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:
"We were there, too. Renew us!"
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