The Latest Uganda Plan
By Jeffrey Goldberg
The Forward, June 28, 1996
Weeds push through the cracked tarmac at the old Entebbe airport, where, 20 years ago this July 4, a Ugandan soldier fired the shot that launched Benjamin Netanyahu’s campaign to be prime minister of Israel.
I try to guess the spot where his brother, Jonathan, fell during the Israeli raid on this airport; there are, of course, no markers. The airport is in ruins, closed to visitors and fenced off from the new airport and the new Uganda.
The old terminal, where the selection of Jewish passengers took place, is all rubble and dung. The roof is mostly gone, and the walls are pockmarked with bullet holes. Inside there is Hebrew graffiti: “Shalom, Chazarnu” — “We’ve returned.” An animal smell rises up from the piles of broken concrete; the Ugandan army evidently lets cattle graze around the old control tower.
It’s a shame the airport is in such miserable shape, I tell the mayor of Entebbe, a tank-sized man named Stephen Kabuye. He is a car salesman who is dressed in a burgundy suit on this 98-degree day. He agrees with me wholeheartedly, which is why, I come to learn, he has invited me to tour the airport. In this rotting mess he sees not the embarrassment of Idi Amin’s crazed rule but an opportunity to woo Hadassah women to his country.
“This is a land where God saved the Jewish people,” he says. “I think the Jews will put a lot of money into this.”
The forces of commerce transform all great events into venues for mass tourism, so why not an amusement park at Entebbe?
“I am looking for Jews to come and build this as a memorial,” Mr. Kabuye says. “The Jews will come, don’t you think?”
I am thinking, of course, that we almost came already. It’s been almost 100 years since Herzl first floated the Uganda plan, the notion that the Zionist movement should focus on Uganda as a homeland for the Jews. The idea did not take hold, which is unfortunate in some respects because Uganda is a stunning country, with, among other things in its favor, the source of the Nile and plenty of fresh fruit. On the other hand, the Zionist takeover of central Africa would not have done much for black-Jewish relations.
I try to explain to the mayor that it might, in fact, be something of a hard sell to get Jews to visit Entebbe in large numbers, what with heritage tours of near everyplace a Jewish foot ever stepped competing for the finite — believe it or not — Jewish dollar.
I do admit to Kabuye, however, that Entebbe is weighted with meaning for the Jewish people. The raid was a shining moment in the history of Jewish self-defense, and a testament not only to the valor of the Israel Defense Forces, but to the very idea that motivated the original Zionists. Jewish spines straightened on the news that there are Jews who could achieve what Yoni’s men achieved.
All this is just fine for the mayor, but a bit off the point, because what he’s interested in is money. “I’m going to talk to the Israelis about this,” he says.
As I leave the old airport, I try to picture the spot where one day a Disney-built Robo-Yoni will welcome busloads of Jewish teens to Kabuye’s theme park.
The next day in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, I am talking with Paul Wamala, Uganda’s tourism director, about the strange and complex relationship between Uganda and the Jewish people. Relations between Uganda and Israel were once, pre-Entebbe, strikingly close — the Israeli construction firm Solel Boneh built some of the biggest and ugliest buildings in Kampala, and Israeli military advisers trained the Ugandan army’s elite units, though not too well, given the Ugandan performance during the raid. And Idi Amin, of course, wore Israeli paratrooper wings.
Relations today, 17 years after Amin was overthrown, are proper; Israel’s ambassador to Uganda is also his country’s ambassador to Kenya, but he visits Kampala as often as he can. Uganda’s president, the enlightened autocrat Yoweri Museveni, is rebuilding his country quite efficiently and is said to be interested in strengthening ties with Israel, though Israel today has no shortage of friends in Africa.
Mr. Wamala, who is in charge of efforts to convince travel agents abroad that Mr. Amin is now a very permanent resident of Saudi Arabia, says he too would like to see more Jewish tourism. He notes, besides Entebbe, that Jewish tourists would be keen to meet with the Abuyadaya, a little community of self-professed Jews in the eastern Ugandan town of Mbale.
And then, of course, there’s the Jewish cemetery on the shores of Lake Victoria.
Mr. Wamala tells me that a group of Polish Jews settled before World War II on a plantation east of Kampala, near the village of Koja, and the community cemetery still remains. He phones up the Uganda national museum, where an assistant curator can tell me more. Take a look, Mr. Wamala says, it’s only a half-hour drive.
The next morning, curator in tow, I hire a car for the short drive to Koja. Two hours into the ride, on a pothole-ridden red dirt road, I begin to wonder how far away Koja is. The driver asks a farmer at a junction — five more minutes is the answer. A half-hour later, different farmer, same question: five more minutes. As we drive these narrow backroads, children run beside the car yelling “faza mzungu” at me. Mzungu is the Swahili word for white man, but faza I don’t know. I ask the curator. “They think you’re a priest,” he says: “Father Mzungu.”
We drive a half-hour longer, and come to a stop only because Lake Victoria is blocking our way. “We’re here,” says the curator, who claims to have visited the cemetery before. We hop a fence, and begin walking uphill away from the lake. Fifteen, 20 minutes pass, and we come to a hut. A farmer emerges, words are exchanged and he comes back with a panga, a short machete, in hand. This means one of two things, the more benign of which is that there is heavy brush ahead. We walk for 45 minutes more under the white-hot sun, through thickets and over barbed wire fences.
Exhausted, and soaked through with sweat, we emerge in a clearing, and I see what looks to be the outlines of a stone wall. The cemetery is half-destroyed, and there are few discernible signs that it is indeed a cemetery, except for one all-too noticeable sign: a large stone cross.
“That’s a cross,” I say to the curator, a man I will not name out of charity.
“Yes,” he says.
“This is a Christian cemetery,” I say.
“No. It’s Jewish.”
“No, it’s Christian. That’s what the cross means. A cross means it’s a Christian cemetery.”
“You mean,” he asks, “the Jewish have something different?”
Right. Back to the car.
“No, I’m sure it’s a Jewish cemetery,” he protests.
“Why?” I ask, half-homicidal in my exhaustion.
“Because the Pope’s relatives are buried here.”
I should have known something was awry when I was mistaken for a priest.
On my return to Kampala, I almost didn’t have the heart to tell Paul Wamala that, technically speaking, his Jewish cemetery was Catholic. But I did. Knock that off the Jewish tourist route, I suggested. He seemed crestfallen.
Look, I said consoling him, at least you have Entebbe.