The grave of Lt.-Col. Yoni Netanyahu was recently vandalized, Eli Ben-Shem, chairman of Yad LaBanim, alleged in conversation with Israeli media outlet N12 on Tuesday.
Lt.-Col. Netanyahu fell during the Entebbe rescue operation in 1976, when the IDF freed over 248 hostages from Uganda's Entebbe airport after an Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris was hijacked by Palestinian and German terrorists.
"No one knows yet," Ben-Shem told N12, "not even the Netanyahu family, but two weeks ago [some people] desecrated the grave of Yoni Netanyahu, an Israeli hero, who fell [as a martyr] in Entebbe. Where have we come to?"
Yad LaBanim is an Israeli organization that supports the families of fallen soldiers coping with grief and loss. They host legacy projects and provide guidance and counseling to loved ones.
Israel police responded to Ben-Shem's statement, saying that people left red heart-shaped stones on the gravesite as part of a memorial project and that other graves throughout the country had been similarly adorned. The police said that the stones may have shed some of their red paint, but that any chipped paint was promptly cleaned.
Ben-Shem also told N12 that he was asked not to tell the prime minister about the supposed desecration as not to upset him. "But I deliberately chose to [publicize] it so that maybe they will start to be shocked...and also so Bibi will perhaps start to be shocked and [he will] understand what awaits us on this upcoming Remembrance Day."
He continued, according to Israeli newspaper Maariv, saying "I am not a political person, and I am not allowed to say a word about politics because I [work with grieving] families on the right and the left. I'm passing on what I hear whispered by families and my fear of what will happen on Remembrance Day. I fear for the honor of all the politicians who will come visit [Mt. Herzl cemetery] on Remembrance day and be humiliated because there is no control over who comes and who doesn't."
Entebbe veterans speak out against Netanyahu and the judicial reform
Ten soldiers from the Amnon team who fought under Yoni Netanyahu's leadership in Operation Entebbe wrote a letter to his brother, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in early March in which they said that he is "knowingly and with open eyes sacrificing the State of Israel and the people of Israel for his own interests."
In the letter, which was first made public by Channel 13, the soldiers wrote to Netanyahu that "for years, you have been leading by way of 'separate and govern', dividing us Israelis from one another."
"You compared us to people who carried out pogroms in Huwara," the letter continued. "Your son, who hasn't held a gun in his life, calls us 'terrorists'.
To Netanyahu's brother Ido, they wrote "you called us 'conditional Zionists,' people who are confused and will leave the country at the first chance. You also claimed that were are causing anarchy and fear and that our goal is to cause panic."
The letter warned that "these days, Israel is in danger, and this time the enemy is at home."