Things were not supposed to pan out the way they eventually did. On a July 2, 1976, Friday afternoon bathed in sunshine, a Mossad agent flying in a light aircraft busily clicked away with his camera. The puddle jumper he was travelling in was hovering above Entebbe Airport. And with good reason. In slightly under 24 hours, assault teams would depart the now defunct Lod Air Force Base near Tel Aviv, Israel, single-minded in their determination to rescue hostages numbering 106. The hostages-83 of whom were Israeli-had been held captive at Entebbe’s Old Terminal Building after Wilfried Böse and his accomplices hijacked Air France Flight 139 on June 27, 1976.
The grainy image the Mossad agent captured was brought to the attention of soldiers of the elite Sayeret Matkal (‘the Unit’). Under the commandership of Lt Col Yonatan ‘Yoni’ Netanyahu, the unit’s commandos had for days been honing their skills ahead of the assault force on Entebbe. The vital information-taken together with the granular details Michael Cojot, the French hostage released on July 1, 1976, provided Israeli intelligence about the Old Terminal Building-was supposed to be catalytic.
It was meant to ease the load of a work of considerable difficulty and danger. And, to a great extent, it did. As Saul David’s recollection of the clandestine mission with great novelist detail in a 2015 book-Operation Thunderbolt: Flight 139 and the Raid on Entebbe-shows, the maps, diagrams and notes meticulously put together before the rapid surprise attack came in handy.
The operation put a premium on speed and, moments before the four Hercules planes touched down at Entebbe, the assault force’s commander was at pains to reiterate the same. It was 2030hrs GMT and Hercules One was in Kenyan airspace en route to Entebbe when Netanyahu went over the contingencies.
He said: ‘If there is a cordon of Uganda troops round the terminal, the Mercedes keeps going whatever happens and the Land Rover teams mop up. If the lights are out in and around the terminal, the Land Rovers swing their headlights to illuminate the hall through its plate-glass windows and the assault groups use the light-projectors on their guns.’
Meticulously planned
The black Mercedes on the most pregnant of four Hercules planes flown by Joshua Shani was intended to trick Ugandan soldiers on the tarmac into thinking a senior officer was on the move. Not alone, but, typically, with soldiers squeezed into two Land Rovers in tow. The motorcade would move at a steady pace-40 miles per hour with full headlights-down the original runway towards the Old Terminal. The Old Terminal Building’s doorways are where the unit’s break-in teams would gain forced entry. The prized asset was the former departure lounge, a large hall where the hostages were being held. It was sandwiched by two small halls, one of which-to the left-was customs.
‘If the terminal doors are locked, each team has the charges to blow them open. If one team is knocked out, the reserves fill in. If any force fails to carry out its objectives, radio me for immediate reinforcement. Remember. We are going to be the best soldiers at that airport tonight, and there’s nobody there who can beat us. And above all-speed, speed,’ Netanyahu dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s one last time on Hercules One.
Per David, a British military historian, Netanyahu clad in a heavy web harness ‘had had custom-made: eight drab brown magazine and grenade pouches sewn on to a wide foam-rubber backing for comfort; field dressing, knife, rope; and silenced Beretta 22 pistol tucked into his combat blouse’.
After a statue of Netanyahu holding an assault rifle was unveiled in Entebbe last Saturday, the tribute plunged Ugandans into debates about the unit’s weapons of choice for the audacious hostage rescue mission. David’s body of work provides clarity.
‘Most of the unit’s soldiers were armed with Kalashnikov AK-47s,’ David writes, adding, ‘though a few had Galil ARMs, an Israeli-made assault rifle modelled on the AK-47 but with a folding stock and firing a smaller 5.56 round. All the paratroopers on board were issued with Galils.’
On the ground
Netanyahu and Giora Zussman, who alongside four others were shoehorned into the black Mercedes, fired the first shots of the operation. This was after the faint glow of the Old Terminal made it terribly difficult to judge the reactions of one of two Ugandan sentries.
