Aussie family recalls Entebbe
Forty years after Israeli commandos rescued Jewish hostages held at Entebbe Airport in Uganda, Australian Geoff Bloch relived childhood memories of his murdered great-aunt Dora Bloch, who he described as “cultured and hospitable”.
FORTY years after Israeli commandos rescued Jewish hostages held at Entebbe Airport in Uganda, Australian Geoff Bloch relived childhood memories of his murdered great-aunt Dora Bloch, who he described as “cultured and hospitable”.
On her way from Tel Aviv to New York, the 75-year-old, an Israeli national and British citizen, and her son Ilan were among 248 passengers hijacked by Palestinian and German terrorists on the Air France flight on June 27, 1976, while in the air between Athens and Paris.
While other passengers were freed over the next two days, 94 Jewish and Israeli passengers, and the 12-member airline crew, were held hostage, with support from then Ugandan president Idi Amin.
Dora Bloch was taken from the airport to a Kampala hospital after choking on food. She was left behind during the July 4 raid by Israeli commandos that freed 102 hostages and flew them to Israel. Three hostages were killed during the operation, as was Israeli commander Yonatan Netanyahu, brother of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu.
A fourth hostage would meet a cruel death. Dora Bloch was murdered by officers of the Ugandan army on orders from Amin, in revenge for the Israeli operation.
Her body was found three years later near Kampala, and was exhumed and sent to Israel, where she was given a military funeral.
“My family had mixed emotions in July 1976,” Bloch recalled to The AJN. “While we celebrated, with the rest of the Jewish world … we mourned Dora’s murder.”
The Melbourne barrister, son of late communal leader Arnold Bloch, first met his great-aunt when he travelled to Israel in 1969 and remembered “a refined, cultured and hospitable lady who welcomed my family to her home with a warmth I still recall”.
“I later spent a year in yeshivah in 1974 and have many fond memories of her as she regularly hosted me for kiddush on Shabbat,” he said.
Bloch also paid tribute to his Israeli cousin Ilan Hartuv, Israel’s ambassador to Oceania in the 1990s, who visited Melbourne in 1992 for a family gathering.
He told Bloch about another hostage at Entebbe, Holocaust survivor Yitzchak David, whose plucky harassment of the terrorists during the Israeli raid helped commandos and may have prevented further killings.
Bloch said David’s heroism has been underrated. “While the Jewish world rightly marvelled at the daring rescue by the IDF, it has always pained me that an unsung hero of Entebbe has never been properly recognised.
“The connection I see between the events of July 1976 and the threats faced by Israel today, is that Israel proved herself capable of carrying out extra-territorial operations when the safety of her citizens required it.”
Further coverage in this week’s AJN.
PETER KOHN
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