The immediate legacy of Operation Thunderbolt was twofold: it encouraged most Western governments to conclude that the correct political response to a hostage-taking situation was not to negotiate with the terrorists and, instead, to launch a military counter-strike if at all possible; this in turn prompted countries like France and the United States to set up specialist counter-terrorist units. West Germany had already done so, in the wake of the botched attempt to rescue Israeli athletes held hostage during the Munich Olympics of 1972, and this new unit, GSG-9, was inspired by Operation Thunderbolt to storm a hijacked Lufthansa Boeing 737 at Mogadishu Airport in 1977. Three years later, Britain’s SAS ended the Iranian Embassy siege by killing five terrorists and rescuing all but one of the hostages.
The Lufthansa hijacking was directly connected to Entebbe in that the four PFLP–EA terrorists–two Palestinians and two Lebanese–called themselves the ‘Commando Martyr Halime’ in honour of their fallen comrade Brigitte Kuhlmann. In Aden, en route to Somalia, the hijackers shot one of the German pilots. Once they had landed in Somalia they demanded the release of ten Red Army Faktion terrorists (including the leaders Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe) and two Palestinians held in Turkey.
The German government’s response was to order its GSG-9 commandos to assault the plane on 18 October. During the attack by the commandos (accompanied, according to some reports, by at least one SAS trooper on attachment to GSG-9), three of the terrorists were killed and the other one was wounded and captured; all eighty-six remaining passengers and crew were rescued, though four were slightly injured. The success of Operation Feuerzauber (Fire Magic) prompted the German government to announce an end to negotiations with terrorists. Now convinced they would never be released from jail, Baader, Ensslin and Raspe all committed suicide.
In both this and the later SAS operation in London, however, the rescue assault teams were not operating in hostile territory (GSG-9, for example, had permission for its raid from the Somali government). When the US Army’s Delta Force tried something similar in April 1980 with Operation Eagle Claw–the attempt to rescue the fifty-two hostages in the US Embassy in Teheran, and another mission inspired by the Israeli success at Entebbe–it ended in humiliating failure: the loss of seven aircraft (including one Hercules C-130), eight servicemen killed and not a single hostage rescued. Jimmy Carter, the US president, would later attribute his defeat in that year’s presidential election to the aborted mission.
Delta Force had been created in the wake of Entebbe by Vietnam veteran Colonel Charles Beckwith, then commanding the Special Forces School at Fort Bragg, with the aim of raising ‘a small handpicked outfit that was highly trained, specially equipped, and capable of engaging and defeating terrorists before they could attack American assets’. Beckwith had been seconded to the British SAS and used it as the inspiration and model for the new unit.
The failure of Operation Eagle Claw was attributed in the after-action report to adverse weather conditions and mechanical failure, and no blame was attached to Beckwith and Delta Force. Despite this setback, most Western governments have continued to refuse to negotiate with terrorists, and no more Palestinian attempts to hijack European, Israeli or US planes were made after Mogadishu. Operation Thunderbolt remains the first, and arguably most successful, counter-strike in the West’s long War on Terror.
In his 1995 book on the theory and practice of special operations, Colonel Bill McRaven–later the architect of the successful US mission to kill Osama bin Laden–described the Entebbe Raid as ‘the best illustration of the theory of special operations yet presented’. The extraordinary impact of the raid, then and now, was best summed up by Max Hastings, the British military historian and journalist, who wrote in 2000: ‘In a world of tragedies and frustrations, few people old enough to notice the event have forgotten the great uplift that day gave us. Terror was not invincible. Outrage could be fought and conquered. But only the Israelis, the world acknowledged, could have displayed the boldness and brilliance to launch and execute such an operation, half a continent from home.’ He added:
I was in New York to report the Bicentennial. I saw the euphoria which reigned on every television network that morning, as the news from Entebbe spilled joy into the exhilaration of American’s national celebration… With hindsight, that day might also be perceived as the high-water mark of Israel’s standing in the world, as a bastion of Western values in the Middle East, and a force for the pursuit of justice and freedom. Thereafter, amid the growing rancour of failed diplomacy, the brutal suppression of Palestinian dissent and the invasion of Lebanon, world sentiment drifted steadily away from support for Israel’s policies. But the memory of 4 July 1976 deserves to be preserved, for one of the greatest feats of arms in a humanitarian cause since the Second World War.
