I believe in Every Spy a Prince), that there was a single Mossad agent covering a few African countries, Uganda being one of them. He spent the previous years diving under cover, and then blew his entire cover in order to provide up-to-date intel on the airport. How? Having no other choice, he stole a Cessna plane and circled the airport a few times taking photos and intel. He then had to flee for his life as there's no other way to spin such a daring move other than that he was Mossad.
In addition to the dry recounting of the operation in the Wikipedia article, you may want to spend an evening watching the classic 1977 movie starring Peter Finch, Raid on Entebbe. The full version is on YouTube. I have not seen the movie again since my childhood, but I still remember the chilling scene of the commandos singing "Hinei Ma Tov" in the plane on their way down to Entebbe.
In addition, there is a one-hour documentary by National Geographic on the operation here.
May Yoni's memory be as an uplifting reminder of the heroic sacrifices made every day by our boys and girls in the IDF.
(Hat tip: Rand Simberg)
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