Entebbe raid

Uh, the film significantly fictionalizes the circumstances, um, as we can see.

Uh, Operation Entebbe, the film's closing text claims Israeli forces rescued all but one hostages, uh, one hostage.

In fact, three hostages died during the raid, while a fourth was later murdered by Ugandan soldiers in retaliation.

[gasps]

And although Israel initially did negotiate with the people holding them, they did eventually, or within a week actually, they did have a mission to free the hostages, and they freed almost all of them.

And they managed to free almost all of them in what became known as the Entebbe Raid.

A number of years earlier, in September of 1970, in what became known as the Dawson Field Hijackings, four airliners were hijacked and brought to Jordan.

And then Israel refused to negotiate at all.

In addition to the prohibition that the Mish-- that we mentioned from the Mishnah of not paying for a captive more than the captive is worth, the Mishnah also says it's forbidden from attempting to free any captives, 'cause that will put the captives in danger.

And yet we know that Israel has made countless attempts over the years to free various captives.

Some were successful, such as the Entebbe raid was successful.

Some were not successful, such as the attempt in the Munich Olympics in nineteen seventy-two to free them.

And it's his default position because he is, you know, fundamentally a boomer who is a New York boomer.

And he came up in a time when, you know, his formative experiences with Israel had to do with, you know, Entebbe and, you know, the Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur War, the...

the explosion of Palestinian terrorism from the Munich Olympics, you know, on and on, you know, to, to the, you know, Iranian revolution, even though, I mean, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't necessarily an Israel story.

It was definitely a, a, a story about the explosion of Islamic fundamentalism, you know, in that part of the world.