STATEMENT OF THE GLOBAL PAN-AFRICAN MOVEMENT IN NORTH AMERICA:
ON THE ERECTION AT ENTEBBE AIRPORT UGANDA, OF A STATUE HONOURING LT. COL. YONATAN NETANYAHU, BROTHER OF BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAEL PRIME MINISTER.
On 3 August 2026, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, Chief of the Uganda People's Defence Forces and son of President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, unveiled at Entebbe International Airport a statue honouring Lt. Col. Yonatan Netanyahu, the Israeli military commander who was killed during the Israeli raid on Entebbe,Uganda in July 1976.
The Global Pan-African Movement (GPAM) in North America regards the erection of this statue at Entebbe as deeply inappropriate and inconsistent with Africa's historic commitment to the principles of national sovereignty, opposition to foreign military intervention, and solidarity with peoples struggling against occupation and domination.
GPAM's objection concerns the decision by the Ugandan authorities to honour, on Ugandan soil and at the very site of the operation, the commander of a foreign military force that entered Uganda without the permission of the Ugandan Government, engaged Ugandan forces, killed Ugandan soldiers, destroyed Ugandan military aircraft and carried out an armed operation on Ugandan territory.
THE ENTEBBE RAID
On 27 June 1976, an Air France aircraft flying from Tel Aviv to Paris was hijacked and diverted to Entebbe, Uganda. The hijackers included two Palestinians and two German members of the Revolutionary Cells. More than 100 hostages were eventually held at Entebbe Airport, under the protection of Ugandan soldiers and with the involvement of President Idi Amin's government.
On the night of 3–4 July, Israeli commandos worked the government of Kenya to cancel the scheduled East African Airways flight to Entebbe from Nairobi. The air traffic controllers in Entebbe were tricked to believe that the Israeli flight was the scheduled East African Airways flight. It landed at Entebbe and carried out a surprise military assault. The Israeli military operation resulted in the deaths of the hijackers and a number of Ugandan soldiers. Israeli forces also destroyed Ugandan military aircraft at the airport before departing with the rescued hostages.
Lt. Col. Yonatan Netanyahu, commander of the Israeli assault force, was killed during the operation. He was the only Israeli soldier killed in the raid. The Organisation of African Unity (OAU), meeting shortly after the raid, condemned what it described as Israeli aggression against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Uganda. The OAU condemned the Israeli military action, including the killing and injury of Ugandans and the destruction of Ugandan property. Even though Tanzania was at odds with the government of Idi Amin at that moment, President Julius Nyerere condemned the Entebbe military operation of the Israelis.
The African position at the time was clear: whatever sympathy might exist for the hostages, the sovereignty of an African state and African peoples could not simply be set aside by a foreign military power. It is this historical context that makes the erection of the statue at Entebbe insensitive and troubling.
SHORT HISTORYOF ISRAEL-AFRICAN RELATIONS
In the first years of African independence, Israel developed extensive relationships with newly independent African states. Israeli personnel provided assistance in agriculture, irrigation, health, education, cooperative development and military training. Prior to the Holocaust, Africans had stood in solidarity against the German genocide against Jews and international anti-Semitism.
These African -Israeli relations frayed after the Israeli/British/French attack on Egypt in 1956. These relations deteriorated following the June 1967 war and Israel's occupation of Arab territories, including Egyptian territory in the Sinai Peninsula and the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank, as well as East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced by this war.
African governments consistently demanded Israel's withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967. The OAU repeatedly supported that position. Following the October 1973 war, a large number of African states severed diplomatic relations with Israel.
The African position was not based on hostility toward Israel. It was rooted in principles that were central to Africa's post-colonial order: opposition to occupation, opposition to foreign intervention, respect for sovereignty and support for peoples seeking freedom from domination.
Those principles remain relevant today.
THE PRESENT CONTEXT
The erection of the statue also takes place at a time when the conduct of the Israeli Government in Palestine and the wider West Asia has become the subject of intense international controversy and legal proceedings.
The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on war crimes and crimes against humanity. To the credit of the South African government, and a great honour to Africa, a case against violations of the Genocide Convention by Israel was brought before the International Court of Justice.
The scale of destruction and civilian suffering in Gaza since October 2023 has generated widespread international condemnation. Hospitals, schools, universities, homes and other civilian infrastructure have been erased to the ground, and large numbers of civilians, including children, have been killed and displaced.
