Grandma's army

The entire world has changed dramatically since the 1970’s – a decade which is, for Israel, one of the most traumatic. The Yom Kippur War in 1973 left the country devastated by the loss of 2,600 soldiers. In spite of the astonishing victory against all odds, the country lost faith in its leadership and, with it, a sense of security. [That is perhaps one of the reasons that, in 1977, a right-winged government defeated the impregnable Labour Party for the first time]. Although terrorism has been an ongoing factor since before Israel existed, the 70’s was a nightmare. Palestinian terrorists were sowing terror against Israelis, both on Israeli soil and around the world. The most glaring example was the terrorist attack on the Israeli team at the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972, in which eleven members of the team were murdered. In the same year, Ben Gurion Airport became a slaughterhouse, when three Japanese men - who had been recruited by the “Popular Front for the Liberation ...

Perhaps the most daring rescue ever attempted was the Entebbe mission carried out in 1976 in Uganda, 4,000 kms. from Israel. 98 Jewish and Israeli hostages were rescued by an Israeli commando squad, and brought back to Israel. Tragically, apart from the three hostages who never made it back, was the leader and hero of the mission IDF officer Yonatan Netanyahu, brother of the present Prime Minister. Another daring mission took place very recently when the said Prime Minister exposed documents containing over 1,000 kilograms of nuclear information - captured by Israeli commandos - from the most secret and well fortified archives in Iran.   S peaking of Iran – the world’s most dangerous terrorist power - another very different rescue was carried out from there by Israelis in 1979. In the Bible, a man named Noah built an ark to save two animals of every species during a major flood that engulfed the planet. A more recent tale centres on a mission to reintro...