RUTHFULLY YOURS

Dozens of books and movies have tried to capture the menace and the romance of the operation, most famously “Raid on Entebbe,” the 1977 TV movie starring Peter Finch and Charles Bronson. It’s no wonder. The event sports a colorful cast of heroes and villains. In “Operation Thunderbolt,” British historian Saul David relies on extensive interviews with the captors, kidnapped and rescuers to retell the story in a tick-tock trek from Tel Aviv bunkers to the airport in Entebbe. The effect is heart-racing.

The tale began when Air France announced that Flight 139, departing from Israel, would make an unscheduled layover in Athens. The news rattled 12-year-old passenger Olivier Cojot, who told his father, Michel: “If I were a terrorist I would get on at the stopover.” In 1976, there were roughly three plane hijackings each month. Even young Olivier knew that a flight carrying Israelis through Athens, an airport with lax security, presented a prime target.

Eight minutes after the plane resumed its journey, a man with a German accent announced that the flight was now under the control of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—a terrorist group so ruthless that many passengers “began ripping off their Jewish star necklaces.” The four hijackers, armed with pistols, grenades and explosives, diverted the plane to Benghazi, Libya, and, after refueling, onward to Entebbe.

ENLARGE

Only four years earlier, Uganda had been an ally of Israel; Idi Amin had even trained in an Israeli paratrooper course and sought out Israeli advisers and businessmen. But enraged that Israel had refused to sell him fighter jets, he flipped to the Communist bloc and began collaborating with the PLO to embarrass Israel on the international stage.

Once in Entebbe, the terrorists herded the 253 hostages into the airport’s old terminal. Joined by additional PFLP operatives and safeguarded by Ugandan troops, the terrorists issued their ultimatum: the release of dozens of hardened terrorists within 48 hours. Otherwise, they would repack the plane with the hostages and blow it up.

Israel scrambled to respond. To Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, a rescue mission thousands of miles away in hostile territory, with a dim sense of the number of guerrillas and the location of the hostages, seemed infeasible. Rabin likely would have dismissed the military option entirely were it not for his defense minister and chief rival, Shimon Peres. The ambitious future prime minister insisted that surrender would damage Israel’s long-term security. As the cabinet squabbled, the hostages were physically cramped and psychologically tormented. By day three, the kidnappers separated the Israeli passengers from the rest. “The feeling,” noted one Israeli hostage in his diary, “is like an execution.”

But thanks in part to Mr. Peres’s doggedness, Israel was able to exploit an unexpected reprieve. On the fifth day of the crisis, just as Rabin prepared to negotiate, the mercurial Amin announced that he had arranged for the release of 100 more non-Israeli hostages (48 non-Israeli hostages had been released on the third day) and a three-day extension of the deadline.

The move was a lucky break for Jerusalem. It won precious intelligence from the released hostages and time to flesh out rudimentary rescue plans conjured by another future prime minister, commando-extraordinaire Ehud Barak. Thanks to two other bits of luck—an Israeli company had built the airport terminal in Entebbe and retained the blueprints, and Kenyan intelligence, which hated Amin, offered to let Israeli planes refuel—Israel’s special forces were able to concoct a plan.

From there, Mr. David’s story rumbles to its epic finale. On day seven, four American-made Hercules C-130 transport planes ferried some 200 Israeli soldiers and several vehicles, including a mock presidential limousine complete with Ugandan flags, to the Entebbe airport. Just after the lead plane touched down, the limo, with mission commander Yoni Netanyahu inside, roared toward the old terminal, hoping to fool Ugandan soldiers accustomed to unexpected visits from Amin. As it turned toward the terminal, two Ugandan sentries materialized in the distance. One fled, but the other aimed his rifle at them. “Leave him, Yoni,” Netanyahu’s deputy urged, but Netanyahu took him out, sacrificing the plan’s element of surprise. As the Israeli team unloaded in front of the terminal, Netanyahu momentarily paused in open ground. A Ugandan soldier in the airport control tower fired, striking the commander. As Akiva Laxer played cards with another hostage, he heard gunfire from outside.

The operation had its flaws. The paratroopers accidentally killed a young Jewish hostage, mistaking him for a guerrilla. By the time Netanyahu’s comrades had put their commander on the back of a Hercules, his heart had stopped, but his legend was cemented—one that would inspire generations of Israelis, including his younger brother, current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Even with these losses, it was only 51 minutes from the beginning of the operation that the last hostage-ferrying plane was in the air.

Mr. David’s account of Operation Thunderbolt is thrilling, but in considering Entebbe’s political legacy he veers off course. He wonders whether the operation made “peace with the Palestinian Arabs less likely” by giving the Israelis too much confidence in their military prowess. The opposite is true: Giving into the terrorists’ demands would have only undermined peace. Terror groups and their allies thrive on victory, as subsequent prisoner swaps have brutally borne out.

Mr. Hirsch is a student at Yale Law School and a visiting fellow at the Columbia Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies.