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Self Portrait of a Hero:
The Letters of Jonathan Netanyahu
Even as a young student, Netanyahu had all the qualities of a leader who had committed his life to his country and the cause of his people. His self belief was such that very early on he wrote, "My life will be complete not because of others, but because of myself`85..there is no reason why the tower that I build around myself`85. Should not stand forever." Had he not been a soldier, he would have been a scholar studying and perhaps teaching philosophy. Never succumbing to temptations, he enlisted as a soldier in the Israeli army and barring occasional forays in the world of academics, remained a dedicated soldier. Being good at whatever he did, he excelled as a paratrooper, infantry and armoured officer to finally excel as a leader of the special task force. In fact, he epitomises the qualities that have helped Israel survive in an extremely hostile environment.
Lamenting the attitude of the enemy states, he writes that he experiences a "mood of sadness, anger and helplessness against a primitive foe`85 whose behaviour is guided not by logic or reason but by the dark whims and emotions of a bloodthirsty barbarian." It was this challenge that kept him in the army that offered him a life that probably wrecked his marriage. Ironically, a few days before that fateful flight to Entebbe, he mentioned a line from a play where a character caught in the whirlwind of life says, "Stop the world, I want to get off." In Entebbe, the world stopped and he got off, being the first to go in the attack and the first to be hit!
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LONG before one finishes
reading the letters, their author emerges as a very passionate
patriot, gifted not only with the lucidity of expression but also the
intensity of a troubled soul. Jonathan Netanyahu was the leader of the
Israeli commando force that raided the Entebbe airport in Uganda to
rescue over 106 Israeli hostages from the clutches of terrorists
supported by the army of Uganda’s Idi Amin, in 1976. A careful
reading of the book would tell that it is as much about the author as
about his country and the times he lived.
In his personal life, he
was deeply devoted to his family, writing regular letters to his
parents and brothers, often from the cramped quarters of a pup tent
during a sand storm or while undertaking taking a bumpy ride in
military vehicles. What stands out is his knack of building the
confidence of his younger brothers, never stingy in praise and never
indulging in his own, considerable achievements. He does not make much
of his exceptionally high score at the Officers Training course and
very casually slips in the information about his bullet injury during
the 1967 war! Paradoxically, one of the refrains of his letters has
been the doubt about himself being in the army all his life and yet
the never-ending threats to his country force him again and again to
undertake one mission more arduous than the other.