Posted on 06/26/2019 6:40:13 AM PDT by rktman
Good teachers keep up with their students and rejoice when they demonstrate they’ve learned their lessons well. I want to be a good teacher, and our “student,” Israel, has learned the lessons of democracy extraordinarily well.
In early July of l976, while we Americans were celebrating our big Bicentennial – our 200th birthday party – terrorists hijacked a plane full of innocent tourists and travelers en route from Israel to France and held over 100 of them (the ones identified as Jews) hostage inside a well-barricaded hangar at the Entebbe airport in the East African nation of Uganda.
Day after day the world anguished over the seeming impossibility of achieving anything resembling a happy ending. Israel quit anguishing and commenced preparations for a dramatic commando raid to rescue the hostages. The Israeli plan called for two planeloads of elite commandos, Israel’s Sayeret Matkal (aka “The Unit”), and featured a replica of Ugandan strongman Idi Amin’s personal limousine and a startlingly authentic body-double whose mission was to drive around the airport barking orders not to shoot the Israeli liberators!
The Entebbe raid (known as “Operation Thunderbolt”) will long be enshrined in the annals of special forces successes. Some hostages and rescuers were wounded, but fatalities (other than the hijackers and some Ugandan soldiers supporting them) were limited to four of the hostages and the heroic leader of the raid, Yonatan Netanyahu, who was the elder brother of Israel’s current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu (who also had served in the Sayeret Matkal and had, in 1972, been wounded in a similar operation to free hijacked passengers held hostage at an Israeli airport).
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
The timing was critical and they actually took off WHILE the Knesset was still debating everything.
There was dire risk the airport would turn off all their power after the attack began; they’d have no runway lights to guide them down the strip for takeoff.
They had bend-activiated chem glo sticks.
As they landed, as a precaution a guy threw out sticks as they streaked along to a stop.
Sure enough, after the attack, after they’d loaded everyone aboard, as if on cue all the runway lights suddenly went out, dismaying and terrifying all aboard.
And then, gradually they again saw all those neatly lined-up glo sticks they’d since forgotten about, and all was well again.
I listen to his podcasts on my Smartphone at "Barry Farber CRN". I'm requesting of Barry that he turn his microphone louder. His guests come through perfectly.
Most recognize this picture as Benjamin Netanyahu. (Which it is).
That they do. I was young and still remember the Munich Massacre. Obviously for Israel in 1976, 1972 was fresh in their minds. The West Germans’ performance to the Munich hostage taking was horrible.
Ping.
Whoops! Thank you. I'd meant to post a photo of Yoni.
Sadly, history and the fact there were and East and West Germany are lost on a lot of younger folks. I still have a map of Berlin I got in 1962 when I visited there showing the sectors and dividing lines and barbed wire. I had it laminated to preserve it as it had started to deteriorate.
>ping<
I remember following this and, as the details came out, all I could think of was, “Ian Fleming, eat your heart out!” This story gave any work of fiction a hell of a run for its money.
His brother was killed in the raid, IIRC.
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I like the Cherbourg Project too. I guess cause it's de Gaulle's France embarassed, and no one was hurt.
The best part of the story is the British figuring out the ruse, waiting a bit, then flashing “bon voyage” to the passing ships.
If someone wants to make a heist movie, this is the one to make.
It would make a good one, but non violence.
Well a heist movie a la the “oceans” movies didn’t have much of a body count, if any.
If you needed some bodies, just start with the six day war or the raid in Lebanon.
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