On the 50th anniversary of Operation Entebbe, the Israel State Archive has released recordings of phone calls held in the early hours of the 1976 crisis by Eli Mizrahi, chief of staff to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The calls — to Rabin's home, Foreign Minister Yigal Allon, and other officials — capture real-time deliberations and Israeli frustration with French reluctance to protect the hostages. The release was reported by Ariel Kahana (Israel Hayom).
Fifty years after the hostage crisis that led to Operation Entebbe, the Israel State Archive has released recordings of phone calls from the early hours of the 1976 ordeal — not the cabinet protocols published earlier today (The Zioneer, 09:26), but the raw, real-time consultations of Eli Mizrahi, chief of staff to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
As reported by Ariel Kahana (Israel Hayom), the recordings capture Mizrahi speaking with Rabin at his home (with his wife Leah audible in the background), Foreign Minister Yigal Allon, and Director-General of the Foreign Ministry Shlomo Avineri. The calls reveal Israeli leaders' frustration with what they saw as French reluctance to protect the hostages — a concern that, according to earlier archival releases (The Zioneer, Fri 06:01 Jerusalem), drove Israel's effort to shift responsibility to France and, ultimately, to choose a military rescue over negotiation.
The new audio adds granular texture to the thread we have tracked all morning. Earlier today, the archive released full cabinet protocols (The Zioneer, 09:26), including the passenger manifest and Shimon Peres' dramatic appeal on operational risks. Those protocols built on an initial trove of thousands of documents, notes, and intelligence assessments (The Zioneer, Fri 06:01 Jerusalem) that detailed the cabinet's internal drama and the intelligence race to gather information on Uganda. That first release, reported by Times of Israel, showed the shift from diplomatic efforts to the high-risk raid.
It remains unclear whether additional operational records — such as military planning logs or communications from the rescue itself — remain classified.
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Source and signal
- Internal intake