REMEMBERING ENTEBBE
Larry Domnitch
FrontPage, July 4, 2012
It took Israeli commandos minutes to conduct one of the greatest and most daring rescue missions in modern history, in Entebbe, Uganda, on July 4, 1976. During those brief fateful moments, good triumphed over evil; the innocent were saved and the terrorists who threatened them were routed.
On June 27, 1976, Air France flight 139 was hijacked by Palestinian terrorists while on the ground during a stopover in Athens as it was bound from Tel Aviv to Paris. Carrying 248 passengers, the flight was diverted to Benghazi airport in Libya for refueling and then headed for Entebbe. The Ugandan regime under Idi Amin Dada supported the terrorists and provided them with cover.
The final deadline to meet the hijackers’ demands to release forty prisoners held in Israel and thirteen in West Germany, Switzerland, France and Kenya, was steadily approaching. Negotiations managed to postpone the approaching July 1 deadline for three days. On July 1, the non-Jewish passengers were released by the terrorists. The twelve-member Air France crew chose to stay with the more than 100 remaining Israelis and non-Israeli Jews still being held captive. On July 3, French diplomats involved in the negotiations stated that there was no hope for an agreement.…
As international attention was focused upon the events, the Israeli Cabinet covertly decided to give the green light to ‘Operation Thunderbolt’ to rescue the hostages. Four Israeli Hercules transport planes filled with Israel’s elite Sayeret Matkal commandos, along with medical teams, made their way to Uganda flying under radar over the Red Sea, in order to avoid detection by Egyptians and Saudis.… The planes landed at the Entebbe airport without suspicion.…
The Israeli commandos drove toward the terminal in a Black Mercedes with Land Rover escorts, deceiving Ugandan guards to believe that Idi Amin was visiting. Two guards approached the vehicles and were shot; the ruse was now over and time was of the essence. Taking a chance that the airport complex was not booby trapped, the commandos headed toward the hostage compound. They burst in alerting the stunned hostages that they were Israelis and to stay down.
In the ensuing moments, there were bursts of gunfire within the terminal, and then it ended. Nearby, Soviet-made MIGS were destroyed, preventing pursuit of the Israeli aircraft. The hostages were quickly escorted on board the Hercules transports, which headed home to Israel via a brief stop in Nairobi, Kenya, for refueling and medical treatment for some of the wounded. It took approximately one hour to thwart the plans of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorists.
The operation was so bold that the Israeli cabinet only decided to proceed after planes were already en route. Brigadier-General Dan Shomron later described the daring and extreme difficulties of the rescue mission: “You had more than one hundred people sitting in a small room, surrounded by terrorists with their fingers on the trigger. They could fire in a fraction of a second. We had to fly seven hours, land safely, drive to the terminal area where the hostages were being held, get inside, and eliminate the terrorists before any of them could fire.”
The eight hijackers and upwards of 45 Ugandan troops died. Three hostages were killed during the gun-fire-exchange, another was wounded and at least five Israeli commandoes were injured. Israeli Commando Surin Hershko was shot and paralyzed. One passenger, Dora Bloch, a Jewish British citizen who was hospitalized earlier for stomach pains, was murdered the next day by Ugandan soldiers.
The rescue operation, was renamed Operation Yonatan in honor of its commander, Yonatan Netanyahu, 30, who was cut down by a Ugandan sentry. Netanyahu believed from the outset that the plan could be accomplished and his confidence influenced government leaders and his fellow commandos. On that day, one of Israel’s greatest soldiers had fallen.
On that day which also happened to be the American bicentennial, forces that threatened freedom were routed by courage and daring.… Thirty six years later, as the threat of terrorism continues to loom large, the rescue at Entebbe stands as a model of victory and of how it is achieved.
A CAMP RITCHIE SOLDIER’S ENCOUNTER
WITH A TOP NAZI OFFICER AT THE END OF WWII
Michael E. Ruane
Washington Post, June 30, 2012
The Nazi general wanted to use the bathroom. World War II in Europe had just ended. And U.S. Army Capt. Seymour S. Steinberg, a baker’s son from Manhattan who had custody of the German officer, figured it was fine.
