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The Israeli rescue operation that was tailor made for Hollywood
In the early hours of July 4, 1976, Israel completed a stunning and unprecedented military action that saved 102 Israeli lives. A French plane traveling from Tel Aviv to Paris had been taken over by hijackers demanding the release of 53 Palestinian prisoners held in several countries, including 40 in Israel.
Rerouted to Entebee, Uganda, a pro-Palestinian country headed by the savage dictator Adi Amin, the plane sat in the terminal, surrounded on all sides by armed Ugandan soldiers. The hijackers set a deadline stating that if their demands were not met they would start murdering the hostages. The ordeal dragged on for seven days.
Fifty years later, the extraordinary event still resonates — for those who celebrate Israeli brilliance and bravery as well for those who view the hijackers as freedom fighters embracing a just Palestinian cause.
The event inspired an array of films, most of which depict the harrowing week-long episode with a fair degree of verisimilitude. But, viewed through a post-Oct. 7 lens, each reflects divergent points of view.
The best known are Victory at Entebbe, Raid on Entebbe (two star-studded American blockbusters), 7 Days at Entebbe and Operation Thunderbolt. The latter, an Israeli produced Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film (1978) and no longer available for streaming in the United States, was praised for its authentic feel and historically accurate backdrops, military equipment and uniforms. In its first iteration, Arabic, Hebrew, French and English were spoken. In a later version, dubbed for an international audience, everyone conversed in English. It presented the Israel Defense Forces in a glowing heroic light.
Victory at Entebbe was the most starry of the lot, featuring Elizabeth Taylor, Kirk Douglas, Richard Dreyfus, Burt Lancaster, Theodore Bikel, Anthony Hopkins and Helen Hayes. Though it, too, casts the Israeli commandos as epic figures, at its core it’s about the entrapped Israeli passengers and their present, also past, lives and their conflict-ridden or romantic interactions, some of which bordering on absurdity.
There’s the sometimes wise and sometimes dotty grandmother archetype (Hayes) hoping the plane might be hijacked to India since she’s never been there before and would like to visit. One religious Jew demands kosher food, while others insist upon lighting Shabbat candles. A young girl (Linda Blair, post-Exorcist) tries to cheer everyone up with chocolates. And back home in Israel, her mother (dreadfully played by Taylor) has lost her mind and incoherently screams something about red ribbons.
The characters are way over the top. My favorite is the female German hijacker Brigitte Kuhlmann (played by Bibi Besch), strutting about and barking, often shrieking, demands at the Israeli hostages.
Most of the films create a thread between the victims of the Holocaust and the Jewish passengers. The Jewish hostages are brutally segregated into a separate room in the terminal and treated far worse than the others. In one particularly ham-fisted Victory scene, a Jew with a Belgian passport refuses to be housed with Israelis. He is a Belgian, he insists. Later, he is overwhelmed with guilt because he didn’t identify as a Jew. Another passenger reassures him that trying to survive is fully understandable. Sound familiar?
The most successful film of the films is Raid on Entebbe (1976), directed by Irvin Kershner and starring Peter Finch, Charles Bronson, Martin Balsam, Jack Warden and Sylvia Sidney. It embodies all the elements of a well-conceived airplane hijacking thriller, coupled with archival footage featuring iconic American newscasters of the period covering the happenings as they unfolded. Like many disaster films, it presents a cast of interacting characters with subplots that, unlike Victory at Entebee, are plausible, at least within parameters, and don’t overwhelm the film.
A high point here is the Jewish actor Yaphet Kotto’s Idi Amin, at once a ferocious figure and a buffoon. Careerism, opportunism and self-promotion are at his core. His cheery “Shalom, Shalom” while waving to the Israeli hostages is bone-chilling.
The film is unequivocally told from the Israeli point of view and is especially vivid in its depiction of the internecine struggle within the cabinet. Defense Minister Shimon Peres and others argue that Israel has never given in to the demands of terrorists and to do so now would create a dangerous precedent. Others respond that lives are at stake. Outside in the streets, protesters demand that the cabinet negotiate with the hijackers. On the surface, the Israeli government is proceeding with diplomacy at the very moment it has launched a complex military intervention.
It’s a high-risk sneak attack in the middle of the night, involving four cargo planes carrying between 100-200 soldiers and escorted by Phantom jet fighters. They fly close to 2,500 miles from Israel to Uganda and within 90 minutes of landing the commandos have rescued 102 of the hostages, killed the hijackers and dozens of the Ugandan guards. It’s a nail biter.
But there are losses too, including the murder of Major General Yonatan “Yoni” Netenyahu (older brother of the Prime Minister), the spearheading force behind the rescue. The impromptu Kaddish uttered by the soldiers flanking his body on the return flight is quite moving.
