April 12, 2006

Jews around the world will remember their MIA's at the Passover Table

When world Jewry was struggling for the release of Soviet Jews, they set aside an empty place at their Passover seder tables to represent their missing kin. This Pesach they will be placing a prominent figure 5 on the seder table to symbolize five MIA's, Zachary Baumel, Zvi Feldman and Yehuda Katz who have been missing for 22 years Ron Arad for 17 years and Guy Hever who went missing a few years after Arad.

The suggestion to place the figure 5 on seder tables is being circulated by email lists to protest the deliberate withholding of information about the MIA's by Syria, Iran and the PA. The case of Zachary Baumel epitomizes the suffering and anxiety which the families of the MIA?s endure.In an exquisite refinement of torture in 1993, Yasir Arafat acknowledged that he knew details of the fate of the soldier's and handed one half of Baumel's identity tag to Yitzchak Rabin, with a firm promise that more information regarding the MIA's would be forthcoming. He never kept his promise, but it is believed that current members of the PA shared the knowledge and that they should be pressed to disclose whatever information they have, especially when negotiating the release of Palestinian prisoners.

In 1998 two Dutch women Christa Rhodius, 49, and Jeannet Van Duuren working for the International Coalition for Missing Israeli Soldiers met with Yasser Arafat hoping he would hand over some of the missing soldier's personal belongings they believe to be stored in a safe that was originally held by Abu Jihad (Khalil al-Wazir) in Tripoli, Lebanon and transferred to Gaza. Arafat stonewalled and they did not succeed. He also reneged on his promise to Rabin. The two Dutch women asked Arafat where the other half of Baumel?s tag was, but he did not respond.

AP and others have reported claims over the years by Lebanese and Palestinian militias about the fate of the MIA's. That Syria knows the fate of at least some of the soldiers is evident from the fact that soon after the battle at Sultan Yaqub in which Baumel, Feldman and Katz went missing, three Israeli soldiers were publicly paraded through the streets of Damascus. Palestinian and Syrian officials have made many references to information in their possession regarding the MIAs and it is hoped that international humanitarian organizations will exert pressure on Syria and the PA to reveal the information they have been withholding for far too long.