But as Oberstgeneral Alfred Jodl, who had been one of Adolf Hitler’s top aides and was the epitome of a Nazi commander, vanished into the bathroom, Steinberg’s blood went cold. A German admiral in Allied custody had made the same request an hour before and had killed himself in a bathroom. If Jodl, who was headed to the Nuremberg war-crimes trial, did the same thing, Steinberg was in big trouble. He dashed into the bathroom. Only one stall was occupied. He broke down the door. And there was Jodl “sitting on the can.”
Now 91, the retired Army officer and lawyer from Montgomery County told the story last week with delight—the Jewish guy from New York, facing one of Hitler’s biggest henchmen.… Steinberg’s story has emerged as he and other veterans mark the 70th anniversary of the opening of the super-secret World War II military intelligence school at Camp Ritchie, Md., north of Frederick. The first class entered in July 1942, according to historians. The camp closed in 1997.
The camp was set up to steep its “Ritchie Boys” in a detailed understanding of the enemy’s armies. The U.S. Army brought in some of its smartest soldiers to learn everything they could about the German forces—their nature, tendencies and weapons. The students learned German uniform insignia, and they learned how to interrogate prisoners. Many spoke German; many were from Jewish families that had fled the Nazis just before the war.
Dozens of Ritchie Boys—with wheelchairs, canes, hearing aids and walkers—assembled recently at the U.S. Navy Memorial and Heritage Center in Washington for a symposium about their little-known work during the war.… Among the attendees was Steinberg, who told of trying to gather intelligence by dropping carrier pigeons into France via parachute. The hope was that the French would jot down observations and send them back to Britain with the pigeons. It didn’t work well—the hungry French ate the pigeons.…
Also attending was Peter Skala, 87, of London. His family fled to the United States after his father was dragged by Nazis from his Vienna home during the notorious anti-Semitic rioting of “Kristallnacht”—the Night of Broken Glass—in 1938. (Skala’s father, a World War I veteran, was later released.) During the war, Skala used his language skills on the front lines to talk scores of German soldiers into surrendering.
And Camp Ritchie veteran Ralph H. Baer, 90, of Manchester, N.H., said he became an expert on German weapons and instructed thousands of GIs before D-Day. He said he can still draw almost every German Army insignia from World War II.…
Last week, Steinberg filled in details of his life as he sat at his dining room table, which was cluttered with mementos of war—including a photo of him escorting Jodl on May 23, 1945.… He said he was in an Army engineering unit when he was transferred to Camp Ritchie. He spoke poor German, but his commanders told him, “You’re in!…” After his training, Steinberg said, he was shipped to Britain, where he analyzed intelligence that came in from various sources.…
Steinberg was assigned custody of Jodl in Flensburg, Germany, shortly after Jodl signed the instrument of surrender in a ceremony in Reims, France, on May 7. The port of Flensburg briefly became the Nazi capital in the closing weeks of the war, and it was there that Jodl was arrested after the surrender, Steinberg said.
He said that Jodl and German Adm. Hans-Georg von Friedeburg were taken into custody aboard a cruise liner commandeered by the Allies. The Germans had been summoned to the ship to be arrested, and his commander simply said: “Steinberg, you take Jodl.” The general, who had been with Hitler in his Berlin bunker a month earlier, wore black boots and a double-breasted leather overcoat and had a dark iron cross medal at his throat. “You can image how nervous I was,” Steinberg said. “I was 23 years old. I couldn’t believe what was happening to me.”
Steinberg said his job was to convey Jodl back to his quarters and then get him to a local airport for the trip to Nuremburg. They left the ship, got into Jodl’s Mercedes-Benz convertible and drove to a headquarters building where the general had a room. Steinberg watched him pack.… He said Jodl kept telling him that he had only been doing his duty during the war. Steinberg said he had learned that it was useless to argue.…
Jodl finished packing, and he and Steinberg were leaving the building when the general asked about the bathroom. Standing on the front steps, Steinberg gave his assent, he said, forgetting for the moment that von Friedeburg had killed himself in a bathroom an hour before. An instant after Jodl went back into the building, Steinberg remembered. “My blood turned to ice,” he said.
