The ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of Operation Entebbe took place in an understated setting for one of the most storied military operations in modern history: a small lounge in the offices of the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation, with no more than two dozen people in attendance.
Yet the modest event in Tel Aviv suited Sorin Hershko, the former paratrooper being honoured for his role in the 1976 rescue of more than 100 hostages from a hijacked Air France plane in Uganda.
Hershko was the most seriously wounded Israeli soldier in the operation; now 71 years old, he is a man with little appetite for self-mythology and was among the quietest people in the lounge, which was filled with other survivors of the operation.
Among them were several of the former hostage “children of Entebbe”, whose easy banter with and about Hershko gave the gathering the feel of an old family reunion rather than an award ceremony.
“They insisted on giving me the award,” he said, speaking in a soft register forced on him by the injury he sustained at Entebbe.
“I would have been happy for them to give it to other soldiers from that day.”
Sorin Hershko as a young soldier[Missing Credit]
Hershko was 21 and at the end of his compulsory army service when he boarded one of the Israeli Hercules planes sent to Uganda.
The hijacking had begun after an Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris, carrying 246 people, stopped in Athens, where 58 more passengers boarded along with Palestinian and German terrorists from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Hershko was already close enough to the end of his service to have been sent on discharge leave, but chose to join the operation anyway, later saying he thought it would be an “interesting adventure”.
“When I heard about the mission, I decided I was going to stay to join it,” he said.
Without asking, he took the weapon of a fellow soldier who was in the shower and reported for duty. The other soldier was later tried by the military over the missing rifle, but was acquitted.
“To this day, I’m still ashamed I did that,” Hershko said. “It really wasn’t right.”
By the time Israeli forces launched the raid, most of the non-Israeli passengers had been released, leaving more than 100 mostly Israeli or Jewish hostages held inside the terminal with the backing of dictator Idi Amin.
Hershko was part of the paratrooper force sent to secure the airport as Israeli commandos stormed the building.
The anniversary has reopened the official record of the raid, with the Israel State Archives releasing thousands of previously classified documents on the government deliberations that preceded the rescue mission, including the decision by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s crisis team to negotiate with the terrorists to buy time while commandos prepared for the successful military rescue.
Israeli army chief of staff Lieutenant General Mordechai Gur at a press conference after the raid (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)Getty Images
The raid depended on surprise, speed and a level of reach Israel had not previously shown. The commandos flew thousands of miles over hostile territory, landing at Entebbe under cover of darkness in Hercules transport planes.
A black Mercedes and jeeps, chosen to resemble Idi Amin’s convoy, rolled out of the first aircraft toward the old terminal, where the hostages were being held.
The plan began to unravel when Israeli troops encountered an armed Ugandan soldier before reaching the building, forcing the assault force to move faster than planned. Within minutes, the commandos had stormed the terminal and begun evacuating the hostages. The operation was over in less than an hour.
Yonatan “Yoni” Netanyahu, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother and the commander of the elite Sayeret Matkal commando unit that stormed the terminal, was the only Israeli soldier killed in the operation.
Lieutenant Colonel Yonatan "Yoni" Netanyahu was the only soldier to die in the raid on Entebbe (GPO)[Missing Credit]
Hershko later recalled lying on top of the decoy Mercedes inside the Hercules, trying to sleep before the raid, and noticing Netanyahu quietly reading an English-language book, a display of composure that stayed with him long after the operation.
During the raid, Hershko was shot by a Ugandan security guard, the bullet hitting him near the upper lip, shattering his teeth and lodging in his spine, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down.
Confined to a wheelchair for life, Hershko built a career in computers and in the 1990s helped found LOTEM, an Israeli organisation that opened hiking trails, outdoor education and nature programs for people with disabilities.
Forty years after Entebbe, Hershko was reunited for the first time since the raid with Joel Sayfan, the doctor who treated him that night and whom he credits with saving his life. Sayfan had kept a piece of paper stained with Hershko’s blood which he gave to him, describing the paratrooper’s injury as “almost” the worst fate possible – one stop short of death – while noting that Hershko had still gone on to achieve so much in his life.
Now, ten years on, speaking to the JC before receiving the Peres award, Hershko was careful not to romanticise the decision – driven, he said, by the “impulsive head of a young boy” – that put him on
Hostages returned to Israel after Operation Entebbe on 3 July 1976 (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty)Getty Images
the plane to Uganda.
“Regret is wisdom after the fact,” he said. “I don’t celebrate what happened to me, and I’m not happy that I was wounded, and even though I may be wiser today, I understand the decision I made then and am at peace with it.”
Today, when Hershko meets soldiers fighting in the war in Gaza, they often ask the same question, which he turns back on them.
“I ask them, ‘Would you not go?’” he said. “They don’t even hesitate. They say, ‘Of course I would.’”
After Hamas’s October 7 attack brought Israel into another hostage crisis, followed by the mobilization of tens of thousands of soldiers, including many reservists who volunteered to fight in Gaza, Hershko said he did not immediately think back to Entebbe. The massacre, he said, was “a singular event,” horrifying in its own right.
The comparison came later, as Israeli forces carried out hostage rescues in Gaza. Hershko said he found himself measuring those operations against Entebbe, not to diminish the 1976 raid but to underscore how much more complex the current battlefield had become.
The distance to Uganda had been the defining challenge of Entebbe, he said. In Gaza, troops were operating in dense urban terrain, from the air, above ground and through tunnels, “a three-dimensional battlefield that was much more complicated than what we had”.
Friends and relatives greet rescued hostages at Ben Gurion Airport on 3 July 1976 (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty)Getty Images
Hershko said he has deep respect for the soldiers fighting today, for their patriotism, commitment and professionalism.
“They are no less good than we were, maybe better,” he said. “The training, the exercises, everything has jumped several levels since then.”
At the Peres Center, the late president Shimon Peres’s son Chemi Peres handed the award to Shai Gross, who held it on Hershko’s behalf. Gross, who was six years old at Entebbe and one of the youngest of the rescued hostages, said the bond between them had begun in the hospital, when his parents visited Hershko so often during his rehabilitation that he became part of the Gross family.
Years later, Hershko blessed Gross’s son before he entered Duvdevan, one of the IDF’s commando units.
Gross said the former children of Entebbe share a WhatsApp group with Hershko, where “Sorin is the most normal one,” and that they meet almost every week. Across from them sat Regine Levi, also six at the time of the hijacking, who said she “loved Sorin from the first moment”. They planned to visit a winery later in the month, but Hershko said it would not be another anniversary outing.
“It’s not connected to Entebbe,” he said. “It’s just a fun day at the winery, because we like spending time together.”
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