In Israel, of course, the raid is remembered as one of the greatest moments in its relatively brief history. In the opinion of Ephraim Sneh, one of those who took part, it restored Israel’s ‘pride and self-confidence’ after the ‘trauma of the ’73 War’. Such a ‘spectacular’ military and moral victory enabled Israelis to lift their heads up after the ‘huge humiliation’ of Yom Kippur. ‘We started from minus 10,’ he said, ‘and finished at plus 20.’
Many of the senior officers who took part in the raid have enjoyed successful military and political careers: Dan Shomron went on to become the IDF’s chief of staff and died in 2008; Matan Vilnai was appointed deputy chief of staff, a minister in several Labor governments, including deputy minister of defense, and later Israel’s ambassador to China; Ephraim Sneh rose to brigadier-general and was also a member of various Labor governments.
Though he did not participate in the raid itself, Ehud Barak played a central role both in planning the operation and in the secret negotiations with the Kenyans. His career since has been meteoric. First he rose to the top of the IDF, replacing Shomron as chief of staff in 1991. Then, in 1995, he joined Yitzhak Rabin’s last Labor government as minister of internal affairs. After Rabin’s assassination in November 1995–by an ultra-nationalist Jew who objected to the prime minister’s signing of the Oslo Peace Accords that created the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip–Barak was promoted to defense minister, and later served as minister for foreign affairs and prime minister (1999–2001). He retired from politics in 2012.
Not everyone connected with the raid has prospered. The paratrooper Surin Hershko became a paraplegic as a result of his spinal injury and can only write on a computer by using an elongated straw manipulated by his mouth. In 2001, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the raid, he was presented with a special medal commemorating the raid by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who declared:
These days, when we are in the midst of an ongoing battle against terrorism, violence and incitement, and when we are making a joint national effort to return to political negotiations without fire, we must rekindle the spirit of that operation. The secret of our strength lies in such spirit and faith, and if we learn how to renew it we will be able to meet all the challenges that still lie ahead.
For those who lost loved ones during and after the raid–particularly the families of the largely forgotten casualties Jean-Jacques Mimouni, Pasco Cohen and Ida Borochovich–such anniversaries are a painful reminder of their grief. As Jonathan Khayat, Jean-Jacques’ nephew, explained in a documentary in 2012: ‘This spectacular operation, hailed as one of the most brilliant in military history, put a stop to plane hijacking as a means for Palestinian groups to impose their demands on Israel. But behind the light lies a shadow. This operation also ended the life of my 19-year-old uncle Jean-Jacques Mimouni.’
Kobi Cohen, who was present when his father Pasco was mortally wounded, added: ‘Our release caused a great celebration, so everyone was in great euphoria. “How did the IDF do it?”… In the midst of such a celebration it’s difficult to point and say: “People are dead. We have casualties.” It might spoil the joy, taint the atmosphere, and we really got the feeling that my dad had been forgotten, and that Jean-Jacques Mimouni had been forgotten.’
Most Israelis are understandably proud of what their soldiers achieved at Entebbe. But are they aware of the raid’s long-term political consequences? Did it make peace with the Palestinian Arabs less likely because it convinced Israel’s political leaders–and populace in general–that their intelligence services and soldiers could deal with any security threat? Did it make it harder for Israeli politicians to push through the compromises required for peace? And does the extreme pride or confidence that comes with military success always end in hubris, as it did for the US Army in Vietnam and Iraq, and for the Israelis in Lebanon in 2006?
Opinion is divided, even in the same family of former hostages. ‘It was double-edged,’ argues Claude Rosenkovitch. ‘We were saved but it was bad for Israel. It made peace less likely. All the time since we have been talking about Entebbe and how successful it was.’
His wife Emma disagrees. ‘We did not think like that,’ she says, ‘when the Oslo peace process was under way in 1993. Arabs might have been prepared to make peace because of Entebbe. What happened after Rabin’s death is something else.’