HIJACKED BY POLITICS
The Entebbe raid in 1976 was a true-life thriller with hostages, terrorists and Idi Amin, but this re-telling won’t leave you on the edge of your seat
FOR those of us old enough to recall June 1976, the word ‘Entebbe’ uncorks a whole flagon of hazy memories.
I can still remember Reginald Bosanquet or possibly Gordon Honeycombe — back in the days when TV newsreaders had far more interesting names than Edwards and Bruce — updating us solemnly over grainy footage of an Air France plane standing on the tarmac at Entebbe Airport in Uganda.
Flight 139 had been flying from Tel Aviv to Paris. At a stop in Athens, four hijackers boarded. Two were members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine; the other two were Germans, members of a far-Left terrorist group with links to the notorious Baader-Meinhof gang.
After storming the cockpit shortly after take-off, they forced the pilot to land in Libya, then flew on to Uganda, where that benighted country’s loopy president, Idi Amin, welcomed them warmly in person.
The hijackers moved all 248 people on board to an airport building, where they were divided, broadly speaking, into Jews and non- Jews. After a few days, the non- Jews were permitted to leave.
That left 94 hostages and 12 crew as bargaining chips in the hijackers’ demands. If Israel refused to release a number of militant Palestinians from its jails, the hostages would be murdered.
What happened next was extraordinary. A week passed, during which, as publicists are fond of saying, the world held its breath. Then, 100 Israeli commandos flew 2,500 miles in transport planes, below radar detection, and stormed the airport building.
They killed the hijackers and freed all but three of the hostages, who were fatally wounded in crossfire. A fourth was kidnapped from hospital and murdered by Amin’s thugs.
The only commando to fall in a rescue operation of staggering ambition and audacity, was the man who led them, Lieutenant Colonel Yonatan Netanyahu. His younger brother, Benjamin, who somehow had to reconcile his grief with great national rejoicing, later entered politics. Maybe you’ve heard of him.
It’s an incredible story, its every detail the stuff of which movies are made. And indeed, have been.
The starriest was Victory At Entebbe (1977), which featured Elizabeth Taylor, Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster, no less. Even Anthony Hopkins and Richard Dreyfuss, a little further down the bill, must have been star-struck.
The big names this time are Rosamund Pike and Daniel Bruhl. Interestingly enough, while all the stars back in 1977 played the leading Jewish protagonists, Pike and Bruhl are cast as the two Germans, Brigitte Kuhlmann and Wilfried Bose.
THEY
are the characters we get to know best, an ideologically driven but almost comically hapless pair who want to ‘throw bombs into the consciousness of the masses’ yet are catastrophically out of their depth.
Maybe this tilt of perspective says something about how, rightly or wrongly, perceptions of Israel have changed in 40 years, for many, from plucky underdog to aggressor? Certainly, Brazilian director Jose Padilha’s film strains hard to establish motivation on the part of the hijackers, giving them back stories and, in the case of the Palestinians, poignant and genuine grievances.
‘Operation Thunderbolt’, as it was known, might have been a remarkable Israeli triumph, but Jeremy Corbyn and his less desirable friends in the Labour Party could still safely organise a cinema outing.
For those with no political bias who just want a strong period thriller, the screen-writer, promisingly, is Gregory Burke, who scripted the 2014 edge- of-yourseat drama, ’71, set in Belfast at the height of the Troubles.
Unfortunately, Entebbe won’t nudge anyone towards the edge of their seat. In exploring the political bickering back in Israel as Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (Lior Ashkenazi) and his more hawkish Defence Minister shimon Peres (Eddie Marsan) argue over the best course of action, the film somehow diminishes the rescue mission itself. It just isn’t that exciting. This is a surprise; after all, Padilha is one of the creators of