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

On July 4, 1976, more than a hundred hostages, held at gunpoint in Entebbe, Uganda, were freed in a spectacular rescue operation and flown to safety in Israel, over 2000 miles away. Their captors were Arab and German terrorists, aided by the Ugandan army; their liberators were members of Israel's elite commando unit, Sayeret Matkal, simply known as "the Unit." Lt.-Col. Yoni (Jonathan) Netanyahu, the Unit's commander, earned world-wide fame in the wake of the operation's stunning success. He was the only Israeli soldier killed in the Entebbe raid.

As a brother of the rescue force's commander, and himself a member of the Unit, Iddo Netanyahu had ready access to the participants in the raid. He was able to obtain detailed accounts from the men of the Unit who, for the first time, described the planning and preparations for the mission and its near-perfect execution. What emerged from their accounts is a powerful and stirring story of how the daring undertaking was accomplished after only 48 hours of frantic preparations.

Yoni's Last Battle portrays the men who carried out an incredibly hazardous operation in far-away Africa. Above all, it depicts the heroic - and tragic - figure of their commander, Yoni.

Iddo Netanyahu was born in Jerusalem, Israel. After graduating from high school in the United States, where he spent part of his childhood, he returned to Israel. There he enlisted in the elite commando unit that his older brother Jonathan was to lead to Entebbe in 1976. It was during his studies at The Hebrew University School of Medicine that Netanyahu began his career as an author of short stories, novels and political articles. He divides his time between writing and working as a physician. Netanyahu lives in Jerusalem with his wife and two children.