COUNTERSTROKE AT SOLTSY - Strategy & Tactics Press

thunderball
The rescue mission was code-named Operation
Thunderball (in some sources, Thunderbolt),
and on the morning of 2 July several young Israeli
men rented a couple of twin-engine planes
at Wilson Airport outside Nairobi, Kenya. Their
specified destination was the Kenyan coastal
city of Kisumu, but instead they headed for Entebbe.
They circled the airport and nearby Lake
Victoria, exposing multiple rolls of film as they
photographed the runways and all buildings and
the roads leading to them. After the youthful
spies shot every frame they had, they flew on to
Kisumu, then back to Nairobi, from where they
hastily departed. No one in Entebbe noticed the
aviators winging overhead that morning. Thunderball
was beginning. Netaniahu used their photographs
to enhance the training of his men using
mock-ups of the Entebbe terminal.
During the three days since the rescue plan
had been proposed, the IDF had learned there
were three doors into Old Terminal; terrorists
were standing guard in twos and threes (mostly
by the doors); terrorists not on guard were resting
in a side room; Ugandan soldiers were stationed
on the Old Terminal’s second floor, and the control
tower was roughly the height of a four-story
building, commanding a view of the entire area.
Using that data, Netaniahu had his men build a
sandbag rampart, complete with openings, to the
dimensions of the wall encircling Old Terminal.
Playing the parts of rescuers, terrorists and hostages,
the commandoes tirelessly practiced their
upcoming mission.
The commandoes also purchased an old white
Mercedes at a used car lot and drove it to the assembly
area, where it was meticulously serviced
and painted black so as to look like Amin’s favorite
vehicle. When the action started, that car
would be a centerpiece of the Israeli tactics.
Meanwhile, Radio Israel was repeating the
claim its government would be bargaining with
the terrorists momentarily, shattering the country’s
morale while lulling the hijackers into believing
they had won. The PFLP was demanding
the terrorists whose release it sought be brought
to Entebbe before the hostages would be freed.
The long-distance exchange would give the Israelis
an excuse to take even longer to “comply,”
and the time was being well spent.
As the rescue mission prepared to kick off,
disturbing intelligence reports began arriving
from Uganda—the terrorists were not so much
interested in freeing their imprisoned comrades as
they were in humiliating Israel before the whole
world. More details out of Entebbe pointed to the
hijackers planning to hang on to the captives af-
the terrorists
At the time of the Entebbe affair, Dr. Wadia
Hadad (a dentist) was the most dangerous man on
Israel’s most-wanted list. Forsaking dentistry for
terrorism, he took his new calling seriously. Unlike
other terror paladins, he was virtually never seen
in public and was careful not to allow himself to
be photographed. After narrowly escaping death in
a 1970 Katyusha rocket attack on his Beirut apartment,
Hadad was terrified of assassination, staying
hidden and constantly on the move. A photograph
allegedly of him printed in newspapers worldwide
following the Entebbe hijacking was a fake.
In the 1950s Hadad had joined forces with an
optician by the name of George Habash. Opening
a joint medical practice, they also founded
the Kaumion el-Arab (Arab Nationalism Movement).
Following the 1967 Six-Day War, Hadad
changed his organization’s name to the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and
began directing international terror attacks, attempting
to assassinate Israeli founding father
David Ben-Gurion He later received 5 million
dollars in exchange for the release of a hijacked
Lufthansa airliner.
Part of that ransom was used to pay the
Japanese Red Army to send some of their men
to fight as mercenaries for the PFLP and attack
travelers in Israel’s Lod Airport in 1972. With
a keen mind for finances, Hadad realized huge
sums of money were essential to establish an international
terror infrastructure, with himself as
commander. Apart from ransom and widespread
robberies of banks (mostly in Lebanon), there
were enormous contributions from oil-rich Libya,
Iraq and South Yemen. Additional income
came from smuggling stolen automobiles from
Europe into the Middle East. The man Hadad
placed in charge of the massive car theft ring
was Faiz Jaaber, who would later participate in
(and be killed during) the Entebbe operation.
Hadad and his subordinates also invested in
Arab financial houses that provided steady, dependable
profits. The huge volume of money supported
terror cells and sanctuaries throughout the
Mideast and Europe.
Hadad eventually became too radical for Habash,
and the two parted ways after the Lod attack,
which Habash had not sanctioned. Late in
June 1976, Hadad arrived in Mogadishu, Somalia,
to direct his latest offensive against Israel.
The top prisoner whose release he would demand
was Greek Catholic Bishop Hilarion Capucci, who
then resided in an Israeli prison. Capucci was serving a 12-year sentence
for smuggling hand grenades, submachineguns, detonators, pistols, carbines,
magazines and explosives into Israel for use by terrorist organizations.
The next-most-significant terror figure on the list was 29-year-old Japanese
Kozo Okamoto. A former member of the Japanese Red Army, he had
hired on with the PFLP. On 30 May 1972, he and two comrades had opened
fire on an unarmed crowd in Israel’s Lod Airport, killing 24 persons and
wounding another 72. His two fellow gunmen were killed in the attack, but
Okamoto surrendered and became a terrorist hero.
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