Operation Entebbe: The Rescue That Stunned the World

Seven Days in Uganda

On June 27, 1976, Air France Flight 139 took off from Tel Aviv, stopped in Athens, and headed for Paris. It never arrived. Shortly after departure from Athens, four hijackers — two Germans from the Revolutionary Cells and two Palestinians from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — seized the plane and its 248 passengers and 12 crew members. They diverted the aircraft to Benghazi, Libya, for refueling, then flew on to Entebbe Airport in Uganda, where they were welcomed by the country’s dictator, Idi Amin.

What followed was one of the most extraordinary hostage crises of the twentieth century — and one of the most audacious military rescues in history. It lasted seven days. At the end, Israeli commandos had flown 2,500 miles, fought their way through a guarded terminal, freed more than a hundred hostages, and flown home. The operation transformed Israel’s self-image, electrified Jews worldwide, and became one of those rare events that seem too dramatic for fiction.

The Hijacking

The hijackers were led by Wilfried Bose, a German leftist, and Fayez Abdul-Rahim Jaber, a Palestinian militant. Their demands were straightforward: the release of 53 prisoners held in Israel, France, West Germany, Kenya, and Switzerland. If the demands were not met by July 1, they would begin killing hostages.

At Entebbe, the hostages were moved into the old terminal building. Idi Amin visited, playing the role of benevolent mediator while his soldiers guarded the perimeter. It quickly became clear that Uganda was not a neutral party — Amin was actively supporting the hijackers.

Then came the act that transformed the crisis from a political event into something viscerally personal for Jews everywhere. The hijackers separated the passengers. Israeli and Jewish passengers were held. Non-Israeli, non-Jewish passengers were released and flown to Paris. The selection — Jews to one side, everyone else to the other — evoked the most haunting image in Jewish memory: the selections at Auschwitz.

The Air France crew, led by Captain Michel Bacos, refused to leave. Bacos told the hijackers that he was responsible for all his passengers and would stay with them. Every crew member stayed. It was an act of courage that Israel has never forgotten.

Planning the Impossible

Back in Israel, the government faced an agonizing dilemma. Negotiation seemed the only option — Entebbe was 2,500 miles away, deep in hostile territory, with Ugandan soldiers reinforcing the hijackers. A military rescue seemed impossible.

But the IDF began planning anyway. The breakthrough came from an unexpected source: the old Entebbe terminal had been built by an Israeli construction company, Solel Boneh. The firm provided the original blueprints, giving the planners detailed knowledge of the building’s layout — every room, every corridor, every entrance.

Brigadier General Dan Shomron was put in charge of the overall operation. The assault force was led by Lieutenant Colonel Yonatan “Yoni” Netanyahu, commander of Sayeret Matkal, the IDF’s elite reconnaissance unit. The plan was breathtaking in its audacity: four Hercules C-130 transport planes would fly to Uganda at night, landing with minimal lights. The first plane would taxi to the old terminal, and commandos would storm the building, eliminate the hijackers, and extract the hostages. The entire ground operation was planned to last under an hour.

To confuse Ugandan soldiers, the Israelis loaded a black Mercedes-Benz onto one of the planes — identical to the car Idi Amin used — along with Land Rover escorts. The idea was that soldiers guarding the airport would see the motorcade and assume Amin was arriving for another visit, buying precious seconds of confusion.

The Israeli cabinet approved the mission on the afternoon of July 3, 1976 — a Saturday, Shabbat. The planes were already in the air.

The Raid

Just after midnight on July 4, 1976, the first Hercules touched down at Entebbe with its lights off. The black Mercedes rolled down the ramp, followed by the Land Rovers. The commandos drove toward the terminal.

A Ugandan sentry approached the motorcade. When he raised his weapon, a commando shot him with a silenced pistol. The element of surprise was partially compromised, but the assault continued at full speed.

Netanyahu led his team through the terminal doors. “Stay down! Stay down!” they shouted in Hebrew and English. The commandos killed all four hijackers within minutes. In the crossfire, three hostages were also killed — a devastating but unavoidable cost given the chaos of the situation. Ugandan soldiers fired from nearby positions, and Israeli forces engaged them while evacuating the hostages to the waiting planes.

The commandos destroyed eleven Ugandan Air Force MiG-17 fighters parked on the runway to prevent pursuit.

As the last plane prepared to depart, Yoni Netanyahu was hit by a Ugandan soldier’s bullet. He was carried onto the aircraft but died during the flight home. He was thirty years old.

The planes refueled in Nairobi, Kenya — a secret arrangement that later caused diplomatic fallout for Kenya — and arrived in Israel on the morning of July 4. One hundred and two hostages were free.

The Aftermath

One hostage, 74-year-old Dora Bloch, had been taken to a Kampala hospital before the raid with a food obstruction. After the rescue, she was murdered on Idi Amin’s orders — an act of petty vengeance that horrified the world.

In Israel, the euphoria was overwhelming. After the trauma of the Yom Kippur War three years earlier, Entebbe restored a sense of national confidence that had been badly shaken. The operation — officially renamed “Operation Yonatan” in honor of its fallen commander — became an instant legend.

Yoni Netanyahu’s death added a tragic dimension to the triumph. His letters, published posthumously, revealed a thoughtful, sensitive soldier who had written movingly about the costs of war. His younger brother, Benjamin Netanyahu, would later enter politics, driven in part by his brother’s legacy, and serve as Israel’s longest-serving prime minister.

Why It Matters

Operation Entebbe mattered beyond the hostages it saved. It sent a message — to terrorist organizations, to hostile governments, and to Jewish communities worldwide — that Israel would go to extraordinary lengths to protect its citizens. In an era when hijackings were becoming routine and governments often capitulated to terrorist demands, Entebbe demonstrated that there was another way.

For Jews in the diaspora, the emotional impact was profound. The image of the selections at Entebbe — Jews separated and held while others were freed — had awakened deep historical trauma. The rescue offered something rare: a story where, this time, the cavalry came. This time, Jews were not abandoned.

The operation also advanced the development of counter-terrorism doctrine worldwide. Military planners from dozens of countries studied the raid. The successful rescue at Mogadishu by German GSG-9 commandos in 1977 drew directly on lessons from Entebbe.

Captain Michel Bacos and his crew were honored by Israel for their refusal to abandon the hostages. Bacos was later recognized at Yad Vashem, and his decision remains one of the most moving footnotes in the entire story.

Nearly fifty years later, Operation Entebbe endures as a reminder of what is possible when courage, planning, and conviction come together under impossible circumstances. It was not a war. It was not a political negotiation. It was, in the simplest terms, a rescue — and it remains one of the most remarkable rescues in human history.

The story of Zionism is, at its core, a story about Jewish self-determination. Entebbe was that idea made real, in ninety minutes, at an airport in the middle of Africa.