Ex-IDF commando eulogizes Yoni Netanyahu: ‘You sacrificed your life for the hostages; PM and his partners sacrifice the hostages for themselves’

Friends of Yonatan (Yoni) Netanyahu, who was killed 48 years ago today during the famous Operation Entebbe to rescue Israeli hostages kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists to Uganda, hold a memorial ceremony at his grave — without his younger brother, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“We won’t attend to a ceremony where Benjamin Netanyahu is present,” Udi Shalvi, one of the late Netanyahu’s subordinates in the Israel Defense Force’s elite Sayeret Matkal unit, tells Channel 12 News.

Lt. Col. (ret.) Shlomi Reisman, who also took part in Operation Entebbe, says during the ceremony at Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl military cemetery, “I chose to visit your grave separately from the prime minister’s ceremony. I can’t lie to myself. He and his partners are acting the opposite of how you brought us up. How he was brought up.”

“You chose to sacrifice your life for Israel and the hostages — and they sacrifice Israel and the hostages for themselves, Reisman adds.

“If Yoni were alive, he would be prime minister and not his brother, who has led us to the terrible place we’re now in,” Shalvi tells Channel 12.

Yoni Netanyahu’s partner, Bruria Shaked-Okon, also attends the alternative ceremony, saying, “I feel that there’s no choice and we can’t keep playing this game, that’s why I’m here.”

Some of the attendees were also planning to join tonight’s anti-government protest outside the prime minister’s house in Jerusalem after the memorial ceremony, Channel 12 reports.