Fifty years after one of the most daring hostage rescue missions in modern military history, Israel’s leaders gathered on Sunday at the President’s Residence to commemorate “Operation Yonatan,” drawing parallels between the 1976 Entebbe rescue and Israel’s enduring commitment to bring its citizens home.
President Isaac Herzog and First Lady Michal Herzog hosted the state ceremony in the presence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, veterans of the operation, former hostages and their families, bereaved families and young IDF soldiers.
Among those attending were former Hamas hostage Noa Argamani, her father, Yaakov, and the IDF soldier who participated in her rescue from central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp in June 2024.
A mission that changed history
“Operation Yonatan,” as the Entebbe rescue mission was later named, was carried out on the night of July 3-4, 1976, after Palestinian and German terrorists hijacked an Air France flight carrying 248 passengers and diverted it to Entebbe Airport in Uganda. The terrorists separated the Israeli and Jewish passengers from the others, releasing most non-Israelis while holding the remaining hostages under threat of execution.
Israeli commandos flew more than 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) to Uganda, rescuing more than 100 hostages in a surprise assault that has since become one of the most celebrated military operations in history.
Three hostages were killed during the rescue, while a fourth, Dora Bloch, who had been taken to a Kampala hospital, was later murdered on the orders of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. The operation’s commander, Lt. Col. Yonatan Netanyahu, was the only Israeli soldier killed in the mission, which was later named in his honor.
The ceremony opened with relatives lighting five memorial candles in memory of those who lost their lives in Uganda. Prime Minister Netanyahu and his brother Iddo lit the candle honoring their brother, Yonatan.
Throughout the evening, veterans recounted the tension leading up to the mission. Doron Almog, chairman of the Jewish Agency and a veteran of the operation, recalled his mother’s anxious phone calls. Amos Eran, who served as director-general of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s Office in 1976, described sleepless nights awaiting news, while Dr. Ephraim Sneh reflected on serving as one of the operation’s military doctors.
‘There is no limit to our responsibility’
“There are events that are greater than any single figure, place, or time,” Herzog said. “Operation Yonatan does not belong to any one person or group. It transcends every disagreement. This is a legacy of courage and daring that echoes, and will continue to echo, for generations.”
Calling the operation “a moral declaration,” Herzog said it established a principle that continues to define Israel today.
“There are borders to the state, but there is no limit to our responsibility,” he said. “However far you may be, however difficult the road, however dark the place, you are not alone—we will come.”
Netanyahu described Entebbe as proof that “the impossible” can become possible.
“‘Entebbe’ has become synonymous with an extraordinarily bold operation that turned the impossible into the possible,” he said. “This unprecedented operation brought our hostages home from the heart of Africa.”
Drawing a direct connection to Israel’s recent military campaigns against Hamas and Iran’s regional proxies, the prime minister said the operation demonstrated that “it is possible, and necessary, to stand firm against bloodthirsty terrorists, to strike them and to defeat them.”
He said Israel has “turned the tables” since the Hamas massacre on Oct. 7, 2023, striking enemies “from Gaza to Yemen, from Lebanon to Iran,” and preventing what he described as an immediate existential threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program.
Reflecting on the loss of his older brother, who commanded the rescue force, Netanyahu added: “There is not a day that I don’t think about Yoni. There is not a day that I don’t consult with Yoni.”
The prime minister also paid tribute to the operation’s leaders, including then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Defense Minister Shimon Peres, Chief of Staff Motta Gur, Chief Infantry and Paratrooper Officer Dan Shomron, Air Force Commander Benny Peled and the commanders and soldiers who carried out the mission under extraordinary circumstances.
Recalling his own service in the IDF’s Sayeret Matkal special forces unit, Netanyahu reflected on participating in “Operation Sabena,” the 1972 rescue of hijacked passengers at Lod Airport, and described the extraordinary preparation and courage that made the Entebbe mission possible just four years later.
The enduring promise of ‘habayta’
Zamir likewise drew a direct line from Entebbe to Israel’s more recent hostage rescue operations.
“Between Entebbe and Nuseirat, between the rescue of the October 7 hostages and those freed at Entebbe, between Yoni and Arnon, we march with resolve and a sense of historic responsibility,” he said, referring to Yonatan Netanyahu and Chief Insp. Arnon Zamora, who was killed during the June 2024 rescue of four hostages in Nuseirat.
“This has been our guiding compass since that night in Entebbe, and all the more so since October 7,” Zamir said. “We, and we alone, are responsible for the lives and safety of our citizens.”
The emotional ceremony brought many veterans to tears as they watched a short film featuring children rescued from the hijacked Air France flight alongside images of those same survivors, now in their 50s, reunited five decades later.
Throughout the evening, one message echoed repeatedly: habayta—coming home.
Survivors recalled hearing Hebrew spoken by Israeli commandos as they were carried to safety. Family members of those rescued in Uganda embraced the veterans who had saved their lives half a century earlier.
Speakers agreed that the legacy of “Operation Yonatan” remains a defining principle of the State of Israel: that no citizen should ever be abandoned, and that the country’s commitment to rescue and protect its people endures across generations.
