|
|
The Entebbe Rescue Mission
On June 27, 1976, four terrorists forced an Air France
Airbus to land in Uganda, in the heart of distant Africa. They quickly
demanded that Israel release 53 convicted terrorists. The hijackers
freed the French crew and nonJewish passengers, while retaining
105 Jewish and Israeli hostages. A 48hour deadline was set before
executions would begin.
Faced with little choice, the Israeli government announced that
it would enter into negotiations. This bought the precious time
needed to consolidate a seemingly impossible military option.
A new ultimatum was issued for 13:00 on Sunday, July 4.
The only airplane capable of a rescue operation was
the C130 Hercules. On July 1, the mission's overall commander,
Brig. General Dan Shomron (later to become the IDF ChiefofStaff),
presented his plan to the IDF Commander and Israel's Defense Minister.
The next day they all witnessed a fullscale dress rehearsal. The
incredible was deemed possible.
Shomron's plan was based on several advantages that
the Israelis had over the terrorists. The Entebbe airport at which the
hostages were being held was built by an Israeli construction firm,
which was able to provide Shomron with blueprints. Moreover, the released,
non-Jewish hostages were able to describe the terrorists, their arms,
and their positioning. As a result, the IDF decided to send in an overwhelmingly
powerful force: over 200 of the best soldiers the army had to offer
participated in the raid, all of them heavily armed.
Finally, the element of surprise was probably the biggest
edge that Israel held. According to Shomron: "You had more than
100 people sitting in a small room, surrounded by terrorists with their
fingers on the trigger. They could fire in a fraction of a second. we
had to fly seven hours, land safely, drive to the terminal area where
the hostages were being held, get inside, and eliminate all the terrorists
before any of them could fire." The fact that no one expected the
Israelis to take such risks was precisely the reason that they took
them.
The aircraft took off at 13:20 on July 3 and headed south. Only
then was the plan revealed to the Israeli Cabinet, which decided
to let the operation continue. The lead Hercules carried the rescue
force, led by Lt. Col. Yonatan Netanyahu. It also held two jeeps
and the now famous black Mercedes, a perfect copy of dictator
Idi Amin's personal car. Two additional Hercules carried reinforcements
and troops assigned to carry out special missions, such as destroying
the Migs parked nearby. A fourth Hercules was sent to evacuate
the hostages.
The air package also included two Boeing 707's. One acted as a
forward command post. The second, outfitted as an airborne hospital,
landed in nearby Nairobi, Kenya. The Hercules was escorted by
F4 Phantoms as far as possible-about onethird the distance.
Skirting thunderstorms over Lake Victoria, the Hercules transports
neared the end of the 7hour, 40minute flight. A surprise
awaited them: the runway lights were on! Despite this, they landed
undetected at 23:01 (local time), only one minute past their planned
arrival time.
The soldiers freed the hostages in a lightning attack,
killing all eight terrorists in the process. Tragically, force commander
Yoni Netanyahu was killed as he led the hostages toward the safety of
the aircraft; additionally, two hostages were killed in the crossfire
inside the airport. The other squads accomplished their missions in
virtually the same time as during the "dryrun." By 23:59
the planes were on their way home. The operation, which was predicted
to last one hour, in fact took only 58 minutes.
The mission struck a blow at international terrorism.
"It resonated far and wide," Shomron later commented. "It
showed that you could counter terrorism, and that it was worth cooperating
to do so." As America celebrated its Bicentennial, the world was
reminded that freedom is a value which must be fought for in every generation.
Source: Israel Defense Forces
Operation Entebbe
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
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.[3]
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.[4][5][6]
That afternoon, 47 non-Israeli hostages were released.[6][7][4]
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. [8][9]
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.[10]
These plans included preparation for armed resistance from Ugandan military
troops.[11]
The operation took place at night.
Israeli transport planes carried 100 commandos over 2,500 miles (4,000 km)
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.[12]
24 hours later, a fourth Israeli hostage was killed[13][14]
by Ugandan army officers at a nearby hospital.[15]
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.[14]
Main article: Palestinian
insurgency in South Lebanon
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.
