Chronicle Editor Emeritus Jerry Bellune shares with you his adventures in the Holy Land. The experience gave him a greater appreciation of shared U.S and Israeli values.

AJerusalem, Israel

t 11:01 pm, 30 seconds behind schedule, the Israeli’s four C-30 Hercules transport planes touched down.

My Jerusalem guide was on board with 199 other soldiers at Entebbe Airport to rescue 94 hostages.

The first plane landed with instructions from the control tower where they had been misled that this was a Ugandan aircraft

Even before it came to a stop, the soldiers barreled their vehicles down the ramp. Paratroopers scrambled to light emergency beacons to guide the other three planes if the control tower doused runway lights.

The Mercedes and its Land Rover escorts, picked to fool airport security into thinking they were Uganda dictator Idi Amin’s convoy, raced to the old terminal.

Two Ugandan soldiers aimed their rifles and shouted for them to stop. What followed has been much debated since that night.

Death at the terminal

Legendary Israeli commando Moshe Muki Betser was second in command to Yoni Netanyahu, older brother of current Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu on the assault team that night.

He and Netanyahu brothers Iddo and Bibi – all Sayeret Matkal veterans — have argued in public about the unexpected firefight and its tragic consequences.

“It pained me to fight the soldiers I helped train,” Betser, who had trained Ugandan paratroopers, told a journalist after the rescue.

“We drove disguised as Idi Amin’s convoy undetected.

“Close to where the hostages were held, the soldiers on guard challenged us to identify ourselves.

He said he told Yoni not to fire, but he shot the soldiers with a silenced gun.

A wounded Ugandan soldier reached for his gun and one of the commandos shot him with an AK-47, ending the deception.

“Yoni ordered us to storm the terminal where the hostages were held,” he said.

Lights on the runway

With these initial shots, the advantage of surprise was lost, and Yoni ordered his men to the terminal.

As the other three Israeli planes came in to land, the control tower switched off the lights; but the emergency beacons gave enough light for them to land safely.

When the shooting started, one terrorist in panic told the others that Ugandan soldiers had gone berserk. He appeared not to have realized that Israeli commandos had arrived.

As the Israelis rushed the entrance, Netanyahu fell.

His men kept running as he had ordered. No wounded were to be helped until the hostages were free.

Death of a commander

As his men fought their way inside, Yoni was bleeding heavily. Inside the building, the commandos killed all seven terrorists and 20 Ugandan Army soldiers.

Yoni was taken to the evacuation plane, hit in his arm and chest.

On the plane, the doctors failed to resuscitate him.

Within 90 minutes of first touching down, the Israeli planes were airborne again and Uganda’s Russian MiG jets were destroyed.

Capt. Isaac Bakka of the Uganda Air Force denied that Ugandan soldiers abandoned their guns and fled.

“That is absolute nonsense,” he said. “The Israelis were targeting the Palestinians, not us. “We were taken by surprise and facing one of the best armies in the world.” “A Ugandan captain restrained his men from taking down the plane carrying hostages with a rocket propelled grenade as it took off.”

He quickly realized that killing all the hostages would have provoked an extreme reaction from Israel.

“That captain, like myself, was an Israeli-trained paratrooper, so we knew the Israelis fairly well.”

Next: A narrow escape on the flight home to Israel.