Netanyahu ordered that an adjustment be made to the plan and the sentry be taken out. It, however, took more than just a couple of bullets from the pistols of Netanyahu and Zussman mounted with silencers to liquidate the sentry. Unsilenced firing from the Kalashnikov AK-47s of the unit’s commandos on the Land Rovers took away the element of surprise. Return fire from Ugandan soldiers meant that, writes David, the unit’s motorcade ‘stopped short of the control tower and at least fifty yards from the edge of the Old Terminal, rather than the five they had planned for.’
David further discloses what, stripped of the element of surprise, Netanyahu had to confront per Muki Betser who had also been in the black Mercedes.
The military historian writes: ‘From the darkness to his right came a burst of fire. Flicking his AK-47 to automatic, he fired back as he ran, his bullets hitting his assailant and causing him to fall. On reaching the corner of the Old Terminal he paused ‘while the rattle and crack of rifle and sub-machine gun fire shook the air, kicking up bits of asphalt at our feet’. Behind him [Netanyahu] the rest of the assault teams were ‘bunched up, instead of heading to the assigned entrances’. It was a ‘complete contradiction of the battle plan’, caused no doubt by the loss of surprise and the threat of incoming fire.’
It would get worse. For Netanyahu.
‘Yoni Netanyahu was almost opposite the first entrance [of the big hall], and not far from the point where he planned to set up his command post, when he stopped and turned to his left. He may have wondered why Muki Betser’s squad had run past the blocked entrance; or he might have been checking on the progress of Yiftach Reicher and Giora Zussman, the leaders of the other assault teams. But by pausing in open ground, when most of his men were hugging the front of the building, he was vulnerable to Ugandan snipers,’ David reveals.
Man down!
A sniper struck Netanyahu in the chest and lower right arm. They would prove to be fatal blows. Dr David Hassin, the medical officer on the unit, sprung to Netanyahu’s rescue after the wounded soldier had been ‘dragged behind the relative cover of a low wall’. David further discloses that ‘Hassin could tell by the paleness of his face and other indicators that Netanyahu had already suffered significant blood loss. There was little blood on Yoni’s clothing and he feared haemorrhaging was internal.’
Adding: ‘At first, having cut off Netanyahu’s ammunition belt and shirt with a knife, the doctor could only find an exit wound close to the spine on his lower back. But on closer examination he located a small slit below the collarbone on the right side of Netanyahu’s chest. That confirmed that the bullet, fired from above, had passed obliquely down through Netanyahu’s torso, tearing organs and most likely arteries as it went. He put dressings on the wounds, but knew that Netanyahu was unlikely to survive.’
Indeed, Netanyahu would go on to be part of the raid’s body count that also counted three hostages, seven hijackers and scores of Ugandan soldiers. David describes in breathless detail how one of the hostages-the French-Israeli Jean-Jacques Mimouni ‘who all week had kept the hostages’ spirits up with his stories, jokes and constant drinks service’-was tragically claimed by friendly fire during the operation. He also recounts how Betser radioed Netanyahu at 2107hrs after accomplishing the mission. Unbeknownst to Betser, Netanyahu was barely alive.
‘[Betser] found [Netanyahu] lying on his back on the tarmac, his shirt torn open, with David Hassin ‘kneeling by his side… trying to treat him’. The scene reminded him of another doctor’s desperate attempt to save the life of an officer shot during the failed operation to destroy the PLO camp at Karameh in 1968. He had failed, and Betser suspected that Hasson would too,’ David writes.
Kenya’s key role
Betser took over command. After 51 minutes of the operation ‘the Hercules-with its cargo of 101 hostages, including two dead and a number of wounded-accelerated past the New Terminal and rose slowly into the air above Lake Victoria.’ The next destination was Nairobi, Kenya, where the Hercules refuelled.
In his 2015 book, David reveals the critical, if secret, role that Kenya played in the operation-allowing the Hercules to be refuelled with the demand that the 11 MiG fighters of the Ugandan Air Force be destroyed. Tel Aviv made good on that promise, with newly declassified documents that were released by the Israel State Archives ahead of last month’s 50th anniversary of the raid attesting to the diplomatic balancing acts behind the rescue mission.
