Israel Congratulates West Germany for Freeing Hostages from Terrorists

Premier Menachem Begin and Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan cabled congratulations to West German leaders today for the successful commando raid last night that freed 86 hostages aboard a hijacked Lufthansa jet at Mogadishu Airport in Somalia and ended the five-day, 6000-mile terrorist episode. Three of the four hijackers, two of them Palestinian terrorists, were killed and a fourth was wounded.

Begin’s message, addressed to Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, called the action “indeed a salvation in which all free men rejoice.” Dayan, in a cable to Bonn Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, said “The courageous rescue action will convince the world to take the necessary measures to root out terrorism everywhere”.

Inevitably, Israelis were comparing West Germany’s refusal to accede to terrorist demands after their plane was hijacked last Thursday at palma, Majorca and last night’s rescue of the hostages to their own famous exploit at Entebbe Airport in Uganda on the night of July 3-4, 1976. Many here claimed that Israel set the example for the West German operation when it rescued its own hostages from a hijacked Air France jet under the guns of a hostile Ugandan army.

There were many similarities between the Entebbe and Somalia operations which stemmed from West Germany’s and Israel’s implacable determination never to give in to terrorist demands. The group that hijacked the Lufthansa jet called itself the “Organization of Struggle Against World Imperialism” and listed West Germany and Israel as its primary enemies.

HIJACKERS RAP ‘IMPERIALIST-ZIONIST’ ALLIANCE

The hijackers issued a statement in Arabic last Thursday charging that “while the Zionist regime embodies most genuinely a practical extension of Nazism, the Bonn government and its parliamentary deputies do their utmost to revive Nazism and expansionist racism in West Germany.”

The terrorists demanded the release of II members of the notorious Baader-Meinhoff group imprisoned in West Germany, two Palestinians jailed in Turkey and $15 million in ransom for their hostages. They said they sought “the release of our comrades detained in prisons of the imperialist-reactionary Zionist alliance.” The statement also said the hijack operation was code-named “Kfar Kaddoum,” the name of a recently established Israeli settlement on the West Bank.

The terrorists who hijacked the Air France Jet in 1976 were also a mixed gong of Palestinians and West Germans. They had demanded the release of Arab and other terrorists imprisoned in Israel, West Germany and other countries.

The west German commando group that carried out the rescue was formed in the aftermath of the slaying of.11 Israeli Olympic athletes by Arab terrorists in Munich in September, 1972 and was trained in counter-terrorist methods. Their operation was launched after the hijackers murdered the Lufthansa pilot yesterday, 37-year-old Capt. Juergen Schumann. They had threatened to blow up the plane with all aboard unless their demands were met by 10 a.m. this morning.

EXPECTED RESCUE ATTEMPT

Sources here said the hijackers apparently expected the Germans to mount a rescue attempt along the lines of the Entebbe action. They said that accounted for the fact that they forced the Lufthansa jet to fly from country to country in order to prevent German intelligence from gathering data necessary for the raid. The hijacked plane was flown 6000 miles from Majorca to Rome, to Larnaca Cyprus, to Dubai on the Persian Gulf, thence to Aden and finally Mogadishu. The Air France jet, hijacked at Athens over a year ago while enroute from Tel Aviv to New York, was landed at Tripoli, Libya before flying to Entebbe.

The West German operation was carried out over a greater distance than the Entebbe raid and the Germans did not have the advantage the Israelis had of knowing every inch of Entebbe Airport which Israeli technicians in fact had designed and built for Ugandan President Idi Amin.

While Somalia has cooperated with terrorists in the past and is in the Soviet orbit, political changes have taken place there recently and it has sought cooperation from Western countries in its war with Ethiopia. A statement issued in Bonn today praised the Somali government of President Mohammed Siad Barre and said that without its full agreement and help the rescue could not have been accomplished.

The Israel Broadcasting ‘Service inadvertently gave away the German plans before the Somalia operation was completed. By chance, it monitored communications between the German commando plane and its base in Germany. The journalistic “scoop” was broadcast on Israeli television last night. When the West German authorities learned of it they appealed to all news media to kill the story, which was done. Nevertheless, authorities here have warned Israeli news editors and reporters to be more careful in the future about publicizing such information.