On this day 35 years ago, as the celebrations of 200 years of independence for the United States were just commencing, Ugandans were awaking in the aftermath of the Entebbe raid. One week before, an Air France plane flying between Athens and Paris had been hijacked and diverted to Entebbe Airport in Uganda, the country which was at that time ruled by the unpredictable tyrant Idi Amin.
After a tense week, the latest deadline for complying with the hijackers’ demands was to expire on the morning of Sunday the 4th of July, and the hijackers had threatened to start shooting the 100 or so Israeli hostages. Israel’s government was left with few options, and on the day before the deadline they dispatched a team of commandos and a small fleet of planes as a rescue mission. The commandos landed about midnight and rescued nearly all of the hostages, making it the most remarkable hijack rescue in history.
For Ugandans the outcome was not as encouraging. Idi Amin’s goons rounded up a number of Entebbe Airport personnel and tortured and murdered them. Dora Bloch, one of the Israeli hostages who had been taken to hospital, was also murdered. Amin’s reign of terror over the country continued for a few more years. The story as told by William Eyika, one of Entebbe’s air traffic controllers, is available in the book God Is My Employer.