‘To facilitate the operation, our aircraft have to refuel on their way home from Entebbe, at a Kenyan airfield. I trust you will instruct the appropriate people to enable us to [do] so during this night, since the operation is now underway and our aircraft are already in the air,’ Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin informed President Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya in a July 3, 1976, letter.
‘I [would] like to assure you that we shall stand by Kenya with all possible resources in case [you] will face any outside threats as a result of recent events,’ Rabin added.
South African-born Bruce McKenzie helped broker the secret deal that secured Israel planes the green light to refuel at Nairobi. The deal was sealed at the abode of Charles Njonjo, the Attorney General of Kenya at the time. After the raid on Entebbe, Israeli hostage Dora Bloch, who was in New Mulago Hospital when the operation took centre-stage, was killed at the behest of Amin on July 4, 1976. McKenzie would also go down, [in]arguably, as another revenge killing statistic when he died nearly two years later on May 24, 1978.
‘On a spring morning in 1978, Bruce McKenzie boarded a small twin-engined Piper Aztec light plane at Nairobi’s Wilson Airport for the short flight to Entebbe. Accompanied by two businessmen, Keith Savage and Gavin Whitelaw, he was due to meet President Idi Amin at State House to discuss an arms deal and the ongoing poor relations between Kenya and Uganda,’ David writes.
‘After landing at Entebbe on May 24, McKenzie, Savage and Whitelaw were driven to nearby State House where they had ‘friendly’ talks with Amin. Back at the airport, however, they were told the plane could not take off until one of Amin’s cars had arrived with a gift for McKenzie. [After a long delay] McKenzie was handed Amin’s present: a mounted lion’s head. He carried it on board the Piper Aztec which took off at 4.19pm with a pilot and three passengers. [The plane] was due to land at 6.15pm but the time came and went. The plane had crashed into the Ngong hills with no survivors. The most likely explanation is that Amin’s gift, the lion’s head, contained a time bomb,’ David adds.
An abiding influence
Amidst all this, the enduring presence of Netanyahu-now immortalised in a monument-tenaciously hugs the contours of the collective consciousness of Uganda. While unveiling Netanyahu’s statue, Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the Chief of Defence Forces of Uganda, described the part that the Amin administration played in the hijack as “a painful chapter in our history’.
The hijack of the Paris-bound plane came with demands of $5m and the freeing of 53 militants jailed in Israel, France, Germany, Switzerland and Kenya in return for the hostages. Two of the hijackers were from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Another two were from Germany’s Baader-Meinhof gang. The four were joined by three more colleagues.
During the daring rescue operation, Böse-a former sociology student who helped from the Revolutionary Cells in his native Germany-was the first of the seven hijackers to be put out. That was at 2104hrs when his ‘head twitched as a bullet hit it.’
Brigitte Kuhlmann, another German, and Fayez Abdul-Rahim al-Jaber, a Palestinian operative of the PFLP, were almost immediately liquidated by Amnon Peled as they looked to open fire on fellow Israeli commando Amir Ofer. By 2107hrs the paratroopers were in control of the Old Terminal Building.
‘Ordering the soldiers in the room to collect the terrorists’ weapons and treat any wounded hostages-the most serious of whom was Holocaust survivor Pasco Cohen who had been shot in the pelvis as he tried to shield his children from the hail of bullets that killed the Peruvian-Betser went outside to check on Netanyahu,’ David writes.
Like Yoni Netanyahu, Pasco Cohen would die from his wounds. He had been on the hijacked plane with his wife Hannah and their two children Tzipi, eight, and Kobi, six. In June this year Tzipi made an emotional return to the old airport terminal for the first time since the 1976 episode.
‘My father was shot dead. My brother was missing at the time. In the confusion of the exchange of fire, I never knew whether he was killed by Ugandan soldiers or during the rescue operation,’ Tzipi said during a media briefing at Entebbe in June.
‘The moment I walked in, the memories came back as if it was yesterday. I could still picture everything clearly,’ Benny Davidson, who was 13 during the dramatic hostage crisis, said at the same media briefing.
Fifty years on, recollections of one of the most daring hostage rescue operations in modern history still contrive to touch an open wound. They look set to continue doing so.