He dashed back inside, burst into the men’s room and spotted the occupied stall. He broke down the door with his shoulder. “And there he is,” Steinberg said, laughing.…
In the end, Steinberg got Jodl to the airport. He got a receipt for the delivery. And the oberstgeneral reached Nuremburg. Seventeen months later, he was hanged.
THE DEATH OF A NAZI-HUNTER
Efraim Zuroff
Jerusalem Post, July 5, 2012
Late last week, “Anton Kuenzle” died in Tel Aviv and momentarily emerged from the shadows of anonymity enforced on Mossad operatives. Ironically, the media reports of his demise focused primarily on his participation in the abduction of Adolf Eichmann from Argentina, but it was his role in another operation against an escaped Nazi war criminal living in South America which was probably his most outstanding individual achievement.
Whereas “Kuenzle” was one of a relatively large team of at least a dozen Mossad agents who participated in the Eichmann kidnapping in Buenos Aires, it was Yaakov Meidad posing as “Anton Kuenzle” who virtually single-handedly organized the assassination of notorious Latvian Nazi war criminal Herberts Cukurs in Uruguay in 1964.
That operation was exceptional in the annals of the Mossad, which to the best of our public knowledge devoted relatively little attention to the issue of escaped Nazi war criminals, except for the cases of Eichmann, Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele (the infamous “Angel of Death”) and Gestapo chief Heinrich Mueller, and was not involved in the assassination of former Nazis.
The background to the action was also a product of special historical circumstances. At that time, there was talk in West Germany of applying the statute of limitations to murder, which would have prohibited the prosecution of killers, including Nazi war criminals, if 20 years had passed since the crime had been committed. That discussion lit a red light in Jerusalem, where the fear was that such a step would end the efforts to bring Holocaust perpetrators to justice, even though many of the worst murderers were still at large.
According to a memoir Meidad published in Hebrew 15 years ago under the pseudonym he used in the operation, this was the background for the unusual decision made by Israel, which wanted to signal West Germany that if they stopped bringing Nazi war criminals to trial, the Jewish state would have no choice but to track them down and execute them.
The reason the first target of the operation was Cukurs, who was notorious for his brutality as the deputy commander of the infamous Latvian Arajs Kommando murder squad which killed at least 30,000 Latvian Jews and actively participated in the mass murder of many additional thousands of Jews in Belarus, had to do with the legal status of his case.
Toward the end of the war, Arajs and Cukurs, along with many of the Latvians who served under them, retreated with the German forces and posed as innocent refugees fleeing Communism, a ruse which enabled many of these killers to emigrate overseas, primarily to Anglo-Saxon democracies. Cukurs escaped to Brazil and was living in Sao Paulo, where he was eventually discovered living under his own name.
The Soviet Union, which had occupied Latvia, asked for his extradition but the Brazilians refused, claiming that they could only extradite Cukurs to the country in which he had committed his crimes—which no longer existed (due to its occupation by the Soviets). Under these circumstances, it appeared there was no hope the “Butcher of Riga” would ever be held accountable for his heinous crimes.
The plan formulated by the Mossad was complicated because it called for the assassination to take place outside Brazil, where there was still a death penalty for murder. Meidad, who posed as an Austrian business man interested in investing in a tourism company, had to earn Cukurs’ trust, so that he could be lured to Uruguay, where the operation could be carried out with less risk for the Mossad agents.
Meidad did so successfully, despite the emotional difficulty of posing as a Wehrmacht officer and spending lots of time with a brutal mass murderer with so much Jewish blood on his hands.
Meidad’s parents were killed in Nazi concentration camps.
Eventually, after weeks of courting Cukurs with the hope of considerably expanding his aviation tourism business (Cukurs was a famous pilot), Meidad convinced the Latvian to meet him in Montevideo, where a Mossad team was waiting for him.
The original plan was to hold a trial and then execute Cukurs, but the minute he walked into the safe house, the Latvian realized what was about to happen and he fought against his captors, who executed him on February 23, 1965. The operation was portrayed as the work of “those who can never forget” in a message sent to local media outlets.
The State of Israel never officially admitted its role in the execution of Cukurs, but…Meidad’s memoir with journalist Gad Shimron, entitled The Execution of the Hangman of Riga…fully clarified the circumstances of the operation.… That Cukurs was…not able to escape punishment [is] thanks in large measure to the daring exploits of Yaakov Meidad, to whom we all owe a debt of deep gratitude.
