My Take | Weekend ‘hostage rescue’ in Gaza was really another mass slaughter

Israel’s tragedy is perhaps reflected in the history of the Netanyahu family – especially when it comes to hostage rescue operations.

Elder brother Yonatan Netanyahu led and then sacrificed his life in one of the world’s most daring and heroic rescue operations: the raid on Entebbe in 1976.

I read somewhere that even today, such a rescue is still considered impossible by many military experts with all the hi-tech gear then unavailable to the special forces unit of the Sayeret Matkal – led by Yonatan – who played a key role in the operation.

Rescuers were thousands of kilometres from home (Israel), deep into the territories of a hostile state (Uganda) and facing its army as well as a group of Palestinian and German extremists. The number of hostages involved exceeded 200, most of them Israeli citizens.

Yonatan was the only Israeli soldier killed in the famed operation, which was subsequently renamed after him. After the six-day war of 1967, the Entebbe rescue cemented the reputation of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) as invincible. It not only earned the admiration of the world, but such a response became a very realistic, even standard option for Western governments when confronted by hostage-taking or related terrorist situations. Compared with Entebbe, the Princes Gate operation by the British SAS at the Iranian embassy in the heart of London was small beer, even though it galvanised the nation and reversed the plummeting poll numbers of Margaret Thatcher.

Of course, Entebbe didn’t end all so tidy and happy. What is usually left out of Western gung ho accounts is that the psychopathic dictator Idi Amin took revenge on Kenyans living in his country because Nairobi provided logistical and intelligence support to the Israeli operation. Hundreds of Kenyans were killed and thousands fled. In effect, the lives of one group of innocent human beings were exchanged for another group.