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Today in history July 3–4, 1976 - Operation Entebbe

One of the boldest hostage rescue missions in modern history. Israel rescued 103 hostages held by terrorists in Uganda.

Here's what happened, and how Yonatan Netanyahu, PM Bibi Netanyahu’s @netanyahu brother - became a national hero. 🇮🇱 2/🦌
It started June 27th 1976.

The flight, which had originated in Tel Aviv, had a scheduled layover in Athens, Greece, before it was to continue to Paris, France.

Shortly after taking off from Athens, four of the new passengers hijacked the flight and demanded the release of hundreds of prisoners worldwide.

The hijackers – Wilfried Böse and Brigitte Kuhlmann of the German Baader-Meinhof militant group, and two "Palestinians" from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – The two groups formed an alliance in the mid-70's, with the goal of carrying out united attacks against Israeli and Western targets.

The two groups also shared tactics, resources and safe houses and worked together to plan and execute attacks.

They have directed the hijacked flight to Entebbe Airport in Uganda, where Ugandan soldiers, under the leadership of then-Ugandan President Idi Amin Dada, helped support the hijackers and trap the hostages.

The mullahs of Iran didn’t seize power alone. They used the gullibility of leftist revolutionaries to pave their way.

Chief among them was the Tudeh Party, Iran’s largest communist party, which openly supported Ayatollah Khomeini in the late 1970s. Tudeh hailed the Islamic Revolution as anti-imperialist and anti-Western, blindly ignoring the religious authoritarianism at its core.

At its peak, the Tudeh Party had over 100,000 members and sympathizers, including many in the universities, armed forces, and labor unions. But their alliance with the Islamists was suicidal.

By 1983, the regime had arrested virtually the entire Tudeh leadership. Over 10,000 party members were imprisoned, and confessions were extracted under torture. Many were forced to appear on state TV denouncing their own ideology.

Between 1981 and 1988, the Islamic Republic executed an estimated 4,500 to 5,000 leftists, secular activists, and political prisoners, many buried in unmarked graves like those at Khavaran cemetery.

The most notorious of these purges came during the 1988 prison massacre, when thousands of prisoners many with already served sentences, were executed in just a few months, following a fatwa by Khomeini himself.

And yet, today, U.S. college campuses are full of self-proclaimed communists and “anti-imperialist” activists who idolize regimes like Iran’s, simply because they oppose the West.

They shout slogans against capitalism while wearing Che shirts and waving "Palestinian" flags, utterly oblivious to the reality: had they lived under the Islamic Republic, they’d be tortured, silenced, or swinging from cranes.

The Islamic Republic is no workers’ paradise - it is a clerical autocracy that used, then slaughtered, its leftist allies.

That lesson is lost on the privileged Western radicals playing at revolution from the safety of their liberal arts campuses. Tudeh and Leftist Slogans (late 1970s–early 1980s):

"Bread, Freedom, and Equality"

"Long live the Iranian proletariat": or "Long live the working class of Iran".

"Workers of the world, unite!": (a classic communist slogan adopted by the Tudeh Party).

"Death to American Imperialism!"
(Used by both Islamists and communists - the overlap fooled many into thinking they were on the same side.)

"Unity between the working class and the clergy!"
(Promoted heavily by Tudeh to legitimize Khomeini’s leadership.)

"Long live the anti-imperialist struggle of the Islamic Revolution!"
(Used in party newspapers to frame the revolution as a people's movement.)

"Workers of Iran, unite under Imam Khomeini’s banner!"
(Yes, seriously. Some Tudeh factions said this openly.)

"Down with capitalism, down with feudalism, long live the revolution!"
(A classic Marxist line adapted for the Iranian context.)

"The Islamic Revolution is progressive and anti-colonial!"
(Tudeh Party’s official line until their purge.)

"The imperial system is the cause of all corruption / the Islamic Republic is the epitome of justice"

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Do these sound familiar to anyone?

The moments the wave of strikes began in Tehran, the capital of Iran. Bushehr, southern Iran.