40 years ago today
It's hard to believe that it was 40 years ago today that Sabena 571 was hijacked on its way from Vienna to Tel Aviv (Hat Tip: MFS - The Other News). Within ten minutes of boarding the plane, the squad of elite commandos managed to kill the two male terrorists, arrest the two female terrorists, and neutralize the threat to the passengers. Nearly all civilians on board were unharmed, except for three, one of whom later died from her injuries. Among the commandos were Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu–both of whom eventually became Israeli prime ministers.On a personal note, I flew Sabena 571 to Israel six weeks later on a summer tour for teenagers. In retrospect, I'm amazed that my parents let me do it (or maybe they didn't realize which flight it was).
The surviving female terrorists were sentenced to life in Israeli prison, but were later released in the prisoner exchange deal following the 1982 Lebanon War.
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The same airplane that was victim to the hijacking was flown for an additional five years before being sold to the Israeli Air Force (IAF). The IAF ended up using it to carry out spy missions.
Read the whole thing.
Yes, that's Bibi shaking hands with then-President Zalman Shazar.
Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, hijacking, Palestinian terrorism
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:08 PM
2 Comments:
Do you remember the DC-10 flight that took off out of Chicago, went vertical, flipped over to the side, and crashed? It was on a Friday at about 5pm. And the reason I know that is because I was on that exact flight (may not have been the same plane) one week before. The circles of life are really amazing. Life is a narrow bridge and the most important thing is not to be afraid...
So glad to see the commandos reassembling.
Were that to happen today, the Belgian government would be negotiating with Hamas over how much cash they'd take to murder all the Jews on board.
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