Still, at the end you cheer for the Israelis even as you mourn the irretrievable loss of life.
Seven Days in Entebbe, directed by José Padilha, stands in stark contrast to the other films, focusing its attention on three of the hijackers. There is the furious Palestinian and two Germans, whose motivations are more enigmatic. The one woman (Rosamund Pike) seems the most eager to kill anyone or everyone. Her rage is far more existential and free-floating than it is political or even targeted.
The gentlest of the lot and the most conflicted (vividly acted by Daniel Brühl) is a left-leaning German publisher, who wants to make a statement that puts him on the right side of history, at least as he sees it. His posturing becomes all too real when he realizes he may actually be called upon to pull the trigger. Throughout, he grapples with Holocaust history and the moral complexity and resonance of contemporary “Germans killing Jews.”
“You are here because you hate your country,” says the Palestinian, “I am here because I love mine.”
“Jews came to Palestine and did to our people what your people did to them,” he adds. “Go back to your nice life. I go back to nothing.”
The dramatization of philosophical differences among the hijackers, informed by class and experience, is not without interest. Unlike the other films, this movie concludes on an introspective and perhaps even conciliatory note as Prime Minister Rabin says that in the future Israel will have to negotiate.
Most off-putting is the interspersed presence of the Batsheva Dance Company. Its members are on a stage seated on folding chairs in a circle. Abruptly, they twisting this way and that to evoke anguish. In each segment the tortured movements grow increasingly intense. These choreographic bits that also serve as bookends to the film are pretentious, totally unaccounted for, serve no discernible purpose, and bring to mind badly done satire.
The topic of the Entebbe raid has surfaced once again with Boaz Dvir’s compelling To Kill a Nazi, which just debuted in Los Angeles. Though it is a documentary, it has the feel of fiction.
It tells the little known story of business consultant Michel Cojot, who was committed to tracking down and killing Klaus Barbie (“the butcher of Lyon”). Barbie was responsible for the deportation and ultimately the death of Cojot’s father in Auschwitz. But when Cojot was in shooting distance of Barbie, he couldn’t do it and tore himself apart for what he viewed as his cowardly indecision. For him, that indecision was both a personal and Jewish flaw.
Depending on your viewpoint, either through destiny or coincidence, a year later he found himself on the ill-fated Air France flight and was unwittingly given a second chance to redeem himself. And he did, facilitating relationships with the hijackers and pilot and flight crew. In so doing he negotiated a plan and retrieved information that played a major role in the successful outcome of the raid. Though the French government still hasn’t honored him Cojot, who died in 1999, found peace with himself as a Jew and a human being.,
It’s a theme that has an indefinite shelf life. And it couldn’t be more timely in light of the surge in antisemitism, the rift among Jews and the ongoing internal and external battle of what it means to be a Jew.
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John Galliano bows out of Met exhibition as backlash over antisemitism mounts
(JTA) — John Galliano withdrew from a planned exhibition of his work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in response to a rapidly escalating controversy over the museum’s decision to honor the fashion designer despite his history of antisemitic and racist remarks.
Galliano said Monday that, after discussions with the Met and others involved in the exhibition, he had decided that it was best for the show not to take place “at this time.” He said he remained accountable for the pain caused by his past words, particularly to Jews and Asians, and recognized that an exhibition honoring his work could be painful for some. The Met said it agreed with his decision.
The reversal came less than a month after the Met announced that Galliano would be the subject of its spring 2027 Costume Institute exhibition, a rare honor that would have made him only the third living designer to receive a solo show there. The exhibition was to open in conjunction with the Met Gala, one of New York’s biggest annual cultural and celebrity events.
Opposition to the exhibition appeared to mount steadily in recent weeks. Early public pushback came from Dana Thomas, Galliano’s biographer, who wrote in an Aug. 6 New York Times guest essay that the Met had made a serious error in choosing to honor him. The criticism then broadened, with Jewish leaders, museum donors and New York politicians publicly urging the museum to reconsider.
Those criticizing the exhibition were New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin, who called the decision deeply painful for Jewish New Yorkers. Prominent Met donor Alice Tisch described the planned exhibition as a “whitewash,” according to the Times.
The reversal is also a setback for Anna Wintour, Condé Nast’s chief content officer and the driving force behind the Met Gala. She had championed Galliano for decades and was among the Met figures most closely associated with bringing the exhibition to the museum.
The controversy was complicated by the fact that some prominent rabbis had actually met with Galliano before the exhibition was announced and had come away believing that his repentance was sincere, as JTA reported earlier this month.
Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said Galliano had shown the contrition necessary to earn his return to the fashion world. Rabbi Joshua Davidson of Congregation Emanu-El, a Reform synagogue in New York, likewise said he was convinced by Galliano’s statements of remorse and his efforts to educate himself about Judaism and the Holocaust. Neither rabbi endorsed the Met’s decision to honor Galliano, however. Rather, both told the museum that if it proceeded, it had a responsibility to make Galliano’s antisemitic conduct and the lessons of his repentance an explicit part of the exhibition.
