Kenyan ‘shemeji’ saved Israelis during the raid on Entebbe

 

Air France hostages after being rescued from Entebbe Airport by Israel soldiers in 1970s.

Inset: Bruce Mckenzie with President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current tour of East Africa- Kenya included- was meant to coincide with the 40th anniversary of ‘Operation Entebbe’  which inspired many celluloid offerings, including Irvin Kershner’s, Raid on Entebbe, released in 1977 with the late Charles Bronson in lead role.

The film recounted the daredevilry of Israeli paramilitary and Mossad intelligence operatives in the ‘most daring rescue operation in history,’ but in which Netanyahu’s elder brother, Lt Col ‘Yoni’ Netanyahu, leader of the assault elite unit, was the only Israeli commando killed after he shelled two Ugandan soldiers manning the terminal at Entebbe.

Palestinian and (West) German terrorists had hijacked an Air France Flight 139 with 248 passengers, an Airbus from Athens, Greece, where porous security proved a walk-over that June 27, 1976. They demanded the release of 40 Palestinian prisoners in Israel and 13 others in France.  June 30 was the deadline for also paying $5 million (Sh500 million at current exchange rates) for the plane or else it would be blown up.

But why did the terrorists choose Entebbe Airport in Uganda? Well, Israel had attacked Egypt in 1973. Egypt was part of OAU (Organisation of African Unity, now the African Union or AU). In solidarity with Egypt, Africa, Kenya included, had severed diplomatic ties with Israel.

Ugandan tinpot dictator Idi Amin, chair of OAU at the time, even handed over the Israeli embassy to Palestine, hence the choice of Uganda. But since Kenya had severed her ties with Israel, why did the Kenyatta government allow the Israelis to use the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) and our officers?

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin called President Kenyatta I, flattering him how he was reading Kenyatta’s, Suffering Without Bitterness, for the fifth time. After his guttural laugh, and offers of more copies to Rabin, Kenyatta was reminded that Israel had trained Kenya Air Force pilots ‘illegally’ as it was behind British backs before Kenya was handed its independence by Britain. It was time he returned the favour despite the diplomatic tiff over Egypt.

Daniel Branch in his book, Kenya: Between Hope and Despair 1963-2011, tells us that Bruce McKenzie, at the time of the raid a former Minister for Agriculture and Animal Husbandry (having resigned 10 years earlier), was a spy for the Israeli Mossad, the British M16 and South Africa’s Bureau of State Security. 

McKenzie was instrumental in the Entebbe rescue mission which included chartering a plane at Wilson Airport for an alleged ‘aerial photographer’ for holiday brochures on Lake Victoria, but in actual fact, the two Mossad agents on board were taking pictures of Entebbe Airport, which had been built by Israeli construction firm, Solel Boneh, the same company behind Cooperative Bank’s headquarters or ‘Bell Bottom House’ along Haile Selassie Avenue.

Solel Boneh provided the airport blue prints to the Mossad and together with the photos and the info from the Kenyan soldier with a shemeji in Uganda, proved invaluable. 

But did you know ‘Operation Entebbe’ was greatly aided by Kenya’s sense of shemeji and kujuana?

In Gideon’s Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad published in 1999, Gordon Thomas informs us that the wife of one of the Kenyan soldiers escorting the Israeli Mossad operatives to Lake Victoria- from whose shores Entebbe Airport was proximate- knew a soldier who was married to her relatives. The soldier was thus ‘family’ by extension. The soldier was also among the men guarding the Israeli hostages. Using the Ugandan ‘relative’ as prop enabled the Kenyan to enter Entebbe and count the number of “tense and nervous” Ugandan soldiers, the terrorists and their positions.

It was this ‘insider’ knowledge that the commandos used when storming the holding area where only five of the seven minutes planned were used to eliminate the terrorists and free the 102 hostages!

Idi Amin never forgave McKenzie for his role in ’Operation Entebbe.’

Never mind it was McKenzie who had urged the British government to sell Amin security equipment, besides visiting Israel so that Ugandan soldiers could be trained by the Israeli army! Yet, when McKenzie went to pitch for an arms deal, Amin had him killed via a time bomb in his private plane as it flew over Ngong Hills in May 1978.

Meir Amit, global head of Mossad operations had a forest planted in Israel and named in McKenzie’s honour with his wife, Christina watering the seedlings.