An Israeli El-Al jet was hijacked by Palestinians and flown to the Ugandan city of Entebbe, just as in 1976, and the Israeli Defense Force quickly moved into action to release the hostages on the plane. But this time it was no more Mr. Nice Guy.
First of all the Israelis sent thousands of conscript soldiers to surround Entebbe, and then began to shell the entire city indiscriminately, killing hundreds of civilians. They then sent in jets to bomb hospitals and schools and houses, killing many more innocent people, before sending tanks and soldiers in on the ground.
But the locals, incensed by this mass-murder, decided to stop them entering the city, and began fighting the Israelis in the streets and houses with the limited weapons they had. Meanwhile, the original aim of the mission - to capture the Palestinian terrorists and free the Israeli hostages - was all but forgotten, as air strikes and shells killed more and more civilians, including many children.
When the IDF commander, Colonel Moshe Dayan, was asked why the Israelis were doing such things to innocent civilians, he said: 'The Ugandans have harbored the terrorists, and allowed them to attack the people of Israel by letting the jet land. We cannot tolerate this, and will only stop when the hijackers either surrender or are dead. We regret the civilian deaths, but if the terrorists stay inside a city then of course we can only get at them by blasting anything that moves in that city.'
And when it was pointed out that the Israelis themselves had called the hijackers murdurers and gangsters, and it was hardly the fault of the civilians if they couldn't do anything about such violent armed criminals, the Colonel just shrugged.
'Do you think this is still 1976? We copy the Americans in Iraq - a few soldiers invaded Kuwait, and the US wiped out most of the cities and infrastructure of Iraq in return, killing thousands of civilians. Well, at least it got rid of Saddam Hussein and Arab terrorists - oops, it didn't.'
It was unlikely that many of the Israeli hostages would survive such a massive over-reaction, and even if they did then many more would die in retaliatory attacks in the Middle East. But Colonel Dayan was unrepentant. 'The more Arabs we kill, the more money America sends us. The more money America sends us, the more Arabs we kill. Told you this ain't 1976, we've learnt to stop being heroes and to just act like Nazis! Lucky we never take on any real soldiers though, like the Germans or the British, think we'll just carry on airstriking civilians. Shalom!'
Shares in Israel Plc fell to an all-time low today, worldwide disgust was up to a new high, as were sales in bandages and children's coffins in Gaza City.
