Entebbe Rescue Mission Remembered: Uganda Unveils Statue of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s Brother 

Almost five decades after one of the most audacious rescue missions in military history, Uganda has put up a statue honoring the man who led it and died doing so. The bronze memorial now stands outside the old airport terminal in Entebbe, marking the exact spot where Lt. Col. Yonatan “Yoni” Netanyahu fell in July 1976. He was the elder brother of Israel’s current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the only Israeli soldier killed during the raid that freed more than a hundred hostages from Palestinian and German hijackers. Uganda’s military chief, Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, unveiled the statue himself, framing it as a tribute to Netanyahu’s courage and his role in saving innocent lives. Officials also pointed to it as a sign of just how far Uganda-Israel relations have come.

A Quick Refresher on What Happened

Back in 1976, Air France Flight 139 was hijacked and diverted to Entebbe. The hijackers separated the Israeli and Jewish passengers from everyone else and threatened to kill them unless Israel released a list of Palestinian prisoners. While Israel publicly negotiated, its military was quietly drawing up a rescue plan. That plan came together on the night of July 3rd into the 4th, when Israeli commandos flew over 4,000 kilometers to Uganda and pulled off the rescue in under an hour, freeing 106 hostages. Netanyahu, who commanded the elite Sayeret Matkal unit, was shot and killed during the firefight with Ugandan troops. Three hostages also died in the operation.

Why This Statue Is a Bigger Deal Than It Looks

The symbolism here runs deep. Back in the 1970s, Idi Amin’s Uganda had cut ties with Israel entirely, and much of Africa condemned the raid as a blatant violation of Ugandan sovereignty a foreign military operation carried out on their soil without consent. So a Ugandan general standing up to honor the Israeli commander of that same raid says a lot about how the relationship has shifted. Uganda and Israel are on friendly diplomatic terms these days, and President Yoweri Museveni has voiced support for a two-state solution while still keeping close ties with Israel.

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Not Everyone’s on Board

Reactions to the statue have been mixed. Plenty of people especially in Israel and among military historians see it as a well-earned honor for an operation still taught as a textbook case in special-forces planning and intelligence work. But others aren’t as comfortable with it, arguing the raid is still a touchy subject given that it involved armed forces storming into another country. Nearly 50 years on, that tension hasn’t fully gone away. For Israelis, though, Yoni Netanyahu is still very much a national hero, and his death left a lasting mark on his younger brother, something Benjamin Netanyahu has spoken about publicly many times over the years. At the end of the day, this isn’t just a story about a statue. It’s a reminder that this one night in 1976 still shapes how Uganda and Israel see each other and how differently people remember it depending on where they’re standing.

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