(Efraim Zuroff is the chief Nazi-hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.)
THE EUROPEANS’ SKEWED VIEW OF CIRCUMCISION
Jonathan Sacks
Jerusalem Post, July 5, 2012
In May 2007, a small group of religious leaders met, in the EU headquarters in Brussels, with the three most significant leaders of Europe: Angela Merkel, German Chancellor and at the time president of the European Council, Jose-Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, and Hans-Gert Pöttering, president of the European Parliament.
The meeting was one of those semi-formal occasions at which little is said, and a great deal of time taken in saying it. Concerned at the return of anti-Semitism to Europe within living memory of the Holocaust, I decided that the time had come to break protocol and speak plainly, even bluntly.
I gave the shortest speech of my life. Sitting directly opposite the three leaders I said this: “Jews and Europe go back a long way. The experience of Jews in Europe has added several words to the human vocabulary—words like expulsion, public disputation, forced conversion, inquisition, auto-da-fé, blood libel, ghetto and pogrom, without even mentioning the word Holocaust. That is the past. My concern is with the future. Today the Jews of Europe are asking whether there is a future for Jews in Europe, and that should concern you, the leaders of Europe.”
It took less than a minute, and after it there was a shocked silence.
We adjourned for lunch, and over it Angela Merkel asked, “What would you like me to do, Chief Rabbi?” I did not have an easy answer for her then. I do now. It is: reverse, immediately, [last month’s] decision of the Cologne court that renders Jewish parents who give their son a brit mila [circumcision], even if performed in hospital by a qualified doctor, liable to prosecution.
It is hard to think of a more appalling decision. Did the court know that circumcision is the most ancient ritual in the history of Judaism, dating back almost 4,000 years to the days of Abraham? Did it know that Spinoza, not religious but together with John Locke the father of European liberalism, wrote that brit mila in and of itself had the power to sustain Jewish identity through the centuries? Did it know that banning mila was the route chosen by two of the worst enemies the Jewish people ever had, the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV and the Roman emperor Hadrian, both of whom set out to extinguish not only Jews but also Judaism? Either the court knew these things or it did not. If it did not, then how was it competent to assess the claim of religious liberty? If it did, then there are judges in Germany quite willing to say to religious Jews, in effect, “If you don’t like it, leave.”
Do judges in Cologne today really not know what happened the last time Germany went down that road? The case—like the banning of shechita (ritual slaughter of animals) by the Dutch parliament, now thankfully reversed—illustrates the deep difficulty Jews are facing in Europe today.…
I have argued for some years that an assault on Jewish life always needs justification by the highest source of authority in the culture at any given age. Throughout the Middle Ages the highest authority in Europe was the Church. Hence anti-Semitism took the form of Christian anti-Judaism. In the post-enlightenment Europe of the 19th century the highest authority was no longer the Church. Instead it was science. Thus was born racial anti-Semitism.… Since Hiroshima and the Holocaust, [however], science no longer holds its pristine place as the highest moral authority.
Instead that role is taken by human rights. It follows that any assault on Jewish life—on Jews or Judaism or the Jewish state—must be cast in the language of human rights. Hence the by-now routine accusation that Israel has committed the five cardinal sins against human rights: racism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, attempted genocide and crimes against humanity. This is not because the people making these accusations seriously believe them—some do, some don’t. It is because this is the only form in which an assault on Jews can be stated today.
That is what the court in Cologne has done. It has declared that circumcision is an assault on the rights of the child since it is performed without his consent. It ignored the fact that if this is true, teaching children to speak German, sending them to school and vaccinating them against illness are all assaults against the rights of the child since they are done without consent. The court’s judgment was tendentious, foolish and has set a dangerous precedent.
In historical context, however, it is far worse. By ruling that religious Jews performing their most ancient sacred ritual are abusing the rights of the child, a German court has just invented a new form of blood libel perfectly designed for the 21st century.
Chancellor Merkel, the answer to your question, “What would you like me to do?” is simple. Ensure that this ruling is overturned, for the sake of religious freedom and the moral reputation of Germany.
(Jonathan Sachs is Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth.)
