by Shmuel Sackett, co-founder of both the Zo Artzeinu and Manhigut Yehudit political movements, translated by Hillel Fendel.
If you were to ask someone on the street today, "What about the
hostages?" – they would look at you as if you had fallen off the moon.
"We returned all of them already! Don't you remember that we screamed out
Bring Them Home! and they all came back?"
Well, not quite. We thank G-d that all the Simchat Torah/October 7th
hostages have returned, dead or alive – but that doesn't mean that there aren't
others who were abducted much longer ago and who still have not returned. One
of them is known to have been executed – Eli Cohen, some 60 years ago (!) – and
two others are unofficially presumed dead, yet we have no concrete information
on their fates: Yehuda Katz and Ron Arad. Their families – at least those who
are still alive – are still waiting... Do the rest of us remember them?
Eli Cohen was one of the greatest spies in the history of the State
of Israel. He moved to Damascus in February 1962 in the guise of a Syrian-Argentinian
businessman known as Kamel Amin Thaabet. With his great wisdom and personal
charm, he succeeded in forging connections with Syrian politicians, senior
officers, and public figures in Damascus. His assimilation was so successful
that the Syrians almost appointed him their Deputy Minister of Defense! They
placed complete trust in him and shared important military and other secrets
with him. Cohen immediately passed the information on to his superiors in the
Mossad, and today we know that the intelligence he provided was one of the key
factors in Israel's swift victory over Syria in the Six Day War.
In January 1965, Syrian officials, suspecting the presence of a
high-level spy, used newly-acquired Soviet tracking equipment to monitor illegal
radio transmissions. They quickly detected a suspicious signal, and security
forces traced it to Cohen’s apartment, catching him in the act of transmitting
to Israel. He was arrested, interrogated, and brutally tortured. Within a short
time, he was charged with treason and sentenced to death, and, despite an
international campaign calling for clemency, he was publicly hanged in a
central square in Damascus.
Where is Eli Cohen today? In truth, his grave belongs on Mt. Herzl
in Jerusalem with many other Israeli heroes, but unfortunately this is not the
case. The Syrians have been holding his body for over 60 years, repeatedly
refusing to release it. He is our #1 hostage, but no one cries out "Bring
Him Home!" or even wears a yellow pin for him.
Over 20 years later, on Oct. 16, 1986, Israel Air Force pilot Yishai
Avraham and navigator Ron Arad were dispatched on a mission to attack PLO
targets in southern Lebanon. However, a bomb on their Phantom F-4 exploded
pre-maturely beneath them, forcing the two to bail out by parachute. IDF forces
quickly located and rescued Avraham under heavy fire, but Arad was caught by
local Lebanese. He ultimately ended up in the hands of Hizbullah – and that's
the last we know of him. It is assumed that he was transferred to Iran and then
back to Hizbullah, in whose hands he likely died from starvation and lack of
medical treatment. His wife Tami is still considered an agunah, in that
there is no proof that her husband is dead. I still pray for Ron Arad as if he
were alive: Ron ben [son of] Batya.
Where is he today? Dead or alive, he is still being held by
Hizbullah, instead of at home with his family or buried on Mt. Herzl. He is
Israel's Hostage #2: No one demonstrates for him, no one wears a "Free the
Hostages!" pin for him, and too many Israelis under age 30 don't even know
his name.
Our hostage #3 is Yehuda Katz, who was taken prisoner by Syrian
forces during Sultan Yaaqub battle in the 1982 Peace for Galilee War in
southern Lebanon. This tragic and difficult battle ended in the deaths of 21
IDF soldiers and the capture of several more. Among them were Zecharia Baumel,
whose body was returned only in 2019; Tzvika Feldman, whose body was returned
less than a year ago – both of these followed heroic IDF operations; and Yehuda
Katz, whose fate is still unknown.
The Syrians had sent some 30,000 troops to Lebanon in order to help
the PLO, together with very significant tank and artillery forces. The Sultan
Yaaqub battle is considered one of the most difficult and costly battles fought
by the IDF. The Syrians, for their part, did not lose their appetite for
killing and humiliating Israeli forces even after it was over, and they paraded
Baumel, Feldman and Katz through the streets of Damascus in a victory march, in
which Syrian citizens felt at liberty to beat and humiliate them.
For a while, a public outcry for their freedom pressured the Israeli
government to act. After several years, however, the IDF came to assume that
the three were no longer alive. Where is Yehuda Katz today? Is his body being
held in some out-of-the way cemetery in Syria, or perhaps it was transferred to
Hizbullah? No one knows. But one thing is clear: The Israeli public has all but
forgotten him. Like Eli Cohen and Ron Arad, no one hangs pictures of Yehuda
Katz along the highways, no one demonstrates on his behalf, and to the best of
my knowledge there is no one in the country wearing a yellow ribbon or a pin
for Captive #3.
There is no one happier than I am about the return home of the Simchat Torah captives, both those who remained alive and those who died there for the Sanctification of G-d's name. We must thank G-d for this open miracle. At the same time, please do not fool yourselves into thinking that "all" the captives are now home; it's simply not true. Let us continue to pray for the return of Eliyahu HaCohen ben Sofia, Ron ben Batya, and Yekutiel Yehuda Nachman HaCohen ben Sarah, and ask G-d to bring these heroes back to Israel so that they may finally receive the last honors they deserve.