Entebbe: A Defining Moment in the War on Terrorism: The Jonathan Netanyahu Story

Rating:
Summary: Great book!
Review: I have an interest in hostage-rescue/counter-terror operations, and so when I saw "Yoni's Last Battle" (the previous edition of this book) at the local library, I decided to get it out. I enjoyed it so much, that I decided to order this more recent copy ("Entebbe"). The book goes into a lot of detail about the operation; but Iddo also puts a human face on the commander, his brother, Yoni. It is also quite interesting to see how Yoni related to his men; he was the ideal officer.

Iddo takes care to write accurately, noting his sources (and the reasons for choosing them) whenever there is a contradiction in different versions of the event. Iddo was once a member of Sayeret Matkal, so the men he interviewed, who were involved in the mission, would have felt more comfortable talking with him than with someone else.

Additionally, the diagrams in the book are helpful in piecing together what happened during the takedown.

I highly recommend this for anyone considering joining the service!


Rating:
Summary: Good Narrative, Good Author, But the Book Binder.......
Review: Iddo Netanyahu states he himself was once a reserve member of the unit that performed the daring rescue in Entebbe and that, combined with the fact that his brother Benjamin was once a member as well and that it was his other brother Jonathan ("Yoni") who led the unit to victory in this mission lends special credibility to this narrative. This book is readable and informative. The author states he took a lot of the information from taped interviews with members of the unit who performed the raid. I have only one complaint that causes me to drop one star and it has nothing at all to do with the author: the book binder/printer/whatever was a little "off" unless I'm just missing something about the latest trends in book printing. To explain, the pages are all different widths so that one edge of the book (where you'd normally thumb through) presents a jagged edge (which is impossible to thumb through). Never seen that happen before. Maybe mine was just a fluke. I would still heavily recommend the book to anyone interested in the raid.

Rating:
Summary: Hit and miss
Review: The book is interesting and fairly well done, but it suffers from both too much detail (seemingly interminable lists of exactly who was at particular meetings) and then not enough (the author says that Isreali soldiers had been stationed in Uganda in the years before the raid but doens't fully explain why; there are many other examples of times I wanted more context) In addition, although some doors were certainly opened to the author because he is the brother of Jonathan Netanyahu, as a reader, it is more difficult to accept some of the flowery compliments and accolades heaped on the commander when they are being filtered (or not) through a sibling. In summary, it is a highly personal and fairly readable take on the events, but not the definitive story.

Rating:
Summary: Tendentious and misleading
Review: This is a totally tendentious version of what happened at Entebbe, at odds with the official IDF history written by Avigdor Shahan (Operation Yonatan, formerl Thunderball) and the autobiography of the Sayeret Matkal commander around whom the operation was built, Muki Betser. His book, Secret Soldier: The Autobiography of Israel's Greatest Commando, is available at Amazon.