The Entebbe Raid, 1976

What happened

Air France Flight 139 left Tel Aviv for Paris on June 27, 1976, with a scheduled stop in Athens. ² Four armed hijackers boarded at Athens and seized the aircraft, which was carrying 243 passengers and 12 crew. ² Two of them were Palestinians from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and two were Germans, and four more operatives joined them on the ground after the plane was flown to Entebbe airport in Uganda. ⁶ The Jewish Virtual Library identifies the two Germans as Wilfried Böse and Brigitte Kuhlmann, of the Baader-Meinhof group. ¹ Uganda's president, Idi Amin, welcomed the hijackers and their captives, came to see them several times, and stationed Ugandan soldiers to secure the airport. ¹

The hostages were moved into a disused old terminal building, and the Israeli and Jewish passengers were separated from everyone else. ^{1 2} On June 29 the hijackers released the passengers who were neither Israeli nor Jewish, keeping roughly 105 people. ⁶ Five non-Israelis were held anyway because the hijackers suspected they were concealing Israeli identity, and three others chose to stay. ¹ The Air France crew stayed with them. ² Two of the people doing the sorting were German, thirty-one years after the war, and the sorting criterion was whether a passenger was Jewish. ^{1 6}

The demands were money and prisoners. The Jewish Virtual Library records a demand for $5 million and the release of 40 convicted terrorists held in Israel plus 13 held elsewhere, with a 48-hour deadline later pushed to noon on Sunday, July 4. ¹ Reference summaries commonly round the prisoner figure to 53 and date the first deadline to July 1. ⁶

Israel's government spent that week arguing with itself, and the records of the argument were declassified by the Israel State Archives in June 2026 for the operation's 50th anniversary. ³ Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's first instinct on June 27 was to put the problem on Paris: "My intention is to hold the government of France responsible for the fate of the Israelis." ³ Defense Minister Shimon Peres framed the choice as one between "responsibility for the security of the entire state" and "responsibility for the security of every individual." ³ Chief of Staff Motta Gur initially told ministers that only a limited operation was possible, then presented a full rescue plan on July 2, and the next day assessed its chances of success as high. ³ Israel had publicly announced on July 1 that it was willing to negotiate, which bought the planners time while the military option was assembled. ³

The raid launched on July 3 at 13:20. ¹ Four Lockheed C-130 Hercules transports flew about 2,500 miles, with two Boeing 707s and F-4 Phantoms in support. ¹ The transports crossed the Red Sea at 200 feet to stay under radar and then climbed to 20,000 feet over Ethiopia to save fuel. ² The assault party wore Ugandan uniforms and rode in a black Mercedes with false plates, staged to look like an official motorcade. ² The first Hercules touched down undetected at 11:01 p.m. Israeli time. ² The force was on the ground for 58 minutes. ¹

Lt. Col. Yonatan Netanyahu, commander of Sayeret Matkal, was fatally shot while the assault force was at the old terminal, and he was the only Israeli soldier killed. ^{1 6} Five other soldiers were wounded. ¹ Three hostages died: Jean-Jacques Maimoni, Pasco Cohen, and Ida Borochovitch. ¹ Maimoni was 20, holding French and Israeli citizenship, and his autopsy found six bullets from both terrorist and Israeli weapons. ⁵ Forty-five Ugandan soldiers were killed. ¹ Eight Soviet-supplied MiG fighters on the tarmac were destroyed. ² The aircraft refueled in Nairobi on the way home. ²

Dora Bloch, a 74-year-old Israeli, had been taken to a hospital in Kampala before the raid and so was not in the terminal to be rescued. ¹ She was murdered afterward by officers of the Ugandan army. ¹ Her body was found in 1979, and she was buried in Jerusalem only after Amin fell. ^{1 5}

Why it still matters

Entebbe is Israel's standard citation for a rule: rescue hostages, don't negotiate for them. The declassified cabinet record shows the rule was never that clean even in 1976. Rabin's crisis team ruled out negotiations at the start, then agreed to open them on July 1 while the raid was being prepared. ³ Negotiation bought time while the raid was assembled; it was never a serious alternative. Refusing in public while quietly buying time to finish the plan is the doctrine Entebbe actually established.

Rabin himself declined the tidy ending. "This was an extraordinary operation and achievement," he said afterward. "However, the problem is not over. Terrorism continues to operate." ³ Peres said of Netanyahu that Israel had lost "one of the finest fighters of the Jewish people." ³ The operation was renamed for him.

The diplomatic aftermath set a second precedent. The UN Security Council took the matter up in July 1976. Libya, Tanzania, and Benin drafted a resolution condemning Israel for violating Ugandan sovereignty and withdrew it once it was clear the nine votes were not there. ⁴ A British-American draft condemning hijacking and international terrorism got six votes and failed. ⁴ Israel's ambassador, Chaim Herzog, called the outcome a victory: "The Security Council was convened in order to condemn Israel. Israel has not been condemned." ⁴ Nothing passed.

The heroic version has also been contested from inside. A 2020s oral history collecting 33 first-person accounts from participants disputes Moshe "Muki" Betser's long-published claim that Netanyahu opened fire unnecessarily, and raises questions Betser's own shifting explanations never answered about why he stopped short of the terminal entrance. ⁷ One contributor noted that the question of why the assault teams went through the wrong door was never raised in the official debriefings. ⁷

The words you'll hear

Operation Thunderbolt. The mission's original code name, later renamed Operation Yonatan for Lt. Col. Yonatan Netanyahu, the Sayeret Matkal commander killed in the assault. ¹

Sayeret Matkal. The Israeli general staff reconnaissance unit that supplied the commandos who stormed the old terminal at Entebbe. ^{1 2}

PFLP. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Palestinian faction that supplied two of the four original hijackers, working with two Germans. ⁶

The selection. Shorthand for what happened at Entebbe on June 28 and 29, when Israeli and Jewish passengers were separated from the rest and the rest were released. ^{1 6}

Dora Bloch. The 74-year-old Israeli hostage hospitalized in Kampala before the raid and murdered afterward by Ugandan army officers, ¹ whose remains were recovered in 1979. ⁵