Itongadol.- Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on Monday lauded Israel’s famed July 4, 1976, Entebbe rescue of a hijacked Air France plane, saying at a memorial service to mark its 40th anniversary that the Jewish state was right to launch the operation on his country’s territory.
Speaking at the Ugandan airfield where IDF troops rescued dozens of Israelis and Jews from the German and Palestinian terrorists who had hijacked a flight from Tel Aviv to Paris, Museveni said Ugandan leader Idi Amin’s “hobnobbing with the terrorists was a crime in itself.”
Turning to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose brother led the commando unit and was the only Israeli military fatality during the mission, Museveni said: “Your brother Jonathan, some Israeli hostages, and some Ugandan soldiers were killed here, on that night, fourth of July 1976. Fortunately, the rescue mission succeeded and the innocent civilians were rescued.”
An often rambling Museveni, clad in a wide-brimmed light-colored hat, also listed a number of biblical links between the Jewish state and his own nation, while consistently referring to Israel as “Palestine.”
The Entebbe raid, he said, was “another bond” linking “Palestine to Africa.”
Museveni condemned terrorism and “indiscriminate violence” — even if the “cause is just” — but said there was still a need for violence so long as it is used responsibly and morally.
“Even soldiers when they are not armed should not be attacked,” he said. “That is our doctrine. We’re a liberation movement, we use violence for the cause of Africa, but it’s disciplined and purposeful violence.”
The Israeli prime minister, who spoke before the Ugandan president, called the Entebbe mission “a watershed moment for my people.”
During the Holocaust, Jews “were murdered by the millions, stateless,” Netanyahu said. “The State of Israel has changed that. It was perhaps in Entebbe where this transformation was seen by the world. We were powerless no more."