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.[16][note 1]
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.[17]
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.[10]
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.[17]
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.[18]
The hijackers sorted the hostages
into two groups—Jews and Israelis in one, everyone else in another. [19]
In 2011, one of the survivors, Ilan Hartuv, said that the hijackers did not
separate out the Jews, only the Israelis. [20]
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".[19]
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.[20]
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.[1][17]
The hijackers threatened to kill them if Israel did not comply with their
demands.[18]
It was announced that 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.[11]
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.[3][21]
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.[22][23]
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.[24]
On the 1 July deadline,[25]
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.[26]
This extension of the hostage deadline would prove crucial in allowing Israeli
forces enough time to get to Entebbe.[16]
On 3 July, the Israeli cabinet approved the rescue mission,[27]
under the command of Major General Yekutiel "Kuti" Adam with Matan Vilnai as the Deputy Commander.[28]
Brigadier General Dan Shomron was appointed to command the operation on the ground.[29]
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.[30][31]
Negotiations, however, were made futile as the operation proceeded.
Eventually President Idi Amin allowed more Palestinian hijackers to join the hostages[citation
needed], some accounts claim that all non-Israelis including Jews
where allowed to leave [20]
other hostage accounts claim that the hijackers kept both Jews and Israelis
hostage [19].
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.[32]
While preparing the raid the Israeli army consulted with Israeli firms involved
in building projects in Africa during the 1960s and 1970s. 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 militarily superior to all his neighbours) by
aiding the Israeli government 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[original
research?] 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.[citation
needed]
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 the 31st 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.[33]
According to a 5 July 2006, Associated Press interview with raid organizer "Muki"
Betser, Mossad operatives extensively interviewed the hostages who had
been released.[34]
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.[34]
After days of collecting intelligence and planning by Netanyahu's deputy Moshe
"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.
 
The Israeli ground task force
numbered approximately 100 personnel, and comprised the following:[29]
This small group comprised the overall ground commander,
Brig. Gen. Shomron, and the communications and support personnel.
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 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.[35]
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.[29]
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.[11][36]
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.[dubious – discuss] The
commandos shot the sentries with silenced pistols, but did not kill either of
them.[11]
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.[11]
Fearing premature alerting of the hijackers, the assault team was quickly sent
into action.[36]
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.[17]
Another hostage, Pasco Cohen, 52, the manager of an Israeli medical insurance
fund, was also fatally wounded by gunfire from the commandos.[37][17]
In addition, a third hostage, 56-year-old Ida Borochovitch, a Russian Jew who
had emigrated to Israel, was killed in the crossfire.[38]
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.[20]
A C-130 Hercules in front of old terminal after arriving with food and
supplies for the Rwandan refugee camps in 1994. Bullet hole damage from the 1976
raid is still visible.
At one point, an Israeli commando
called out in Hebrew, "Where are the rest of them?", referring to the
hijackers.[citation
needed] 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.[16]
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.[16]
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.[1][39]
He was the only Israeli commando killed in the operation.[16]
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.[citation
needed] 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.[16][need
quotation to verify] About 11 Ugandan Army Air Force MiG-17 fighter planes were destroyed on the ground at Entebbe Airport.[citation
needed] 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.[14]
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.[40][17][need
quotation to verify] 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.[41][need
quotation to verify] 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,[15]
after the Ugandan–Tanzanian War led to the end of Amin's rule.[42]
Idi Amin ordered the killing of
hundreds of Kenyans living in Uganda in retaliation for Kenya's assistance to
Israel in the raid.[43]
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,[44]
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.[45][46]
—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.[47][48][49]
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.[50]
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.[51]
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.[52][53]
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.[54][55]
As a result of the operation, the
United States military developed highly trained rescue teams modeled on the
Entebbe rescue.[56]
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.[57][58]
The aircraft was carrying 248
passengers and 12 crew members[16][note 1]—of
which four passengers were killed and ten injured.[citation
needed] From the total of 260 people on board, 256 returned home
safely.
The four passengers killed were:
According to a list by Air France, most of the passengers were Israeli, French, American, and
British citizens. The complete list is as follows:[citation needed]
The old
terminal building as it appears today.
The old
terminal building as seen from the front.
Close up
of the control tower.
Wall
plaque on display at the old terminal building.
The old
terminal building of the Entebbe International Airport as seen from the air.
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.[59]
Below follow a complete list of films on the subjects:
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,[60]
was an Award Winner at the Palm Springs Short Fest[61]
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.[62]
Other depictions include:
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dealers in; IT, Consultancy, blogs ,websites, Stationery and Secretarial Services and Entrepreneurship training. Find us at Kitiengare Enterprises- Buguruni Malapa Dsm
Monday, 13 August 2012
Operation Entebbe/ Thuernderbolt or Operation yonathan
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)