A new animated documentary marks 39 years since Operation Entebbe. Photo: Zionism in Animation.

A new animated short about Israel’s famed Operation Entebbe in 1976 features narration from commandos who were involved in the daring and successful hostage-rescue mission in Uganda, 39 years ago on Saturday.

The film, produced by Zionism in Animation, tells of the run-up and execution of the Israel Defense Forces mission to rescue the 106 hostages, most but not all of them Israeli, who were captured by Palestinian terrorists aboard an Air France Flight en route from Athens to Paris.

The former head of IDF special ops, Brig. Gen. (res.) Yiftach Reicher-Atir was part of the elite Sayeret Matkal unit tasked with storming the Entebbe airport. He was deputy to Lt. Col. Yoni Netanyahu, a commander of the mission and, ultimately, the only Israeli military casualty in the raid.

In the video, Rechiter-Atir describes a part of the bold operation that involved deceiving the Ugandan army to gain access to the airport terminal where the hostages were being held.

“Upon landing, the rescue force, headed by Yoni, would move in a convoy led by a Mercedes mimicking Ugandan President Idi Amin’s car, which was meant to confuse Ugandan soldiers and to buy precious time and access into the terminal,” Reicher-Atir narrated.

Sayeret Matkal fighter Amir Ofer, who the video says was the first to break into and enter the terminal where the hostages were being held, described the gun-battle that erupted between Israeli soldiers and the terrorist kidnappers.

“I heard somebody shout that Yoni was wounded and I saw to my left a few dozen meters away a figure collapse. At the same time, the glass shattered and someone shot at me in an automatic burst of fire from the inside,” said Ofer. “My commander entered simultaneously and killed two other terrorists.”

Within a matter of seconds, the other terrorists in the hanger had been shot dead, Ofer continued.  Within less than an hour of the Israelis’ landing, the hostages were back on a plane and on their way home.

Netanyahu succumbed to his wounds despite efforts to save him by Israeli medics.

The video also features a few lines of narration by former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, who described how news of Operation Entebbe reached him in a regime jail and gave him hope that Israel would one day rescue him too.

Zionism in Animation describes itself as “a project which will tell the story of Zionism in a series of short; compelling; animated clips which cover the main events, people, places and concepts which make up this story.”

Watch the video below, in Hebrew: