One of the most successful counterterrorist rescue missions in history was the Entebbe raid carried out by the Israeli Defense Forces on July 4, 1976. I was one of the 26 members of the Golani Brigade who were part of that mission. Our job was to evacuate the hostages as quickly as possible while under fire, while the elite Sayeret Matkal commando unit, led by Lt. Col. Yoni Netanyahu, was tasked with getting first into the terminal and securing the hostages.
On Sunday morning, June 27, 1976, an Air France A300 airliner took off from Ben-Gurion Airport bound for Paris with a planned stopover in Athens. On board were 240 passengers, including the 12 crew members. One hundred and four of the passengers were Israeli nationals. In Athens, 41 passengers got off the plane and 55 new ones came aboard for the continuing flight to Paris. Among them were four terrorists equipped with guns and grenades. They were two Germans, Wilfried Böse and Brigitte Kuhlmann, and two Palestinians, Jaeil al-Arja and Abdel Latif, members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Eight minutes after takeoff, the hijacking of Flight 139 commenced when Wilfried Böse got up from his seat and entered the first-class cabin, making his way to the cockpit. The other terrorists then stood up and started shouting, “This is a hijacking! No one move!” while threatening the passengers and gaining control of the two aisles. Meanwhile, Kuhlmann, the female German hijacker, advanced toward the front of the plane, waving a pistol in one hand and a grenade in the other and shouting at people to stay in their seats and not move. By then, Böse was already banging loudly on the door to the cockpit with his gun, demanding that the pilots open it.
The captain, Michel Bacos, asked the plane’s engineer who was seated behind him to find out what the noise was about. As soon as the door was opened, Böse forced his way in and hit the engineer with the butt of his gun, dropping him to the floor. Böse then ordered the captain and his copilot to remain seated behind their controls. After he was satisfied that he was in truly in charge of aircraft, Böse grabbed the captain’s radio and contacted the air traffic control tower in Athens to report the hijacking of Flight 139 and his intention to change the plane’s route to a destination in Africa. After a short stop in Benghazi for refueling, the terrorists demanded that the plane be flown to Entebbe, Uganda.
After the plane landed, the hijackers led their hostages into the neglected, dirty terminal building and instructed them to sit on the floor. The terrified passengers sat quietly, taking in their new surroundings. The whole place was buzzing with big annoying flies. By now there were seven terrorists gathered in the corner of the arrivals area for a briefing [more terrorists had met them there], while armed Ugandan soldiers pointed their weapons at the hostages. The following day, the terminal was visited by Uganda’s dictator, Idi Amin, who agreed to cooperate with the terrorists in exchange for $5 million.
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The atmosphere in the Israeli Cabinet was unbearably tense. Some of the ministers suggested rejecting the hijackers’ demands outright, while others thought it was preferable to release Palestinian terrorists with blood on their hands rather than abandon over 100 helpless Israelis who would no doubt die on enemy soil thousands of kilometers from home. Defense Minister Shimon Peres was the only one to push for a military operation to rescue the hostages. By contrast, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin wasn’t all that eager to consider a military operation, even one conducted by the Israeli commando unit that was considered the best in the world.
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