Uganda unveils Yonatan Netanyahu statue at Entebbe Airport memorial

Uganda unveiled a statue of Yonatan Netanyahu at the Old Entebbe Terminal, honoring the Israeli commando commander killed in the 1976 rescue of 102 hostages. The memorial, presented by Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, tied the event to a broader message of renewed Uganda-Israel relations, security partnership and diplomatic reconciliation.

Operation Entebbe took place in July 1976 at Uganda’s Entebbe Airport after a hijacked Air France flight was diverted there. Israeli commandos stormed the terminal and freed 102 hostages in about 90 minutes. Netanyahu, known as Yoni, was the only Israeli soldier killed in the raid; he was 30 years old.

The new monument places Netanyahu at the center of a political gesture as much as a historical commemoration. Kainerugaba, Uganda’s chief of defence forces, framed the unveiling as recognition of Netanyahu’s courage and selfless service, language that also signaled a deliberate warming of ties between Kampala and Jerusalem. The ceremony at the historic airport terminal used one of the most famous hostage-rescue operations in modern history to underline that shift.

The decision also carries an unmistakable diplomatic edge. Uganda has chosen to memorialize a foreign military figure on the very site of the raid, turning a place once associated with hijacking and armed intervention into a public symbol of reconciliation. That symbolism is sharpened by the passage of time: the unveiling came almost exactly 50 years after the Entebbe operation brought global attention to the airport and to Netanyahu’s role in it.

Yonatan Netanyahu was the elder brother of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and his burial at Mount Herzl Military Cemetery in Jerusalem has long anchored his place in Israeli national memory. The statue in Uganda extends that memory beyond Israel, marking the Entebbe raid not only as a defining episode in Israeli military history but also as a shared reference point in Uganda’s present-day diplomacy.