Fifty Years After Entebbe, Israel’s Independence Is Framed as Jewish and Global
Marking 50 years since the Entebbe rescue operation, the article ties the July 4, 1976 mission to a broader argument about Jewish freedom, Israeli nationhood, and America’s own founding ideals. The writer recalls how, on the morning after the rescue, the world learned that an Israeli force had freed more than 100 hostages from Uganda, where an Air France plane had been hijacked after leaving Tel Aviv for Paris and stopped in Athens. One Israeli officer was killed in the operation, Lt. Col. Yonatan Netanyahu, described as a national hero.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking at this week’s national memorial, said his brother acted because he understood that Israel’s national existence requires readiness for a continuing struggle against those who seek its destruction. He quoted Yonatan as saying after the Yom Kippur War that he preferred to live in Israel amid ongoing conflict rather than be part of the wandering Jew, and that he meant to hold firmly to the Jewish state so it would not be a fleeting episode in history. The prime minister said the operation, later named after Yonatan, lifted Israel’s standing among nations and showed the free world that terrorism can and must be fought, contributing to the near end of the 1970s wave of aircraft hijackings. He concluded, “The State of Israel will not be a fleeting episode in our people’s history.”
The piece then cites US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, who spoke at a JNS conference and argued that America rests on Jewish foundations. He said Christianity and Western civilization were built on the Jewish foundation, and without that, “there was no America.” He pointed to symbols such as Moses’ statue in the US Capitol and said American history is tied more to Mount Sinai than to Athens or Rome, and to Israel.
Huckabee added that the American founders understood rights as coming from God, not government, and that they drew that idea from Jerusalem and the uninterrupted history of the Jewish people. He said Americans should be grateful to God for the Jewish people and the foundation on which liberty and individual sanctity were built. The article closes by linking his remarks to the teachings of the Netziv of Volozhin on the verse “A people that dwells alone,” arguing that Israel survives by preserving its distinct identity and vocation.
