ZOHRAN MAMDANI CRUSHED – IT’S PERMANENT - VICTORY FOR AMERICA
Uganda Honors Yoni Netanyahu at Entebbe—But the Mamdani Connection Is More Symbolic Than Direct
Fifty years after one of the most famous hostage-rescue operations in modern history, Uganda has put a bronze statue of the Israeli officer who led it at the place where he died.
The monument to Lt. Col. Yonatan "Yoni" Netanyahu was unveiled Aug. 1 outside the old terminal at Entebbe International Airport, the site of the 1976 Israeli raid that freed more than 100 hostages from a hijacked Air France flight.
The decision is striking because Uganda in 1976 was ruled by Idi Amin, whose government supported the hijackers and whose soldiers fought the Israeli commandos during the rescue.
It is also being pulled into a much newer political argument—one involving New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and has become one of the most prominent American critics of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Yoni Netanyahu's younger brother.
That connection makes for an irresistible political contrast.
But it is important to separate the monument itself from the claims being built around it.
Uganda's military did unveil the statue. Mamdani does retain Ugandan citizenship. He has repeatedly condemned Benjamin Netanyahu over the Gaza war. His father, Columbia University scholar Mahmood Mamdani, has written a controversial reinterpretation of Idi Amin's rise and Uganda's relationship with Israel.
What has not been established is that Zohran Mamdani had anything to do with the monument, opposed it, commented on it, or was personally embarrassed by Uganda's decision to honor Yoni Netanyahu.
That part is political interpretation, not a documented event.
The history behind the statue is more consequential than the social-media irony.
Air France Flight 139 was hijacked on June 27, 1976, after leaving Athens on a trip from Tel Aviv to Paris. The hijackers included Palestinian militants and members of the German Revolutionary Cells.
The aircraft was diverted first to Benghazi, Libya, and then to Entebbe, where the hijackers were supported by forces loyal to Amin.
After many non-Israeli passengers were released, 106 hostages remained at the airport.
Israel responded with a long-range commando operation during the night of July 3-4.
Israeli forces flew thousands of miles to Uganda, stormed the terminal and rescued 102 of the 106 hostages who remained in Entebbe.
Three hostages were killed during the rescue. A fourth, Dora Bloch, had previously been taken to a Kampala hospital after becoming ill and was later killed by Ugandan authorities.
Yoni Netanyahu, who commanded the principal assault force, was the only Israeli military fatality in the operation.
The mission became known internationally as the Entebbe raid or Operation Thunderbolt and was later renamed Operation Yonatan in his memory.
That history explains why a statue of Netanyahu at the old terminal carries weight far beyond the man himself.
For Israel, Entebbe became a national symbol of military reach, intelligence preparation and the willingness to use force to recover hostages.
For Uganda, the site carries a more complicated legacy.
Amin's government had once maintained close ties with Israel. Israeli advisers and military cooperation played a role in Uganda before Amin later broke with Israel and moved toward Libya and the Palestinian cause.
By the time of the hijacking, the relationship had reversed dramatically. Amin publicly associated himself with the hostage crisis, and Ugandan troops resisted the Israeli force during the raid.
Uganda today is governed by a very different political order and has restored relations with Israel.
The statue was commissioned by Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, Uganda's chief of defense forces and the son of President Yoweri Museveni.
At the unveiling, Kainerugaba described Yoni Netanyahu's leadership and sacrifice as symbols of courage, duty and selfless service.
That makes the monument most directly a statement by Uganda's current military leadership about how it wants to remember Entebbe—and about the modern Uganda-Israel relationship.
The Mamdani angle begins with biography rather than Ugandan state policy.
Zohran Mamdani was born in Kampala in 1991. His family moved to South Africa when he was five and later settled in New York when he was seven.
He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2018 while retaining his Ugandan citizenship and was sworn in as mayor of New York City on Jan. 1, 2026.
His criticism of the Israeli government is well established.
During his mayoral campaign, Mamdani said he wanted Benjamin Netanyahu arrested if the Israeli prime minister came to New York, citing the International Criminal Court's warrant accusing Netanyahu of war crimes and crimes against humanity in connection with the Gaza war. Israel rejects the ICC's jurisdiction and denies the allegations.
That pledge ran into a basic legal problem.
