Yoni Netanyahu movie inspires audiences, underwhelms critics
36 years after Entebbe, ‘Follow Me’ examines the mythology, the controversy and the legacy of Israel’s lone fallen soldier from the daring raid
Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center
It was July 4, 1976. America was celebrating its bicentennial year and a group of Israeli commandos was setting out for Uganda, aiming to free Israeli hostages captured by Palestinian and German hijackers of an Air France plane a week earlier.
Called Operation Entebbe, for the Ugandan airport where they were being held, the raid was successful except for the deaths of four hostages and Yoni Netanyahu, the unit leader and older brother of current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Now a new documentary about Yoni Netanyahu is making the film festival circuit — “Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story,” by directors Jonathan Gruber and Ari Daniel Pinchot. Interviewed from his studio office in Maryland, Pinchot said he had worshiped Netanyahu for many years after having been introduced to his book by his wife when they were still dating. They named their first son Yoni for the fallen commando.
“I felt that Yoni is a remarkable role model, especially for young people in today’s world,” said Pinchot. “Kids today are becoming very self-absorbed and a lot of their life is focused on career and how to make their lives better. As a parent of four kids, I want to teach them that there are higher purposes out there, and that Yoni really was that role model for me.”
The death of the elder Netanyahu, a good-looking, bright and eloquent 30-year-old, saddened the nation and presumably changed the Netanyahu family forever. Yoni, the family’s heir apparent, was primed for leadership, which would have possibly have left middle brother Bibi to follow another career course. Yoni’s untimely death made him a hero in the Jewish world. Families and educational institutions pored over his posthumously published book of letters and religiously watched the two 1970s movies made about the raid, “Operation Thunderbolt” and “Raid on Entebbe.”
It took Pinchot 16 years to get “Follow Me” made, as funders inevitably questioned the wisdom of making a movie about someone who died in a tragic event 30 years earlier. As time passed, Benjamin Netanyahu became more involved in politics, and Pinchot was anxious to leave that sphere of Israeli life out of the film.
“We wanted to make it a personal story about a hero,” he said.
While it has been inspiring audiences in the Jewish and Christian circuits, “Follow Me” has also been reviewed as a film with “an excess of treacly music and an overabundance of glowing reminiscences” that trades “in overt sentimentality.”
“Obviously I see him as an inspiring character,” said Pinchot, “but I think a lot of reviews are not taking into account what our interviews revealed.”
Using footage from more than 50 interviews — including an exclusive one with Yoni’s ex-wife discussing her miscarriage and their divorce — the film illuminates the deep schism in the Operation Entebbe unit.
The unit rift has been under discussion for years in Israeli circles, as former commandoes in the unit felt blamed by the Netanyahus for Yoni’s death, and believed that the family mythologized their son and brother.
A 2006 article in Yedioth Ahronoth, 30 years after the raid, delved further into those first moments of the operation. According to Muki Betzer, the commando responsible for seizing the terminal, the problems began with Netanyahu’s late arrival in the planning stages and continued from there.
When the unit arrived in Entebbe, driving out of a Hercules plane in a black Mercedes designed to look like dictator Idi Amin’s car, the unit had just minutes to reach the terminal before it was detected. In those moments, when the commandos had been warned not to open fire, Netanyahu saw two Ugandan soldiers raise their weapons. Betzer told him not to fire but Netanyahu did. He was shot and wounded, and the surprise element was gone, opening the door to a possible disaster.
The mission ultimately succeeded for the most part, freeing 103 of the hostages and getting them back to Israel. But back home, during the mourning period for Yoni, his fellow soldiers were angrily questioned by Benzion Netanyahu, Yoni’s father.
“’I visited the Netanyahu family during the Shloshim [30-day mourning period],’ Alik Ron, one of the company commanders, told Yedioth. ‘They wouldn’t accept the possibility that Yoni was the one who erred. I felt like they were being manipulative. At a certain point, I couldn’t take it anymore, and I said: ‘It was bad luck. I was very close to that bad luck, but it struck Yoni.’”
In the ensuing years, the family published Yoni’s letters and continued to memorialize their son, as any Israeli family would when mourning a child who has been killed in battle. Iddo Netanyahu was Pinchot’s “main resource and main liasion from the family.”
To Pinchot, it seems clear that Yoni Netanyahu was “a complex person, but his faults and the fact he was able to overcome aspects in his life and take on this mission,” exemplify “what heroism is about today. It’s not about riding off into the sunset, but a story about a complicated guy who made tough choices.”
If the reviewers don’t like “Follow Me,” then tough luck, says Pinchot. It’s been well-received by Jewish, Christian and US military audiences, and certainly isn’t targeted at those Israeli viewers who are more familiar with the mission, the mythology and the Netanyahu family.
“We wanted to create an inspiring story, and we’ve found that people need to process after seeing the film,” said Pinchot. “What would [Yoni] have done if he were in politics today?”
A good question indeed.
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