Sunday 14 February 2016

They Were Also at Entebbe

In memory of the civilian hostages murdered at Entebbe, July 1976.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of Operation Entebbe, the counter-terrorist hostage-rescue mission conducted by commandos of the Israel Defense Forces  at Entebbe Airport in Uganda on 4 July 1976.

It is has been increasingly argued in recent years that the memory of Lieutenant Colonel Yonatan Netanyahu, elder brother of the current Israeli Prime Minister, who was kiled by a Ugandan sniper while leading the raid,  has been magnified and mythologised at the expense of both his colleagues and the four civilians who were also killed or died as a result of the operation.

The piece below is my tribute to them.

  

A Prayer for Rebirth at Entebbe

We were there, too.

Hear us!

 

Don’t let myth’s weight void

us, time’s passage oust us,

fine words erase us.

This is our wish.

 

Honour us like those

always feted by flags,

flowers, burnished stones.

 

Do not expunge us,

condemn us to plunge

further, still further

in an ever-falling

spiral inside oblivion’s

unending deep.

This is our plea.

 

Heed us now as you

dismissed us then, petty

people in a giant plan.

 

Both alone and as one,

recall our four lives that

were quite forgot as time

fashioned false truth, making

others larger, us smaller,

in a wrong fixed still deeper

as the decades ran.

 

We were there, too.

Renew us!

© Natalie Wood (14 February 2016)

1 comment:

Natalie Wood said...

"We were there, too. Renew us!"