That distinction was reflected in the Met’s original plans. Andrew Bolton, the Costume Institute’s curator, said in announcing the exhibition that it would address Galliano’s antisemitic and anti-Asian conduct, as well as his firing from Dior, a hate speech conviction in France and his subsequent treatment for addiction and public acknowledgment of his actions.
Galliano, among the most celebrated designers in the world, was fired by Christian Dior in 2011 after a video surfaced showing him praising Hitler and making antisemitic remarks in a tirade in a Paris cafe, and directing an anti-Asian slur at the partner of a Jewish woman. A French court convicted him of making public insults based on race, religion and ethnicity.
After entering treatment for substance abuse, he embarked on a process of rehabilitation and eventually returned to the fashion industry. Abraham Foxman, then national director of the Anti-Defamation League, met privately with Galliano repeatedly; in 2013 the ADL said that Galliano had demonstrated “true contrition.”
After the initial announcement of the exhibition, Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and national director of the ADL, noted that the organization had “long since accepted his apology,” but added that he understood “why some Jews may question the decision to include Galliano’s work in an exhibit given the massive spike in antisemitism in recent years.”
In a statement Monday, Greenblatt appeared to take a harder line in welcoming Galliano’s withdrawal.
“With antisemitism at crisis levels, the Met honoring John Galliano at this moment was misguided, and even Galliano ultimately recognized what the Met should have done from the start,” Greenblatt wrote on X. “This was the wrong move at the wrong moment. Timing matters.”
Galliano’s withdrawal leaves the Met without a planned spring 2027 Costume Institute exhibition. The museum said information about a replacement exhibition and the 2027 Met Gala will be announced later.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Julie Moos Named as the Forward’s New Editor-in-Chief & Chief Content Officer
The Forward today announced the appointment of Julie Moos as Editor-in-Chief & Chief Content Officer. This newly created executive position merges newsroom leadership with audience strategy, positioning the nation’s premier independent Jewish news outlet to accelerate digital growth and serve audiences across platforms.
The appointment was announced by Forward Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen.
Moos, who joined the Forward in 2024 as Managing Editor for Audience, previously served as Interim Editor-in-Chief and Vice President for Audience & Strategy. In these roles, she advanced the publication’s digital content strategy and helped secure major grant funding, including a prestigious Luce Foundation award to support the “Holy Ground” series chronicling Jewish life and reinvention across rural and small-town America.
Under Moos’ leadership, the Forward has hit unprecedented growth milestones:
- Record Audience Scale: Surpassed 100 million total audience views in 2025 across web, video, audio and social channels, as measured by Brandwatch.
- Social Acceleration: Grew social media reach by 280%, expanding video reporting to meet the audience where they are.
- Critical Acclaim: Led the Jewish journalism field in reporting awards, including record recognition from the New York and Los Angeles press associations.
- Product Innovation: Successfully relaunched specialized newsletter offerings, including Antisemitism Decoded.
“Julie’s new role marks a pivotal shift toward a fully integrated structure that meets the demands of the rapidly changing news environment,” said Feddersen. “By bringing editorial stewardship and audience strategy under unified leadership, we can ensure our high-impact reporting meets readers where they consume media today, expanding our reach and amplifying the Forward’s mission to elevate issues vital to the American Jewish community.”
Joel F. Brown, Chairman of the Forward Board of Directors, added: “Julie has made important contributions to the Forward from her first days with us and our franchise will accelerate its growth significantly under her editorial leadership. She has a deep and authentic devotion to Jewish communal life which she braids brilliantly with her excellence in journalism and her advanced command of media distribution strategy. I am confident that her leadership will ensure the Forward remains the premier, trusted media source for American Jews.”
Moos said, “I’m honored to lead this incredible team at a moment of dramatic change in the Jewish world and in the media. For over a century, the Forward has been a trusted guide and voice of Jewish life in America. Today, that requires deep, principled reporting, groundbreaking storytelling and ongoing innovation — from dynamic newsletters to video and live events — to ensure our work invites conversation and connection everywhere people watch, listen, read, talk and meet.”
Moos is a nationally recognized editor and media leader who has served in senior roles at McClatchy Media, the National Press Club Journalism Institute and The Poynter Institute. She edited the New York Times bestseller President Obama Election 2008: A Collection of Newspaper Front Pages Selected by the Poynter Institute.
She lives in Alexandria, VA. She is a graduate of Barnard College and earned a nonprofit management certificate from Georgetown University, where she taught digital journalism at the graduate level. She serves as an ambassador for Central Synagogue’s online community, The Neighborhood, and co-hosts the DC-area chapter. Julie has served for decades as a synagogue board member, staff member and active congregant in North Carolina, Florida and Chicago.