The genocidal war has also expanded beyond Gaza. Israel and the US, the latter being its unflinching military, financial and intelligence provider, have engaged in military confrontation with Iran, while Lebanon and Syria have repeatedly been drawn into the wider of aggression and occupation. The assassinations of civil and military Iranian leaders including the supreme leadrr, Ayatollah Ali Khomenei and his family exposed the barbaric nature of the US -Israel war against Iran, in their belief that such decapitation of Irans's leadership would lead to regime change.
Entebbe cannot, therefore, be regarded as an entirely neutral historical memorial. Its meaning is inevitably influenced by current events and by the political position of those who have chosen to erect it.
THE POSITION OF GENERAL MUHOOZI KAINERUGABA
General Muhoozi Kainerugaba's own public statements reinforce this concern.
In 2026, the Ugandan Chief of Defence Forces publicly declared that Uganda would stand with Israel if Israel faced an attempt to destroy it and offered Ugandan assistance. He expressed his position in explicitly religious terms, stating that Uganda stood with Israel because Ugandans are Christians. He has also made statements concerning the possibility of Uganda participating militarily on Israel's side in the war of aggression against Iran.
These statements cannot simply be dismissed as those of an ordinary private citizen or junior military officer. General Kainerugaba is the serving Chief of Uganda's Defence Forces. Even if his public statements do not automatically reflect Ugandan foreign policy, the distinction between the personal position of the highest ranked military commander, and the official position of the Ugandan Government cannot be dismissed.
This is particularly so when Uganda is simultaneously strengthening its military, intelligence and political relationship with Israel and has now authorised participation in a proposed international ‘stabilisation’ force for Gaza.
The statue at Entebbe must, therefore, be viewed in the context of a broader and increasingly visible Ugandan engagement with Israel and with the politics of West Asia.
GPAM wishes to make it clear that the question is whether Uganda as an independent African state can justifiably erect, at a major national airport and at the very site of the event, a monument honouring the commander of a foreign military force that entered its territory without its permission, fought its soldiers and destroyed its military property?
For GPAM this question cannot be separated from the history of colonialism, apartheid and foreign intervention in Africa.
Uganda has also developed close military and security relationships with the United States, Israel and other foreign powers. GPAM does not question Uganda's right to maintain international relations or to seek military and economic cooperation with other countries. GPAM's concern is whether those relations serve the broad African interests and not only the individual country's immediate short run interest or the personal interests of the country’s leaders.
What concerns us is the growing tendency to treat foreign military alliances as a substitute for independent African foreign policy.
Africa's security problems should ultimately be addressed through African institutions, African diplomacy and African solutions, rather than through the permanent militarisation of the continent or dependence on competing external powers.
The experience of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Great Lakes region and other African wars demonstrates the dangers of allowing external interests, military alliances and the competition for natural resources to become intertwined with African security.
THE GLOBAL PAN-AFRICAN MOVEMENT IN NORTH AMERICA BASED ON THE FACTS OF THE SITUATION:
- Condemns the erection of the statue of Lt. Col. Yonatan Netanyahu at Entebbe International Airport as inappropriate recognition of a foreign military commander at the site of an armed intervention against Uganda.
- Reaffirms the principles of African sovereignty and territorial integrity that guided the Organisation of African Unity in its response to the Entebbe raid and remain fundamental to the African Union today.
- Condemns statements by General Muhoozi Kainerugaba that suggest Uganda would participate militarily on Israel's side in a war against Iran, and calls upon the Ugandan Government to make clear its official position regarding such statements.
- Calls upon President Museveni, as Commander-in-Chief of the Uganda People's Defence Forces, to ensure that Uganda's foreign and military policy is conducted through established constitutional and diplomatic institutions, rather than through personal declarations by individual officials.
- Calls upon the African Union to reaffirm the principle that African states should not participate in wars between external powers and should not permit African territory or African armed forces to become instruments in conflicts outside Africa.
- Calls upon the Government of Uganda to reconsider the appropriateness of maintaining the statue at Entebbe International Airport, a site of profound significance in Uganda's national history.
- Calls upon Pan-African organisations and movements throughout Global Africa to defend consistently the principles of sovereignty, self-determination and opposition to foreign occupation, including support for the rights of the Palestinian people.
- Calls for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza and for a just political settlement based upon negotiations, international law and the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.
- Calls upon African governments to pursue independent foreign policies that place African peace, sovereignty and the interests of African peoples above the strategic interests of external powers.
Entebbe belongs to Uganda and to the history of Africa. It should not become a monument to foreign military intervention.
The principles of African sovereignty, self-determination and solidarity with oppressed peoples remain as relevant today as they were at the birth of the African independence movements.
August 9, 2026