One of the big TV events of 1976 was a made-for-television movie called Raid On Entebbe. Directed by Irvin Kershner (later to make The Empire Strikes Back) and starring Charles Bronson, Peter Finch, Martin Balsam and James Woods, the picture was inspired by an insanely daring Israeli commando operation. The raid was so extraordinary that two further movies were made about it - Victory At Entebbe starring Richard Dreyfus and Operation Thunderbolt featuring Klaus Kinski. It was Kershner's picture that captured the audience's imagination - together with two Emmys and a Golden Globe - airing as it did just five short months after the extraordinary events of the summer of 1976.
On 27th June, an Air France jet carrying 260 people left Athens for Paris. Not long after the craft left Greek air space, four terrorists - two Palestinian and two German - hijacked the plane, demanding that it be flown to a friendly country. So it came to pass that, after a seven hour stopover in Libya, Air France Flight 139 touched down in Entebbe, Uganda.
As you might know, at this time Uganda was in the hands of General Idi Amin Dada, heavyweight boxing champion, uncrowned 'King of Scotland' and avid collector of human body parts. Siding with the Palestinian cause, Amin warmly welcomed the terrorists, whose numbers had by now doubled. As for the hijackers' demands, they included the release of 53 political prisoners in return for the Air France passengers. Should the governments of Israel, France, Switzerland and Kenya fail to pursue this course of action, they would start executing the hostages on 1st July.
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