https://www.breitbart.com/midd...hijack-dies-aged-95/

(AFP) Nice, FRANCE — A French pilot hailed for bravery during a hijacking drama targeting Jews on an Air France flight in 1976 has died aged 95, his son told AFP on Wednesday.
Michel Bacos (pictured above, right) died in the southern city of Nice, where he had been living since 2006, their son Eric told AFP.

Bacos was flying from Tel Aviv to Paris on June 27, 1976, when Palestinian and German radicals hijacked the aircraft, which was flown to Entebbe in Uganda.

The former French Resistance fighter earned France’s highest award, the Legion d’Honneur, for refusing to leave the plane and ordering his crew to remain with Jewish passengers who were separated from non-Jews.

“By courageously refusing to give into anti-Semitism and barbarism he honoured France,” Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi wrote in a tribute, hailing Bacos as “a hero” and sending condolences to his widow Rosemary and their three sons.

The hijackers boarded the flight during a stopover in Athens and demanded it change course.

After a refuelling stop in Moamer Kadhafi’s Libya, the plane headed to Uganda, then ruled by brutal dictator Idi Amin.

The hostages were freed after six days by Israeli commandos, who launched a raid that has since been re-told in multiple documentaries and films as one of the most audacious special-forces operations in history.

The commandos freed all but four of the 105 hostages, shooting dead all the kidnappers and several Ugandan troops in the process.

The only Israeli soldier killed in Operation Thunderbolt was Yonatan Netanyahu, the elder brother of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In an interview with Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper in 2016, Bacos said that as he flew the plane a German hijacker “sat behind me with his gun pointed at my head.

“Every time I tried to look in a different direction, he pressed the barrel of his gun against my neck.”

On arrival in Uganda, the hijackers separated passengers with Jewish names from the rest.

“I told the Palestinians and the Germans: ‘I’m responsible for all of the passengers and demand to be able to see all of them — be they Israeli or not — at any given moment.’ I insisted, and the Germans agreed.”

“As a former officer in the Free French Forces, I couldn’t imagine leaving behind not even a single passenger.”

Two weeks after the hijacking, Bacos was back at work and asked to fly to Israel “to see if I were still afraid.”

That flight, he said, “went without a hitch.”

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a hero indeed

BTW, just to clarify (from Wiki):

The terrorists freed the 148 non-Jewish passengers, and offered to release Bacos and his crew. They felt duty-bound to remain on the plane, and refused to leave. They stayed behind with the Jewish hostages

I've been to Entebbe many times (and in fact stay in Qaddafi's old place); the old terminal where the hostages stayed and the rescue took place is still there, by the UN compound. Still full of bullet holes, too.

The crew handled it well, and the resulting "raid on Entebbe remains one of the single greatest hostage rescue acts on record.

The last movie did an excellent job of portraying it, except that it left out the fact that for the rescue, hundreds more were killed in retaliation, in Uganda.

quote:

The former French Resistance fighter

This part stood out to me. Those PLO idiots didn't have any idea they were messing with a true badass when they boarded that plane (and apparently, didn't realize that a bunch of IDF badasses were prepared to fly thousands of miles to kill them and take their hostages back, either). I doubt there was much they could do to him that he hadn't already seen. And insisting on staying with the Israeli passengers when he had an opportunity to be freed with the rest is one of the most honorable things I've ever heard of someone doing.

Good post. Thanks.

I still regard the Entebbe Raid as perhaps the best Bicentennial gift we could have received -- A reminder from Israel that freedom is paid for with blood, and that we should remain ready to shed ours for our own liberty.

Thank you, too, Michel Bacos.

Michel Bacos efforts inscribed him. B"H.

quote:

By courageously refusing to give into anti-Semitism and barbarism he honoured France ...

Not just France.