On June 27, 1976, an Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris was hijacked by a group of Arab and Ger­man ter­ror­ists who demand­ed the release of 53 ter­ror­ists. The plane was forced to divert to Entebbe, Ugan­da — ruled by the mur­der­ous despot Idi Amin, had no inter­est in inter­ven­ing.

Days lat­er, Israeli com­man­dos dis­guised as Ugan­dan sol­diers assault­ed the air­port ter­mi­nal, killed off the ter­ror­ists, and res­cued all the hostages but three who were killed in the cross­fire. The assault force suf­fered just one fatal­i­ty: its com­man­der, Yoni Netanyahu, the broth­er of the cur­rent Israeli prime min­is­ter. Three of the Israel’s great­est lead­ers, Ehud Barak, Shi­mon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin planned and pulled off one of the most aston­ish­ing mil­i­tary oper­a­tions in history.