4 | JULY 18 • 2024 
J
N

opinion

Why the Entebbe Rescue 
Almost Didn’t Happen

A

s expected, on July 
4, 1976, the United 
States celebrated its 
bicentennial with a flurry of 
patriotic pride and hype. The 
surprise was 
that the day 
also brought 
one of the most 
miraculous 
events in Jewish 
history: Israel’s 
rescue of 102 
hostages being 
held over 2,500 miles away at an 
airport in Entebbe, Uganda.
A week earlier, on June 27, 
terrorists from the Popular 
Front for the Liberation of 
Palestine and a radical West 
German group hijacked an Air 
France airliner full of Israeli 
passengers and redirected 
it to the Entebbe Airport. 
The hijackers warned that if 
their demands — including 
the release of several dozen 
prisoners being held in Israel 
and elsewhere — were not 
met, they would begin killing 
hostages. 
Israel dispatched multiple 
aircraft with 100 commandos 
for a rescue mission that 
astonished the world. Three 
hostages died during the rescue, 
and only one Israeli soldier 
was killed: mission leader Yoni 
Netanyahu.
Fast forward 48 years, and 
Yoni’s younger brother is now 
the prime minister, with Israel 
grappling with a longer-lasting 
and much more extensive 

hostage crisis. Not only were 
hundreds of people taken from 
Israel on Oct. 7, but this time 
the hostages were abducted 
from their homes and military 
bases on Israeli soil, in a 
broader attack that killed 1,200 
people. With the exception 
of more than 100 hostages — 
mostly women and children 
— released through deals, 
most have spent nearly nine 
months in captivity, with little 
information known about their 
whereabouts or well being.
The legacy of the raid 
on Entebbe is complicated: 
It endures as an inspiring 
embodiment of Israeli boldness 
and ingenuity — but one that 
set a near-impossible bar for 
success and has proven to be 
the exception to the rule in 
securing the release of hostages.
Multiple times since then, 
Israel has agreed to prisoner 

releases, and at a much worse 
exchange rate than the Entebbe 
hijackers were demanding. Back 
in 2011, Benjamin Netanyahu 
agreed to free 1,027 Palestinian 
prisoners in exchange for one 
soldier, Gilad Shalit, who spent 
five years in Hamas captivity in 
Gaza. 
During the current war, 
Israel has staged three rescue 
missions, leading to the release 
of a combined seven hostages. 
However fleeting, the 
operations produced collective 
moments of relief and joy in 
Israel and among many Jewish 
communities around the world.
But far more of the captives 
came home after the deal struck 
on Nov. 22, 2023, when Israel 
and Hamas agreed to the release 
of hundreds of Palestinian 
prisoners during a ceasefire that 
was extended to a week. Almost 
all of the 109 hostages released 

by Hamas were freed by the end 
of November, during that truce. 
Israel has reportedly agreed 
in principle to release hundreds 
more Palestinians, including 
100 serving life sentences for 
killing Israelis, as part of a 
wider multi-phased deal to get 
back what Israel says are 116 
remaining hostages plus four 
whose captivity predates the 
war. More than 40 of those are 
thought to be dead. 

PRESSURE MOUNTS
Meanwhile a national debate 
has raged, with hostage families 
and their supporters waging a 
sustained protest movement 
to pressure the government to 
agree to a deal, even if it means 
accepting a ceasefire that falls 
short of dismantling Hamas. 
Former Israeli war cabinet 
minister Benny Gantz seemed 
to endorse this view after 
pulling out of the government 
a few weeks ago, which was 
followed with several reports of 
military officials increasingly 
making the case that securing a 
deal to free the hostages should 
now take precedence.
At this point, no one is 
talking about an Entebbe-style 
operation to save the bulk of the 
remaining hostages, who are 
thought to be held in separate 
locations across Gaza. What’s 
often lost in the nostalgic 
euphoria and mystique that still 
surrounds the historic rescue 
mission is just how close it 
came to never happening — 

Ami Eden
JTA.org

Air France passengers rescued by Israeli commandos at the airport in 
Entebbe, Uganda wave to the waiting crowd while leaving the belly of 
a Hercules plane at Ben-Gurion Airport, Israel, July 4, 1976. 

MOSHE MILNDER GOVERNMENT PRESS OFFICE

PURELY COMMENTARY

continued on page 6

And how Israel is still wrestling with the 
same tough questions 48 years later.

