#operationthunderbolt
#israeloperations
On 3 July 1976, Israeli commandos carried out a daring raid to free greater than 100 hostages held by pro-Palestinian terrorists at Entebbe Airport in Uganda. Ever since, the raid has been portrayed by Israelis and others as a brilliantly deliberate and completely executed hostage rescue. But a detailed research of top-secret paperwork and interviews with key contributors reveals a really completely different image of a mission virtually derailed by political and army infighting, and one whose final success was closely contingent on luck.
The drama started when an Air France Airbus was hijacked en route from Tel Aviv to Paris. On listening to the information, Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin arrange an emergency committee and despatched the Israeli Protection Forces’ elite anti-terrorist unit Sayeret Matkal to Ben Gurion Airport, Tel Aviv, in case the hijacked airplane returned to Israel. As an alternative, it was flown to Benghazi in Libya the place a single feminine hostage was allowed to disembark after she faked a miscarriage. She advised British and Israeli intelligence that the 4 hijackers three males and a ladies had been a part of a rogue offshoot of the Fashionable Entrance for the Liberation of Palestine, a terrorist organisation dedicated to Israel’s destruction and led by Wadie Haddad. Actually, solely two had been Haddad’s males, the others had been Wilfried Böse and Brigitte Kuhlmann, founder members of an affiliated leftwing West German terrorist group referred to as Revolutionary Cells. That night, the refuelled airplane left Benghazi for an unknown vacation spot with the hijackers and 253 passengers and crew on board.
Simply after 3am, the airplane landed at Entebbe Airport in Uganda the place the hijackers had been joined by three extra armed Palestinian terrorists. The Ugandans made no try and intervene as a result of their president, Idi Amin, was in league with Haddad and knew of the hijacking prematurely. His troopers helped to protect the hostages after they’d been taken off the airplane and put into the previous departure lounge of the airport’s disused previous terminal. That afternoon, Amin visited the hostages and stated he was attempting to safe their launch. “I do know that you’re harmless,” he advised them, “however the responsible one is your authorities.
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