Copyright 1991 Jerusalem Post
Jerusalem Post
March 14, 1991
HEADLINE: PARENTS GET NEWS OF CAPTIVE SONS
BYLINE: Bradley Burston
As Secretary of State Baker and Syrian officials began talks in
Damascus yesterday, parents of Israeli soldiers held captive in
Lebanon disclosed that they had recently received evidence that their
sons were still alive.
Yona Baumel, father of Zacharia Baumel, captured in June, 1982,
said that some of the missing soldiers' families had received word a
month ago.
The information came from "private channels unavailable to the
IDF and the government," Baumel said in a broadcast interview.
Yosef Katz, father of Yehuda Katz, captured on the sixth day of
the war, revealed that he had received messages from three separate
sources regarding his son.
Zacharia Baumel disappeared in the first week of Operation Peace
for Galilee. He was a member of a tank crew with Zvika Feldman, Hezi
Shai and Ariel Liberman.
Held by the Ahmed Jibril terror organization, Shai and two other
IDF soldiers, Yossi Groff and Nissim Salem, were returned in a May,
1985 exchange for 1,500 Arab security prisoners. Liberman had been
released the year before.
Baumel praised the efforts of Prime Minister Shamir and Defense
Minister Moshe Arens on behalf of the prisoners. "After 8 years, I
cannot be totally satisfied, but the government's efforts have been
over and above those that any other country would have made."
Katz, Baumel and other members of the missing soldiers' families
met with State Department officials to discuss U.S. efforts to mediate
the captives' release.
The other soldiers still missing are Samir Assad, who disappeared
near Sidon in April, 1983, and is believed held by the Democratic
Front for the Liberation of Palestine; Rahamim Alsheikh and Yossi
Fink, by Hizbullah in February 1986; and IAF navigator Ron Arad, shot
down eight months later.