THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, January 12, 1995 TAG: 9501120018
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Short : 41 lines
Your Dec. 27 front page gave an account of the rescue of hostages on the French airliner at Marseille. You compare it with the raid by Israeli commandos 18 years ago at Entebbe, Uganda.
However, your statement that ``commandos raided the jet'' at Entebbe is in error. Records show that Air France Flight 139 originating in Tel Aviv on June 27, 1976, was hijacked by international terrorists after takeoff from Athens en route to Paris.
The jetliner with 256 passengers aboard was directed by the terrorists to fly to Entebbe in central Africa, where all passengers were removed from the plane and placed under heavy guard in an old passenger terminal.
One hundred and forty-seven of the passengers were released on June 30 and July 1, but the terrorists continued to hold more than 100, all Jewish, passengers as hostages. On July 4, 1976, Israeli commandos, flying from Israel 2,500 miles away, made a lightning raid on the Entebbe terminal and in a blaze of gunfire rescued the hostages.
An Associated Press report in your newspaper of Dec. 28 about the hostage rescue at Marseille states that ``the raid was seen as one of the most successful anti-terrorist operations in aviation history.'' Considering the complexity of the situation at Entebbe 18 years ago and the fact that the Israeli team came from more than 2,000 miles away to stage the rescue of more than 100 hostages from hostile territory, it would seem to me that the Entebbe rescue was a greater feat than the one at Marseille, where French commandos had the advantage of operating on their own turf.
For more information about the Israeli raid, a good reference is 90 Minutes at Entebbe, by William Stevenson.
JOHN H. KNIBB JR.
Chesapeake, Dec. 29, 1994 by CNB