What Entebbe Still Says About Zionism

Fifty years after Entebbe, we should remember not only what happened there, but why it still matters.

In July 1976, Palestinian terrorists from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, assisted by two German ‘Nazis’, hijacked Air France Flight 139 after take-off from Athens and diverted it to Uganda. At Entebbe Airport, Jewish and Israeli passengers were separated from the others.

For Jews, the symbolism was unmistakable.

Only 31 years had passed since Auschwitz, Treblinka and Bergen-Belsen and the liberation of other death camps. Once again, German ‘Nazis’ were participating in the selection of Jews. Once again, Jews found themselves singled out because they were Jews.

This time, however, history unfolded differently.

There was a State of Israel.

Israeli aircraft flew thousands of kilometres, Israeli soldiers stormed the terminal, and Jewish hostages were rescued by a Jewish state acting on behalf of Jewish lives.

Entebbe remains perhaps the clearest and most powerful answer ever given to the question of why Zionism exists.

It is against that historical backdrop that many Jews listened with disgust, but no surprise, to the testimony of Sarah Schwartz from the extreme left Jewish Council of Australia (JCA) before the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion. Schwartz argued that conflating Jewish identity with Israel or Zionism contributes to antisemitism and that Jews should not be treated as representatives of the Israeli state.

Technically, she is correct that individual Jews should not be held responsible for decisions made by Israeli governments, much like blaming an Iranian for the actions of the IRGC or blaming a Russian for the actions of Putin. Then why does she sit comfortably with those who state that Jews should be made to feel uncomfortable, and how does she justify advancing the same narrative as antisemites who present themselves as anti-Zionists? They did not chant “F*** the Zionists” or “Gas the Zionists” on the steps of the Sydney Opera House, nor did they blame Zionists for the firebombing of the Burgertory store in Melbourne. As repugnant and hateful as those claims were, it was the ‘Jews’ they targeted in their chants.

Were any of the Bondi Beach victims asked whether they were “just Jews” or Zionists as well before they were shot? No, they were not. Nor were any of the victims and hostages of the October 7 atrocities asked whether they were Zionists or what side of politics they followed.

Schwartz complained of being called a kapo. That is an ugly and historically loaded insult, but if one is looking for a moral comparison, the behaviour of the JCA is far worse. Representing approximately 1% of Australian Jewry, it speaks for a tiny minority while claiming to define what Jewish safety and Jewish identity should mean for everyone else. Kapos, however reprehensible, can at least be understood as doing what they could to save their own lives. What is Schwartz’s excuse? Her life is not in danger. Yet her rhetoric helps normalise and inflame ideas that endanger the safety of Jews in Australia.

Her testimony appeared to invite Australians to separate Jewish identity from Zionism itself, as though Jewish attachment to Israel were a recent political development rather than an ancient and defining feature of Jewish civilisation. This distinction misunderstands both Judaism and Jewish history.

Jerusalem is not a creation of modern nationalism.

Jerusalem appears hundreds of times throughout the Hebrew Bible and repeatedly in the New Testament. For two thousand years, Jews prayed facing Jerusalem. At Passover and Yom Kippur, Jews ended their prayers with the words, “Next year in Jerusalem.” Jewish weddings conclude with the breaking of a glass in remembrance of the destruction of Jerusalem. Moreover, it was Hatikvah, or ‘The Hope’ which later became Israel’s national anthem that was sung by the final survivors on liberation from the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen in Germany on April 15, 1945 references Jerusalem. The key line is:

“Od lo avdah tikvateinu,
Hatikvah bat shnot alpayim,
Lihyot am chofshi b’artzeinu,
Eretz Tzion v’Yerushalayim.”

Which translates approximately as:

“Our hope is not yet lost,
The hope of two thousand years,
To be a free people in our land,
The land of Zion and Jerusalem.”

Archaeology tells the same story that Jewish memory preserved: Jewish kingdoms, Jewish temples, and Jewish civilisation existed and continued to be discovered in the land long before the modern conflict.

Zionism did not invent Jewish connection to Israel.

It politicised and institutionalised a connection that had already existed for millennia.

Jewish communities have always contained political and theological diversity. Attempts to portray Zionism as somehow external to Jewish identity sit uneasily with the beliefs and experiences of most Jews worldwide.

Entebbe demonstrates why.

The hostages were rescued because there was an Israel.

Without Israel, there would have been no rescue force crossing continents to save Jewish lives. There would have been no government whose first instinct was that Jews anywhere in the world were its responsibility. It follows the Hebrew premise of  “Kol Yisrael arevim zeh la-zeh” – all the people of Israel are responsible for one another.

That reality explains why many Jews see anti-Zionism not merely as opposition to a government or policy, but as opposition to the principle that Jews, uniquely among the world’s peoples, should be denied national self-determination in their ancestral homeland.

There is another uncomfortable question as well.

How would parts of today’s activist movements have responded to Entebbe had it happened in 2026 rather than 1976?

Would an Israeli military operation on African soil be described as a violation of sovereignty? Would accusations of colonialism, occupation, or apartheid have followed? Would the language of genocide have been deployed against the rescuers rather than the hijackers?

Probably. The political climate of the past three years explains why many believe it would. Penny Wong would most certainly have condemned Israel and called in Ambassador Newman for a dressing-down. Schwartz would likely have joined such calls.

That suspicion is not born from theory.

It is born from hearing the aftermath of October 7 described as resistance, hearing Jewish self-defence described as colonialism, and hearing the world’s only Jewish state described as uniquely illegitimate.

Entebbe is therefore not merely a military anniversary.

It is a reminder of the difference between Jewish sovereignty and Jewish dependence.

The hostages survived because there was a Jewish state willing and able to save them.

For many Jews, that is not an argument about politics.

It is an argument about history.

And history has given Jews very good reasons to take that distinction seriously.