8. A Daring Rescue
In the wee morning hours of July 4th, 1976, Israeli special forces carried out a daring raid on Entebbe airport in Uganda. The goal was to rescue hostages taken from an Air France jetliner. The plane had been commandeered on June 27th, while en route from Tel Aviv to Paris, after a stopover in Athens where it was boarded by four hijackers. Two were from a breakaway faction of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and the other two were from a German Red Army Faction revolutionary cell. Seizing the airplane, the hijackers diverted it to Entebbe airport in Uganda, whose president, Idi Amin, was sympathetic to their cause.
Once landed at Entebbe, the hijackers removed the passengers from the airplane to a disused airport terminal building. There, they were joined by another three accomplices. After sifting through the passengers’ passports, the hostage takers released those who were neither Israeli nor Jewish, and kept as hostages 94 who were, plus 12 members of the Air France aircrew. In exchange for freeing their hostages, the hijackers demanded the release of 40 prisoners held in Israel, plus another 13 held in other countries.