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The Times of London Corrects Entebbe Hostage Error

In its obituary for Shimon Peres, The Times of London included the following paragraph in reference to the 1976 Entebbe operation: However, the 105 passengers held hostage were not all Israeli. They also…

Simon Plosker
September 29, 2016
12:00 am

Reading time: < 1 minutes

In its obituary for Shimon Peres, The Times of London included the following paragraph in reference to the 1976 Entebbe operation:

However, the 105 passengers held hostage were not all Israeli. They also included Jews from other countries as well.

Why is this important? Aside from the obvious factual inaccuracy, it fails to account for the inherent anti-Semitism of the hijackers who deliberately held Jews and not only Israelis.

We contacted The Times and the sentence now reads:

They flew it to Entebbe airport in Idi Amin’s Uganda, released all but the 105 Jewish passengers and crew members, and threatened to kill them unless Israel freed 40 Palestinian prisoners.

While it is still lacks detail, it is nonetheless an improvement over the original.

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Tags: distorted facts, Entebbe, Shimon Peres, success, The Times of London

Simon Plosker

With over two decades of experience in various non-governmental organizations in the UK and Israel, Simon Plosker returned to HonestReporting in October 2022 as Editorial Director having previously been part of the organization’s management team from 2005 to 2020. Prior to his first spell at HonestReporting, Simon worked in Israel for NGO Monitor, BICOM, and served for a short period in the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit. He was Managing Editor of the Geneva-based NGO United Nations Watch for two years before moving back to the frontline defending Israel from media bias. Simon has a BSoc.Sc in International Studies and Political Science from the University of Birmingham and an MSc in History of International Relations from the London School of Economics. He immigrated to Israel in 2001 from London.

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