Jerusalem Post
Date: January 2, 2000
"The Mystery of Guy Hever"
By: Sam Orbaum
Sympathy for the MIA families, yes, Rena Hever is like everyone else in the
country. But she feels something else for these anguished
people, something unimaginable: envy. She is the mother of an
M -- a Missing. Her son's mysterious fate is not a cause
celebre, doesn't rate front-page headlines. Guy Hever is not
on the national agenda. Guy is unknown, and his family suffers
alone. He was a soldier when he disappeared two and a half
years ago, while on duty on the Golan. Nothing more is known.
No one just disappears in this country, Rena reminds herself
-- over and over and over. It can't be, it's not possible. But
Guy has disappeared. "I don't know, maybe a spaceship took
him," Rena says sardonically. Guy loved -- loves -- science
fiction. His mom doesn't believe in it, but there aren't many
options to believe in. She clings to a certainty that her boy
is still alive. Almost every earthly possibility has been
discounted, including the most absurd theories: that he's been
hitchhiking around the country, that he became a Buddhist or
Beduin, that he's been communing with nature. For one thing,
"Guy hates nature. He's a home boy, loves his room, his books,
his music." And, Rena says, he knows she worries. "If he
didn't call, it's because they wouldn't let him." With no
clues, and so much time elapsed, the establishment can only
shrug its collective shoulders. Everyone agrees that it's not
possible for anyone to vanish. Everyone agrees there is simply
no explanation for this. "Barak told me that there's never
been anything like this in Israel. They're always found.
Always." The prime minister is a neighbor of the Hever family
in Kohav Yair. It hasn't helped. Rena, however, does offer an
explanation, and it's plausible: he is being held by the
Syrians. They have an inhuman penchant for incarcerating
people for years without informing anyone, and the single
shred of eyewitness evidence -- together with a bizarre,
unrelated incident -- leave open the chance that Guy is in
Syria, still alive.
Rena and her
husband Eitan last saw their son on August 16, 1997. Later
that same day, he disappeared from his base in the southern
Golan. "He was with a fine group of boys, but their officers
were awful -- this was well known among the soldiers'
families. And Guy had it especially rough, because he's not a
social type. The officers picked on him for that. He'd say
'Leave me alone,' and they'd say 'Oh yeah? Leave me alone?
We'll show you.' They tormented him. We didn't know.
On
the night of August 16, there was a sort of social meeting,
and they were told to put stickers on the weapons -- it was a
kind of game, like something from kindergarten: one group
competing against the other. He said to his commander, 'Come
on, this is silly, leave me out of it.' And besides, he said,
the officers were compelling them to vandalize army property.
"They threatened to put him on trial, so he agreed to
participate. But they punished him anyway, with lengthy guard
duty, and again threatened him with a trial. At that point he
disappeared. He wasn't even seen leaving the camp."
Later,
however, a reliable witness came forward and reported that Guy
was seen at Katzabiya Junction -- heading in the direction of
the Syrian border. Guy, 20 at the time, was not the type to
act suicidally -- such as crossing the forebidding border in a
class-A IDF uniform. So what was Guy doing there? Rena has
been wracking her brains for two and a half years. There is no
answer.
But if he HAD crossed the border...
"Something
happened there, in 1978, that was never reported. Two Germans
were traveling in the area, and they accidentally crossed the
border." They were here on a program for conscientious
objectors called Operation Atonement, allowing them to do
their German army service in Israel as volunteers.
"Eventually, I found them. What happened was, a friend
refused to accept that they simply disappeared. He went back
and forth along the border with pictures of the Germans, and
went to all the coffee houses. No one knew anything. Suddenly,
an Israeli army jeep pulled up, and an officer told them two
words that they said they'll never forget: 'ra'iti otam' (I
saw them).
"They crossed into Syria without documents,
only maps. For the Syrians, that's enough: you're spies.
"The German foreign minister, Hans Genscher, was due to
visit Syria, and he said he wouldn't go unless he was given
information about his citizens. Great pressure was put on the
Syrians, and after holding the Germans for a year, in secret,
they freed them." Rena spoke with one of them.
She has
spoken to German officials, to French officials. To the UN,
the Red Cross, the Palestinians, to Arab MKs. Prime ministers
Barak and Netanyahu have listened. She has spoken to everyone
she can think of, but still, there has been no groundswell of
support, no national clamor. The anemic publicity has
handicapped the Hevers. "When I went to the Red Cross," Rena
recalls, "I found that they hadn't even heard of Guy. I went
to the Foreign Ministry. They didn't know who I was. But
they've tried very hard to help me. They say this can't be
happening, it's just not possible." She praises the "fantastic
support" from Lova Eliav, who "believes the country has to
come to understand there are five MiAs, not four."
She has
spoken to the Baumel family, who have suffered as she has, but
for 17 years. "I was deeply moved by them. Where do they get
the strength?" Numbed by unrelenting heartache, Rena softly
evokes pitiful comparison with the saddest families in the
land. "My situation is ten times worse than Arad and the
others," she says. They have the world working for them. Rena
can't even enlist her neighbor.