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B'nai Emet -> Messages -> Conservative Jewish Commitment -> 2002Remember missing Israeli soldiersAnother year has passed and Ron Arad hasn’t come home. Nor has there been any positive news about him, or about any of the other Israeli soldiers who fell captive in recent years. It is 16 years since the Israeli navigator’s plane was shot down over Lebanon and well over a decade since his family had any proof he was alive. Out of respect for the pain that the families of Arad and the other Israeli MIA’s have endured, here are a few web sites devoted to them. The main Ron Arad website is still available, though some parts have not been kept up to date—for example, it does not include the news that Arad’s mother died in June. However, you can still get Arad’s basic story here and see pictures of him and his wife, Tami, who has done so much to keep his image in the public consciousness all these years. A blue balloon is a symbol to commemorate the navigator’s disappearance. Read the lyrics to the song that Boaz Sharabi composed for him. If you have a website and you’d like to add a banner reminding people about Arad, download a banner. There is a website devoted to Israeli soldiers missing in action—the International Coalition for Missing Israeli Soldiers. At the home page, which is available in Hebrew and in English, you can read about the history of missing soldiers since the founding of the State of Israel, as well as see pictures of the six soldiers missing in action but presumed to be alive. In addition to Arad, this site lists them as Zachary Baumel, Tzvi Feldman, and Yehuda Katz, captured in 1982; Guy Hever, who disappeared from an IDF base in the Golan in 1997; and Elchanan Tannenbaum, a colonel in the reserves who was kidnapped in 2000 in Europe, while traveling on business. The archives section of this site features relevant articles from the past 20 years on this subject. The website of the Consulate General of Israel to the Midwest features a section on the missing soldiers. Unlike the International Coalition for Missing Israeli Soldiers website, which concentrates on the MIA soldiers who are believed to be alive, this site also features Adi Avitan, Benny Avraham, and Omar Souad, the three IDF soldiers who were captured by Hizbullah in 2000 while patrolling the Israel-Lebanon border near Mount Dov. The IDF last November officially declared them to be presumed dead. |
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