Entebbe Remembered 

Twenty-five years ago, on July 4, 1976, while most Americans were celebrating the Bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence, I was returning from the commando raid at Entebbe.Radical Palestinian and German terrorists had hijacked a plane and its passengers and diverted it to the Ugandan capital.  Upon arrival, the passengers were separated into groups of Jews and non-Jews, with the Jews further broken into groups of Israelis and other Jews.  With a few exceptions, all but the Israeli hostages were soon released.

 

Faced with a deteriorating situation and with an unstable leader of Uganda in the notorious Idi Amin, and hijackers with confused motives, the government of Israel chose to act in perhaps the most daring hostage rescue operation in history. Flying more than 2,200 miles from our base in Israel, we overtook the hijackers and their  accomplices and were able to rescue all but three of the 105 hostages. The commander of the main raiding force, Yonatan Netanyahu, brother of a future Israeli prime minister, was the only loss of our rescue team.

 

With terrorism continuing as a scourge of civilized people everywhere, today is a good moment to reflect on changes in face of terrorism and the days of the 1970s plane hijackings, kidnappings and other terrorist activities that became a part of the consciousness of the West.

 

The most significant change is the transition of terrorism from a political to a religious character.  However murky and confused the goals of the terrorists of the '70s may have been, they based their actions on political credos, with the intent of changing society by changing the system of government. While such politically inspired terrorism may still exist in some places, that phenomenon is clearly on the wane. Instead, terrorism primarily of a fundamentalist Islamic character, is rooted in religious concepts.  Whether or not terrorism is compatible with Islamic thought, the adherents of Islamic-based terrorist activities claim to find a basis for their acts in Islamic holy texts.  In any event, Osama Bin Laden, along with Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hizballah and the Moslem Brotherhood, among many others, all find justification in their acts by virtue of religious doctrine.
 

Second, terrorism has turned more grisly.  While the terrorists of the 1970s were hardly shrinking violets, their use of terror was focused more significantly on the publicity benefits that they felt they could gain by virtue of terrorism.  Today, terrorism is used to inflict maximum possible casualties.  Suicide-bombers not only strap high explosive charges to their bodies, but also add nails and other anti-personnel devices to wound the largest number of survivors possible.  The recent Tel Aviv discotheque massacre, which killed 21 young Israelis and injured more than 100, and the suicide attack on the U.S.S. Cole where 17 American sailors were killed and 39 were injured (but where far worse casualties were only miraculously averted), are examples of the murderous turn of events.
 

Thirdly, terrorism today has morphed to being more state-sponsored than in the 1970s.  Iran today finances, directs, equips and trains a consortium of terrorist organizations.  Iran's reach can be felt from the Middle East to Uzbekistan.  Indeed, the recent public acknowledgement of Iran's involvement in the bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, where 19 U.S. servicemen lost their lives, is only one of many know uses of terrorism by the Islamic Republic of Iran.  Painfully, whereas the Western world hunted down sources of terrorism in the'70s, Western governments and leading corporations have fallen all over themselves to relax sanctions on Iran and on other such oil rich terror-supporting states as Iraq and Libya and to do business with each of them.

 

America, which celebrates the anniversary of its independence on the same day that Israelis celebrate the freeing of the hostages at Entebbe, remains a leading voice and force in the fight against terrorism worldwide.  On this Independence Day, friends and allies of America look to this great country again to continue to fight against terrorism and the brutal murder of innocent civilians.  And, for our part, Israel cannot abandon the spirit of Entebbe and with it the vital need for effective action against terrorism which has become more fanatic, more deadly and more desperate.