Exactly right. It was a very clever plan because the Israelis knew they had to get through the outer ring of Ugandan soldiers guarding the airport [cleanly] because if there was a firefight at the outer ring the terrorists would be forewarned and have a chance to start killing the hostages. So one of the senior special-forces officers on the raid, Muki Betser, told his commander, Yoni Netanyahu, that whatever happens, even if they were challenged, “Don’t stop and don’t fire.” He thought Yoni Netanyahu had agreed to this.
But what actually happens is that as they’re driving toward the terminal at 40 miles an hour with the lights on – pretending to be a military convoy – they see three Ugandan sentries, one of whom raises his rifle to his shoulder as if he’s going to fire. Now, Muki knows from his time in Uganda that this is just standard procedure, so he says to Yoni, “He won’t fire, just keep going.” But for some reason Yoni ignores him and says to the driver, “Swerve slightly to the right, I’m going to take him out with a silenced pistol.”
So he and another officer draw their pistols and shoot at the sentry. He falls and they think they managed to kill him silently. But he’s not dead and he gets up a second later and raises his rifle to shoot, so one of the Israeli soldiers in the truck behind the Mercedes opens fire with his Kalashnikov. And this starts a massive firefight because not only do the Israelis on all three trucks start firing now but so do the Ugandans from various vantage points. And as far as Muki Betser is concerned, this is a total disaster because it’s given the terrorists a chance to start killing the hostages.
Why, in fact, didn’t they kill the hostages?
This is the other amazing thing about the story, and it’s hard to know. I was able to track down one of the terrorists’ accomplices, Gerd Schnepel – he was actually the boyfriend of the female hijacker – and he gave me what I think is a very credible reason. Two of terrorists inside the building were Revolutionary Cells terrorists from Germany, and they weren’t killers, Schnepel told me. They were idealists. And when they realized the game was up, when they realized they weren’t going to get their fellow terrorists in Germany released from prison – which is why they participated in this hijacking – they decided not to become murderers and kill defenseless men, women, and children.
Whether that’s entirely true – whether they weren’t entirely sure who was coming through the door – we will never know, but I think they must have had a pretty good idea that a rescue was underway given the firing that was going on outside.
No one knows for sure. Maybe it was confusion or worry that the Ugandans had gone loco. Maybe they were frozen with shock. I don’t know. Maybe they just weren’t as hardened and ruthless as the terrorists we’re used to dealing with today.
Is it possible they were so taken in by Rabin’s efforts to negotiate with them that they didn’t even consider the possibility that the Israelis at this point would attempt a rescue mission? Rabin, after all, was genuinely prepared to give in to the hijackers’ demands until virtually the last second.
Yes, I think that must have been a factor. Dan Shomron, the Israeli commander who led the whole rescue operation, said afterward that the reason it succeeded was because no one thought in a million years there was any possibility they would launch such a rescue operation, partly because logistically it was so hard to do.