Entebbe Survivors Confront History and Healing Half a Century After Iconic Rescue]

Entebbe Survivors Confront History and Healing Half a Century After Iconic Rescue]

For the survivors of Operation Entebbe, the 50th anniversary marked less a celebration of Israel’s most mythologized rescue and more a reckoning with the gap between the nation that saved them and the one that failed to prevent future hostage crises.

Approximately two dozen survivors and their relatives gathered at the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation in Jaffa for an event honoring Sorin Hershcu, the Israeli paratrooper left gravely wounded during the 1976 raid. Teasing and jokes frequently broke through the formal atmosphere, giving the room the feel of an unruly extended family.

The hijacking began when an Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris was seized after a stop in Athens by terrorists from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Germany’s Revolutionary Cells. The plane was diverted to Uganda, where dictator Idi Amin provided sanctuary. The hijackers separated Israeli and Jewish passengers from most others, releasing them over two days.

On July 4, Israeli commandos flew thousands of miles to Entebbe and rescued more than 100 hostages in an audacious raid now considered one of Israel’s defining military operations.

To mark the anniversary, Israel released previously classified protocols from the mission, later renamed Operation Yonatan after Yonatan “Yoni” Netanyahu, the operation’s commander who was killed. (Uganda’s military chief Muhoozi Kainerugaba announced in February plans to erect a statue of Yoni Netanyahu at the airport where he died, citing strengthened “close blood relations with Israel.”)

‘I wanted to look evil in the eyes’

The documents reveal the government abandoning its long-standing policy of avoiding negotiations with hostage-takers while preparing the military rescue.

Most attendees were the so-called “children of Entebbe” – the youngest hostages, now in their 50s and 60s, who still meet regularly. Three – Benny Davidson (13 at the time), Shay Gross (turned 6 during captivity), and Tzipi Cohen Gonen (8) – had just returned from their first trip to Uganda, visiting the old Entebbe terminal where they were held at gunpoint for a week.

Cohen Gonen’s return to Uganda meant confronting the site where her father, Jerusalem doctor Pasco Cohen, was shot and killed among the four fatalities. Terrified but accepting the invitation, she wanted to “look evil in the eyes” directly. “It closed a circle,” she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, “because the Ugandans were so nice to us. But there was no closure for my father’s death.”

Near the tarmac where she and other children played during captivity, Cohen Gonen said memories returned with adult clarity. The control tower that seemed enormous to her as a child suddenly looked smaller.

“I stood on the runway crying my eyes out, and had a long conversation with my father,” she said.

Gross, the only hostage formally recognized as a terror victim, remains in treatment today. “I didn’t know what going back there would do to me,” he told JTA. When reaching the old terminal, he said, “everything looked the same, as if 50 years hadn’t passed.”

Recalling when a terrorist struck him and knocked him to the floor, Gross said, “I broke down.”

Davidson, who returned to meet his 13-year-old self, compared public pressure during Entebbe with responses to Israel’s hostage crisis following Hamas’ October 7 attack. “There was no WhatsApp, no protest movement,” Davidson said. “But the people of Israel demanded that the state do something. And they did it. There was actual leadership, both military and political.”

The released records show the government weighing whether to break with Israel’s refusal to negotiate with terrorist demands for imprisoned terrorists. Pressure came most directly from hostages’ families, who wrote then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin that “human life is more precious than principles,” pressured ministers to negotiate, and once forced their way into the prime minister’s office demanding a meeting.

The rescue allowed Davidson to move on. “Maybe that’s why I’m not scarred,” he said.

Laughing, Gross interjected: “Oh, you’re definitely scarred.”

Davidson remained hopeful about Israel’s ability to endure the current crisis. “We’ll get through this,” he said, “because we have no other choice.”

Rabin’s handling of the Entebbe crisis underscores how Netanyahu failed, says former Entebbe hostage

Cohen Gonen rejected Davidson’s optimism, comparing the army that rescued them in Entebbe with the absence many Israelis felt on October 7.

“I wish Benny would inject me with some optimism. Until now I don’t feel safe,” she said. “In Entebbe, it didn’t even come as a shock that the army came to rescue us. It felt natural and logical. But what happened on October 7, with no army, no government, no nothing, it shook me to my core.”

She remembered flying home on Israeli Hercules transports carrying the rescue force and hostages, wrapped in blankets as soldiers handed sweets to children. “You say to yourself, okay, something bad happened here, but the army was here,” she said. “You feel like someone is watching out for you.”

She viewed Rabin as a father figure, recalling running into him years later at a mall when she was a student at Ben-Gurion University. “I told him I was there because of him,” she said. The two hugged and spoke for half an hour. When Rabin was assassinated in 1995, she told her husband, “Dad was murdered a second time.”

To Cohen Gonen and others, Rabin’s readiness to resign in case of failure contrasted with Netanyahu’s resistance to a state commission of inquiry into October 7 failures and his lack of public acceptance of personal responsibility.

“Today I have no Dad, in both senses of the word,” she said.

After October 7, Cohen Gonen crawled into bed for three days, closed all blinds, and armed herself with hammers and iron bars.

“To be abducted in Athens on an Air France plane makes sense,” she said. “But to be abducted at home, in the State of Israel, it was too much.”

Gross said Rabin’s decision to send a rescue force with “a hospital in a plane” showed he understood the operation could end with “dozens of dead and wounded,” treating that risk as his own responsibility even drafting a resignation letter in case of failure.

“He put that resignation letter on the table, because he knew that what stood between success and failure was a matter of seconds, and whether or not the terrorists would throw a grenade,” Gross said.

“That’s the difference between a leader who takes responsibility in real time and leaders who won’t,” he said.

After October 7, Gross began visiting rehabilitation wards daily at Sheba Medical Center, where wounded soldiers are treated. “They’re our heroes,” he said. “Let’s hope we’ll see a new generation of leaders from them to take us to better days.”

‘In Israel, we don’t have quiet periods’

For Hershcu, Entebbe’s lesson was confronting terrorism rather than accommodating it. As a 21-year-old paratrooper nearing discharge, he grabbed a fellow soldier’s rifle in the shower to report for duty, a decision he remains ashamed of.

Shot during the raid, Hershcu was left paralyzed from the neck down. Years later, he helped found LOTEM, making nature accessible to people with disabilities.

Reluctant to draw direct comparisons with October 7, Hershcu said even operations becoming part of national mythology fade in a country repeatedly overwhelmed by new crises.

“People forget,” Hershcu said. “Entebbe may be singular, but there have been so many others. In Israel, we don’t have quiet periods. There is just a chain of dramatic and tragic events.”

Ella Rosenkovitch, age 5 during Entebbe, said October 7 left her furious. Unable to accept trapped hostages in Gaza, she joined protests demanding release. “I felt this is the only thing I could do,” she said. “Back then we felt our leaders knew saving our lives was paramount. These days we can’t say the same thing.”

She hesitated over comparing captivity to October 7. “What can I say?” she said. “What is Entebbe in comparison to this horror?”

Still, she agreed to speak at a demonstration because former hostages had one thing to offer: “Hope,” she said, “because they let us go.”

Regine Levi, another child hostage, offered a different view. Born in France, she was released before the raid and later immigrated. Avoiding political discussion despite seeing failures, she focused elsewhere.

“We are not past October 7. We’re still inside it,” Levi said. “So why focus on division? The sense of responsibility for one another that we had then is still here. It didn’t disappear, no matter who the leaders are. That’s what I choose to see. That, and how amazing our people are.”

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