The Legacy of Entebbe By Mark Mietkiewicz "This operation will certainly be inscribed in the annals of military history, in legend and in national tradition." The words of Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli Prime Minister who gave the go-ahead for the raid on Entebbe thirty years ago next week. Today, a look at the legacy of Entebbe. Of course, the rescue had a profound personal effect on anyone who cared about the fate of Israel. Jonathan Rosenblum was studying in an ulpan in the summer of 1976 and remembers the tension and then the joy that filled the air. "Complete strangers were embracing on the bus. For once Jewish unity seemed like a reality, not a fundraiser's slogan. As I looked around the bus, one thought kept recurring: We are all Jews. The obvious differences between us -- language, skin color, personal and familial history - suddenly seemed unimportant." [http://tinyurl.com/qmz2t] Decades later, Rosenblum put those events into perspective. "While the first realization of the miracle of the Entebbe rescue will always rank as one of the happiest moments of my life, the memory today is a bittersweet one. For it always calls in its wake the question: Will we Jews in the land of Israel ever again experience the same feelings of unity we did that morning?" And what about the generation born after the raid? Has Entebbe lived for them "in legend and in national tradition," as Yitzhak Rabin predicted? Unfortunately, a survey conducted earlier this year found that 30 percent of Israelis aged 18 to 22 had no knowledge of the rescue operation. A similar percentage of young people had never heard of mission lead Yonatan Netanyahu. [http://tinyurl.com/q3bzs] I was interested to read what impact the raid on Entebbe had on the people of Uganda. Ugandan political commentator Charles Onyango-Obbo says that before the raid Idi Amin had established a powerful army that terrorized his people in submission. But the raid "shattered his aura of invincibility. Nothing Amin did after that could rebuild his grip on the country." [http://tinyurl.com/ohjvr] And what of the fallen dictator? Amin was dethroned in 1979 by Tanzanian troops joined by Ugandan dissidents. Amin fled to Saudi Arabia, reportedly arriving with his two wives and 24 children. He died there in 2003. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idi_Amin]. A story as powerful as Entebbe has proven irresistible to filmmakers. "Victory at Entebbe" cast Burt Lancaster as Shimon Peres and Richard Dreyfuss as Yonatan Netanyahu. [http://tinyurl.com/qogxv] A second, superior production, "Raid on Entebbe," had Peter Finch as Yitzhak Rabin and Yaphet Kotto as Idi Amin. [http://tinyurl.com/rcbb4] And the Israeli-produced "Mivtsa Yonatan" (Operation Thunderbolt) featured Gila Almagor with Yehoram Gaon as Netanyahu. [http://tinyurl.com/mpwd5] "Operation Thunderbolt" was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in 1977. Right after the rescue, the Organization of African Unity initiated a complaint in the United Nations (UN) condemning Israel's "act of aggression" against a member state of the UN. Soviet delegate Mikhail Kharlamov said "however much the representative of Israel might have tried to refute the irrefutable, the armed action against Uganda was an act of direct, flagrant aggression." On the other hand, Kaj Sundberg said that although Sweden was "unable to reconcile the Israeli action with the strict rules of the Charter, [it] did not find it possible to join in a condemnation in such a case." In the end, the Security Council did not adopt the resolution condemning Israel. [http://home.att.net/~slomansonb/Entebbe.html] I'll leave the last word to Israeli ambassador Chaim Herzog, who later became the country's 6th president. Herzog delivered these eloquent remarks as the UN debated the legality of Israel's actions in Entebbe. [http://tinyurl.com/qkckj] "We are proud of what we have done because we have demonstrated to the world that in a small country - and Israel's circumstances - the dignity of man, human life and human freedom constitute the highest values. We are proud not only because we have saved the lives of over 100 innocent people - men, women and children - but because of the significance of our act for the cause of human freedom." [http://tinyurl.com/mo3jz] Mark Mietkiewicz is a Toronto-based Internet producer who writes, lectures and teaches about the Jewish Internet. He can be reached at highway@rogers.com.