The United States is not a party to the ICC, and New York City does not independently possess authority to execute an ICC warrant against a visiting foreign leader.
By July 2026, Mamdani acknowledged that the city's legal department had concluded he could not order such an arrest under existing law. He nevertheless continued to call Netanyahu a war criminal and urged the federal government to act on the ICC warrant.
That evolution matters because it shows the difference between Mamdani's political position and the legal power of the office he now holds.
The Entebbe statue does not alter either one.
It does, however, create an unusual historical juxtaposition.
The country of Mamdani's birth is now publicly honoring the brother of a leader Mamdani has condemned in exceptionally strong terms.
Critics of Mamdani seized on that contrast immediately.
Former New York Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a longtime critic of Mamdani's Israel positions, described the monument as a form of poetic justice and praised Yoni Netanyahu as a hero of the Jewish people.
Others on social media treated the statue as a rebuke to the mayor.
But those reactions say more about New York and Israeli politics than they do about the Ugandan government's intentions.
There is no evidence that Uganda erected the statue as a message to Mamdani.
The monument was commissioned by Uganda's military leadership as part of the 50th-anniversary commemoration of Entebbe and fits a broader effort to emphasize present-day ties with Israel.
The more substantive connection to the Mamdani family runs through Zohran's father.
Mahmood Mamdani's book, "Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State," was published by Harvard University Press in October 2025.
The book is both memoir and political history. Mamdani, himself expelled from Uganda as a young man during Amin's 1972 expulsion of Asians, argues that Amin should be understood within the colonial and postcolonial structures that shaped the Ugandan state rather than treated only as an inexplicable dictator.
That argument has drawn sharp criticism because Amin's regime was responsible for mass killing, repression and the forced expulsion of tens of thousands of Asians.
Mamdani also emphasizes the role of outside powers, including Britain and Israel, in the politics surrounding Amin's rise and early rule.
Some critics summarize that argument as blaming Israel for putting Amin in power.
The historical record is more complicated than either a complete dismissal or a simple assignment of responsibility.
Israel did have a significant military and security relationship with Uganda in the years surrounding Amin's rise and provided training and assistance to Ugandan forces. Scholars and journalists have documented those ties.
But acknowledging early Israeli involvement in Uganda does not mean Israel controlled Amin's subsequent regime, caused every decision he made, or bears responsibility for his later alliance with Israel's enemies and his support for the Entebbe hijackers.
Those are different historical claims.
That distinction also exposes a weakness in using the new statue as a simple ideological scorecard.
Uganda's relationship with Israel has changed repeatedly over the past half-century.
The country went from close security cooperation, to a dramatic rupture under Amin, to the Entebbe confrontation, and eventually back to diplomatic and security ties under Museveni.
A monument erected in 2026 reflects the priorities of Uganda's current leadership, not a permanent national verdict that can be mechanically applied to every Ugandan-born politician or scholar.
The same caution applies to Zohran Mamdani.
His Ugandan citizenship is relevant to his biography. It does not make him responsible for decisions taken by Uganda's president, military chief or airport authorities.
His criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu is relevant because it creates the political contrast that made the statue newsworthy in New York. It does not establish that he rejects the memory of Yoni Netanyahu or the rescue of the Entebbe hostages.
No public statement cited in the controversy shows that he has taken such a position.
The better argument is narrower.
The Entebbe monument is a vivid reminder that political alliances and historical memory do not remain fixed.
Fifty years ago, Israeli commandos fought Ugandan troops at the same airport where Uganda's military leadership is now honoring the Israeli officer who led the raid.
That transformation says something real about Uganda's relationship with Israel.
Mamdani's role in the story is secondary: his birthplace, citizenship and conflict with Benjamin Netanyahu give American political combatants a modern frame through which to view the monument.
The statue therefore settles one historical question more clearly than any present-day partisan one.
Uganda's current military leadership has chosen to commemorate Yoni Netanyahu at Entebbe as a figure of courage rather than preserve Amin's interpretation of the raid as a national humiliation.
What it does not settle is Zohran Mamdani's position on the monument, because he has not publicly supplied one.
And it does not turn a 1976 hostage rescue into a referendum on the New York mayor's contemporary views of Gaza, the ICC or Benjamin Netanyahu.
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Those disputes are real enough on their own.
They do not need the history of Entebbe rewritten to make them sharper.
