90 Minutes at Entebbe

This is one of those “flash titles” that get published immediately after something happens. Based on some claims in the book, and the publication date, it appears that it happened a couple of weeks afterwards.

The writing is not great. It’s a little scattered. But it is a somewhat gripping analysis of the Israeli raid to rescue hostages from a plane that was hijacked en route to from Tel Aviv to Paris. This was the 70s, of course, which was the “golden age of hijackings.”

The book is short. It’s about 150 pages, with another 50 pages of filler material, including the entire transcripts of the Uganda address to the United Nations, and the Israeli response. Uganda claimed that they didn’t hijack the plane, and were forced into the situation when the plane surprised them by landing at Entebbe. Israel says this is a lie, and Idi Amin was in on it from the start.

Not a terrible book, but it was clearly written in a big hurry.

Trivia: only one Israeli commando died in the raid – the older brother of future Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has said that the loss of his brother was the source of his hard line towards Palestine.