(CNN) — The commemoration of Israel’s most famous military operation should have been a moment to celebrate for Matan Vilnai. Instead, the deputy commander of the Entebbe raid – in which commandos rescued 102 hostages – boycotted the ceremony, along with many of the soldiers who took part in the daring mission.
“What exactly is there to celebrate – an operation from 50 years ago? I haven’t celebrated since October 7,” Vilnai, a retired general from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told CNN. “We have thousands of soldiers fighting right now, thousands of reservists serving – and they’re celebrating?”
On July 4, 1976, Israeli commandos flew nearly 2,500 miles across largely hostile airspace, landing in darkness at the airport in Entebbe, Uganda. In less than an hour, they freed 102 hostages held by Palestinian and German hijackers who were demanding the release of dozens of convicted terrorists. The plane had been hijacked en route from Tel Aviv to Paris and diverted to Entebbe.
Three hostages were killed during the operation, as was its 30-year-old commander, Yonatan (Yoni) Netanyahu, who became a national icon. Operation Thunderbolt – known in Hebrew as the Entebbe raid – was subsequently renamed in Netanyahu’s honor as “Operation Yonatan.”
Entebbe became one of the defining moments in Israel’s national story, a symbol of a country’s promise to go anywhere, and take extraordinary risks, to protect its citizens and bring them home.
It also marks the beginning of another story: that of Netanyahu’s younger brother, Benjamin, who entered public life in the shadow of Yoni’s death and would become Israel’s longest serving prime minister.
Half a century later, that legacy is fraught, mirroring Israel’s deep internal divisions. At a state ceremony marking the anniversary on Sunday, dozens of the operation’s own veterans – senior commanders and commando soldiers who stormed the airport that night, and even some of the hostages they saved – boycotted the event, hosted by President Isaac Herzog, in protest of its guest of honor: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“There isn’t a day I don’t think about Yoni, there isn’t a day that I don’t consult with Yoni,” Netanyahu said at the ceremony, connecting the Entebbe raid to Israel’s campaign against Iran. The 1976 operation, he said, “turned the impossible into possible” and demonstrated that terrorism must be confronted with force. “This is what we are doing. We are systematically crushing the Iranian axis of evil, who tried to advance a plan to destroy Israel.”
But most of the men who once served beside his brother were not there to hear his speech.
“We refuse to serve as a window dressing,” the veterans wrote in an open letter, accusing Netanyahu of “abandoning” the Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, 2023, and of enabling mass draft exemptions for ultra-Orthodox men, even as reservists serve repeated combat tours on multiple fronts.
“This is a matter of conscience,” Uri Sagi, a former military intelligence chief who commanded Golani forces in the 1976 raid, wrote on social media, explaining his refusal to sit alongside Netanyahu. Benny Davidson, who was 13 when he was rescued from Entebbe, also avoided the ceremony, saying he would not be part of “a display that covers a collapse of values and leadership.” Instead, he led a small, quiet protest outside the president’s residence.
The rift between Netanyahu and some of his brother’s former comrades has become increasingly open. In 2023, at the height of mass protests against Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul, members of the Entebbe rescue squad staged a demonstration at Ben Gurion airport, arriving in black Mercedes cars like the ones the commandos drove onto the Entebbe tarmac at the start of the operation.
“Back then we set out on ‘Operation Yonatan’; today we embark on ‘Operation Benjamin,’” they declared, casting their protest as a second rescue mission, aimed at “freeing a prime minister who has been ‘kidnapped’ by extremists, along with an entire country racing toward a dangerous regime change.”
The war that followed October 7 deepened the rupture, with several Entebbe veterans joining the weekly protests calling on Netanyahu to end the fighting and strike a deal to bring the hostages home.
Vilnai, the mission’s deputy commander, said: “The Entebbe legacy is far from unified. Each of us has their own reasons, but we will not be a decorative prop to Netanyahu’s cynical commemorations.”
Inside the ceremony, Herzog tried to rise above the rift. “Operation Yonatan does not belong to an individual or a group. It stands above all disputes,” he said. He called the mission a “moral declaration” that established a lasting principle: “There may be borders to the state, but there is no border to responsibility.”
IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir drew his own line from 1976 to the present war, speaking of “the compass that has guided us since that night in Entebbe, and with even greater intensity since October 7, driven by a deep and clear understanding: we, and we alone, are responsible for the lives and safety of our citizens.”
Whatever gaps the boycott left were filled in a hall packed with young soldiers, bereaved families and survivors from the Entebbe raid, and the veterans who chose to attend.
Among them was Doron Hanan, a member of the aircrew that flew the original mission, who said he understood those who decided to boycott, but that he had “swallowed” his discomfort, because the anniversary mattered too much to skip.
“I also feel uncomfortable with some of the figures here, but we came to meet with our crew members and remember the old days,” he told CNN, before noting how much has changed. “I am ashamed of what Israel has become, as well. This is not the country we fought for.”
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