Yoni's Last Battle: The Rescue at Entebbe, 1976

Rating:
Summary: Heroic Man and Action, Flawed Writing
Review: Iddo Netanyahu's work about his brother's command of the heroic hostage rescue from the airport at Entebbe in 1976 is carried by the courage of the particpants, not his writing. A soldier himself, he was able to get access to the participants to create this solid record of the action. He falters, however, in communicating beyond the details of the event. The military and political characters are barely-drawn and confusing (he expects that the reader is mostly familiar with Israel and Israeli political figures). The lead-up fails to convey the sense of urgency. And the drama of the mission itself is masked by the attempt to convey the actions of each person, resulting in a lack of clarity. I believe that these problems are a result of two main factors: 1) The Author and the particpants that he interviewed likely spoke in the same detailed manner, like all after-action reports. It was difficult for him to break out of the particular details to balance the needs of the narrative. 2) The original was written in Hebrew, and some of the texture of the language is always lost in translation. Overall, a good book about a brilliant, heroic man. The facts are here, perhaps a more detailed, personal biography would have been better.

Rating:
Summary: Seriously flawed book
Review: This book, "Yoni's Last Battle - The Resuce at Entebbe, 1976" is more of a biographic account of Yoni (Jonathan) Netanyahu's planning of the rescue mission than it is the story of the actual rescue itself. The main focus of this book is the days Yoni spent planning the rescue mission and all with which he had to deal from other individuals within the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).

Far more than half of this book is dedicated just to the planning of the rescue mission. The story begins strongly with the author setting up the hijacking, the composition of the IDF, and the major players involved in the operation. From there, however, the book quickly falls in to a long, drawn out, and unnecessary explanation of how Yoni had to fight to get specific soldiers he wanted for the operation. In between some of the chapters are rather unremarkable stories of Yoni's military service designed to portray him as a extraordinary leader.

The part of the book focusing on the actual rescue is thin on detail. Although the reader has a sense of the events surrounding Entebbe, the writing is such that there is no sence of melodrama about such a dangerous mission. There is no sense urgency while the author describes the mission's planning and little mention of what was transpiring between the Israeli Government and the hijackers prior to the rescue. Additionally, due to the fact that were so many individuals named in the book, it was very difficult to keep track of all of them and why they were included.

Overall, the pace of the book was slow and cumbersome. Often times, I would stop reading simply because the book was not moving forward. Many times I considered jumping forward or skipping parts of the book in order to finish it. The book reads more like a eulogy from a man to his fallen brother than an account of a daring rescue mission. Seeing that the book was originally written in Hebrew, it is possible that its intended audience was Israel or those individuals who were familiar with Yoni.