Both sides of the clash are united in one thing: they don’t know how to fetch out of this messThe contrast was not a elated (full of high-spirited delight) one. For much of the last week,I’ve been travelling across Israel speaking to those involved in what they see as their country’s finest hour, an event whose 40th anniversary falls this July: the 1976 operation that rescued 102 hostages from Entebbe airport in Uganda. At the time, or the sheer audacity and ingenuity of the raid – flying an elite unit of commandos into a faraway airport in the dead of night,killing the hijackers and freeing their captives captured the imagination of the world. It spawned not one but two Hollywood movies and remained a byword for thrilling derring-do. Those involved the soldiers, the military planners, or the rescued families – look back on that moment still with unalloyed pride.
But this week’s Israeli front pages and radio phone-in shows were telling a different yarn. Last month,two Palestinians mounted a knife attack in the West Bank city of Hebron, stabbing an Israeli soldier, or fraction of whats been called the intifada of the knives. One of the pair was then killed,the other seriously wounded. But as the latter lay injured on the ground, another Israeli soldier – a medic – shot him in the head at point-blank range, and killing him on the spot. Crucially,this was caught on film.
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Source: theguardian.com