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Republican Mike Rogers is the Senate candidate Democrats need to save their party
Many progressive Michiganders – especially in the Jewish community – will hold their nose and vote for Democratic Senatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed despite his association, friendship and political partnership with antisemitic streamer Hasan Piker.
Many will hold their nose because El-Sayed has called Israel a “rogue” state, refusing to recognize the Jewish State of Israel as legitimate.
They will hold their nose and vote for El-Sayed because they are more scared of the Republicans’ hold on the Senate than a tainted Democrat.
However, as a social progressive who almost always votes Democrat, I want to push back against this logic and urge my fellow Michigan Democrats and progressives to vote for Republican candidate Mike Rogers for the sake of progressive, democratic values.
For me, the disdain that El-Sayed has shown for the Jewish community, especially in his continuing refusal to disavow his relationship with Piker, puts him in the same category as candidates who are openly racist and homophobic. Even the most loyal progressive would reject a racist, even if that meant risking a Republican Senate.
To show the Democrats that such candidates should never be nominated, we must show them that such candidates can never win. Such a candidate winning would be a disaster for the most fundamental requirements we have for any candidate of any party.
Instead, those who really want to focus on turning the Senate Democratic should slip across Michigan’s border to Ohio to knock on doors for Sherrod Brown or donate to help James Talarico in Texas. Those efforts would be a real show of Democratic and progressive solidarity – much more than a vote for El-Sayed.
Donald Trump and the Republican party would like nothing more than to see Abdul El-Sayed in the Senate – an easy target to paint all progressives, liberals and loyal Democrats with the brush of anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
The anti-Israel and antisemitic words of El-Sayed and other extremists in the party are a poison that has the potential to severely damage the party long term and make it unviable both for Jews and all those with traditional liberal values. Only a decisive win for Rogers will send a clear message to the Democrats that a return to a stance that is both pro-Israel and pro Palestinian, respecting the Jewish community, is the only way for a strong party to stand up to the Republicans in national elections to defend our progressive values.
This election is not just about the safety and future of Jews in the Democratic party. It is also about returning America to a place where we do not tolerate the harassment of people with whom we politically disagree. The harassment and intimidation of any candidate considered pro-Israel at the Michigan Democratic convention in April traumatized many Jewish participants. Michigan’s Jewish Attorney General Dana Nessel skipped the convention on Saturday out of fear for her safety.
Meanwhile, El-Sayed has said nothing to apologize for his supporters who carried out this gross infraction of the democratic process. Imagine what the National Democratic Convention will look like in less than two years if this model of behavior is not denounced now. Jews with traditional pro-Israel values will see they have no place in the Democratic party.The only way to stop this behavior is to show that it leads to Democrats losing elections.
In recent days, El-Sayed reportedly apologized for remarks he made in March after a truck loaded with explosives rammed into Temple Israel in suburban Detroit with a driver intent on shooting whomever he didn’t blow up. There were more than 100 children inside.
Jews were shocked when El-Sayed seemed to justify the near murder with the words “hurt people hurt people.” His recent non-apology apology if anyone was hurt by his words made it worse.
He doubled down on recognizing the “context” for the attempted massacre: Israel’s actions in Lebanon fighting Hezbollah – the terror group in which the Michigan terrorist’s brother was a member when he died.
In other words, according to El-Sayed, if children are blown up in Michigan, you can blame Israel.
Moreover, he continues to blame Israel for Michigan not having enough funds for its public schools and other needs, a classic antisemitic deflection. His antisemitic blood libel continued after his primary victory when he accused Israel – not just its government – of being “bloodthirsty” – in its defensive war against Hamas.
El-Sayed’s friend and campaign partner Hasan Piker has shared the same sentiment ,warning pro-Israel American Jews that if they continue to defend Israel, they will be targeted because of that stance.
I urge my fellow progressives to examine Piker’s comments insulting Poles and Poland, blaming the West for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and his disdain for Black chatterers on his show – with the vilest of expressions. How can they vote for a candidate who befriends such a man and repeatedly invites him to campaign events?
Yes, Mike Rogers is an old-fashioned conservative who has had to cede some ground to Donald Trump’s conspiratorial views of the 2020 election. But I would argue that worse for our democracy is to normalize the cesspool of disgusting swearing and demonization that Piker champions.
Progressive Democrats must never give up the fight for our causes. However, in the long run, we must right the sinking ship of the Democratic party, a party which is our only hope for winning the war for our progressive values. The path to making this necessary correction is turning our energies to making sure that Mike Rogers defeats Abdul El-Sayed. That is why Rogers, a Republican, has my vote and my voice.
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