Netanyahu visits the Entebbe rescue site
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara have laid a wreath near the memorial sign for Operation Entebbe posted on the control tower at Uganda’s Entebbe Airport.
Sara and Benjamin Netanyahu Pic: Haim Zach/GPO
The Prime Minister’s brother Yoni was killed during the hostage rescue mission on July 4, 1976. Of the 106 hostages, 102 were saved. He had been the unit commander.
Prime Minister Netanyahu said at the memorial: “This is the fifth time that I am standing in this place, a few meters from where my brother Yoni fell. This always causes waves of emotion, of longing and of pride.
When my wife and I came here with our two sons on one of the visits, President Museveni arranged a memorial ceremony here for the soldier who fell, which was truly incredibly moving. Afterwards in the tent on the side, I asked him – it was unusual to establish here a memorial to a foreign unit that entered by force, and also took the lives of many Ugandan soldiers. He said: ‘I want you to understand the significance of the operation. We fought Idi Amin, who slaughtered 500,000 Ugandans. We were in the jungle and we heard about the raid on Entebbe and we understood then that it is possible to defeat evil.’ And this is what the memorial behind me says, that with courage, strength of spirit and heroism, it is possible to overcome any evil. I think that this is what Entebbe symbolizes and this is what, to a large degree, symbolized Yoni’s life and death.”
