Veterans of Entebbe raid to boycott state ceremony marking 50 years since rescue

Group who took part in rescue operation alongside PM’s slain brother say they refuse to ‘serve as window dressing’ to Netanyahu, who ‘abandoned hostages’ in Hamas tunnels

Dozens of veterans of the 1976 rescue operation at Entebbe have announced that they will boycott a state ceremony next week slated to mark 50 years since the daring IDF raid, in protest of the current government.

The ceremony is scheduled for Sunday at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, with President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir attending alongside hostage survivors, bereaved families and veterans of the operation.

Netanyahu’s older brother, Yonatan Netanyahu, commanded the Sayeret Matkal unit that led the raid to rescue Israeli hostages from a plane hijacked and held in Uganda, and was killed during the operation.

In a letter sent to the President’s Residence and published by the Ynet news site, a group of veterans who took part in the operation under the command of Yoni Netanyahu, said they would not “serve as window dressing for a prime minister who, time and again, glorifies the rescue of the hostages at Entebbe while at the same time knowingly abandoned hostages in Hamas tunnels and is enabling evasion of service in the IDF.”

Benny Davidson, who was 13 when he was kidnapped and later rescued by the IDF during the Entebbe raid, wrote in a Facebook post earlier this week that he too had turned down the invitation.

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“I will not serve as a backdrop for a display that covers up a collapse of values and leadership,” he wrote on Facebook. Davidson accused the prime minister of “dragging his feet” in returning the hostages held in Gaza, and slammed Netanyahu for conduct which “directly harms the memory, legacy and values for which his brother, Yoni Netanyahu, of blessed memory, fell.”

Fifty years ago, an Air France plane, en route from Tel Aviv to Paris via Athens, was hijacked and eventually taken to Entebbe Airport in Uganda. More than 240 passengers were on the flight, 83 of them Israeli. The hijackers demanded $5 million and the release of 53 pro-Palestinian terrorists.

The hijackers released most of the non-Israeli passengers, leaving only a group of 106 in captivity in an old terminal building. A week after the hijacking, four Israeli C-130 Hercules transport aircraft landed at the airport and within hours, the now-legendary rescue operation was complete. Ultimately, four hostages were killed, along with Netanyahu, who was the only Israeli military casualty of the mission.

This is not the first time that the veterans of the daring IDF operation have publicly criticized Netanyahu. In 2023, amid the height of the judicial overhaul protests, several members of the rescue squad published a letter accusing the prime minister of “consciously and with open eyes sacrificing the State of Israel and the people of Israel for your own interests.”

And in 2024, a number of Yoni Netanyahu’s friends, including those who served with him, held an alternate memorial ceremony at his grave, accusing the prime minister of “acting the opposite of how [Yoni] educated us.”

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