The IDF archives at the Ministry of Defense today (Monday), on the 46th anniversary of Operation Entebbe, unveiled a video prepared to mark a decade since the daring operation in Uganda, in which General Staff reconnaissance fighters recount in their voices the moments of tension, preparations and the moment they realized the operation was successful. “If there is a permit – either it will be the IDF’s biggest failure or it will be the IDF’s biggest success,” says one of the fighters about his thoughts before going into action in 1976, rescuing more than a hundred Jewish passengers taken hostage by terrorists.
“Yoni’s farewell was to someone who knows why he is going: he passed between all the soldiers on the plane and shook hands with everyone,” said one of the fighters about Yoni Netanyahu, commander of the General Staff patrol and brother of opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who was killed during the operation. A moment when he thought that the operation had failed: “I entered a room next to that of the hostages and we hit three terrorists there. I tried to hear where the hostages were, there was only a very thin partition of plywood between the rooms and we heard nothing. I remember saying to the people around me then – ‘Transfer them to the new terminal, the operation failed’ “.
“What you think is that you have to save them. Not just because you were told you were a soldier – but because it’s your people, your history,” said another fighter, recalling the moment he entered the terminal building: “When I entered the terrorists were already dead. We shouted for the hostages to understand “We are not going to slaughter them but come to save them, we shouted in Hebrew – ‘It’s soldiers, we have come to free you.'” The same fighter also told of the first meeting with the hostages: “People who just did not know what was happening to them at all. You come to someone and tell him ‘put on shoes and go to the door’ – and he puts the shoes on his hands.”
Another fighter described in the video the first moments after entering the terminal from his point of view: “Suddenly I saw the glass break and I realized that someone was shooting at me. I saw a person with a Kalashnikov lying and shooting in my direction. I instinctively fired 5-4 bullets through the glass.” He went on to say that he shouted “in a voice completely strangled with unusual excitement – ‘everyone is lying down'”.
He, too, recounted the first encounter with the hostages, describing them as being in a state of confusion, shock, and misunderstanding of what was going on around them. “It was a hot night, everyone was covered in a blanket out of instinct – and obviously a blanket doesn’t stop a bullet,” he said, adding: The same fighter also summed up and referred to the enthusiastic reactions in Israel and around the world and the great publicity the operation received: “We need to understand the situation – we understood that we did something very beautiful, well done to us – we did not think it would have such an echo.”