This Month in History
The Raid On Entebbe July 1976
'We thought this would be the end of us': the raid on Entebbe, 40 years later It was the most daring rescue mission of a generation, with a cast that included three future prime ministers, Idi Amin and more than 100 hostages. How did it shape modern Israel?
A crowd lifts the squadron leader of the rescue planes on their return to Israel. Photograph: David Rubinger/Corbis via Getty Images
HISTORY CENTER
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n 4 July 1976, the day the US celebrated its had a big window in the front,” he recalls 40 years la200th birthday, an Israeli expat took a photer, sitting in the office of the Israeli prime minister ne call that would change his life. A student which has been his, on and off, for 10 of the last 20 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he went by the name years. “I could see my father pacing back and forBen Nitay, an Americanised shortening of the origith. And all of a sudden he turned his head and saw nal, the better to fit into the land where he hoped to me. He had a look of surprise, but forge a business career and build a life. On the phone he immediately understood and let was his younger brother, calling with grave news. It out a sharp cry. And then I walked concerned their older brother Yonatan, or Yoni. As in.” Netanyahu pauses as he relives children, they had idolised him; he the moment. “This was was the one who led their games, even harder than Yoni’s who, they felt, had raised them. death: telling my father This was Then 30 years old, ruggedly handand mother.” even harder some and newly installed as the The family flew in virhead of Israel’s elite Sayeret Matkal than Yoni’s tual silence from the commando unit, Yoni had, in the death: US to Israel for the early hours of that day, led a raid to telling my funeral of the son and rescue more than 100 Israeli hostafather and brother who had alreges held at Entebbe, Uganda. Word ady been garlanded as mother.” had just come that the operation a military hero and was had been an astonishing success now about to enter the and the hostages were free. But the national mythology. leader on the ground – Yoni – had been killed in acThe Netanyahu name would take tion. Their brother was dead. its place in the Israeli pantheon and, And so, while the people around him watched marin the process, open up a path that ching bands and held street parties to mark Ameriwould take young Binyamin to the top of Israeli polica’s bicentennial, and while the world marvelled at tics – a path that began in Entebbe. the sheer audacity of a military raid that defied all The career of Netanyahu is the most visible legacy of odds, Ben Nitay – born Binyamin Netanyahu – made that July day four decades ago, but the impact of Enthe seven-hour drive to Cornell University in Ithatebbe would be felt in countless other ways, too. With ca, New York, where his father was teaching. The its extraordinary cast of characters – including a trio 26-year-old was determined to break the news to his of future Israeli prime ministers as well as the garparents himself. gantuan, volatile Ugandan dictator Idi Amin – Ente“I walked up the path leading to their house which bbe would alter the calculus in the conflict between
12 / The Center Spirit / July 2021
Yoni Netanyahu.
