A Hero's Quest - @MidEastTruth

A Hero's Quest

By Gil Troy

Moment Magazine
May 2003

Haim Avraham is a modern Zionist hero. Born in Iraq in 1949, when he was six months old his parents made aliyah with him to Israel. He still keeps some of the gold coins they sewed into his baby outfits as a reminder of what Jews endured to build the Jewish state.

While serving in the Israeli Air Force for more than 20 years, he perfected the system for refueling planes mid-air, the key to IAF triumphs in Entebbe and elsewhere. Since returning to civilian life in 1989, he has been an impassioned community activist, working as a labor organizer for Israel’s monolithic Histadrut Union, while serving shorter stints with the Labor Party, the Knesset Elections Committee, and the World Zionist Congress.

When Haim Avraham mounts one of his many crusades, he is relentless. His broad warm smile dissolves into a frown, and his crinkly eyes bear down on his target as he releases a devastating combination of clever jabs and populist, patriotic knock-out punches. Over the years, as a concerned ezrach, or citizen, who loves "our state" and "fears for its soul," he has confronted politicians and corporate chieftains, leftists and rabbis, and often won, always demanding they do the right thing, always refusing to be paid off with political patronage. "Haim is always fighting a war—or two," his wife and dedicated ally Edna says with a chuckle.

In one such battle, he publicly clashed with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin demanding lower Labor Party dues and won. Nevertheless, loyal to the prime minister and his vision of a "peace of the brave," Avraham spearheaded a drive to mobilize moderates and counter the right’s fusillade against Rabin and Oslo. Avraham’s efforts helped fill central Tel Aviv with peace advocates the fateful night of Nov. 4, 1995. Avraham witnessed Rabin’s shooting, and rushed to Ichilov Hospital behind Rabin’s car. When Rabin’s death was announced, Avraham fainted. Replayed endlessly on television, this scene dramatized the national trauma. "It was not just the murder of my prime minister, but the murder of his way," Avraham recalls. "The Arab world accepted Rabin as a legitimate peace partner. With my hero lying there dead, with my hopes for peace threatened, I felt like my world was destroyed."

Like so many fellow Israelis, Avraham yearned for peace so intensely because his family had sacrificed so much. Before the state was declared, the British hanged his wife Edna’s uncle, Mordechai Elkachi, at Acre Prison. One cousin, Menachem Narkiss, drowned along with 68 others when the submarine Dakar sank in 1968. And during the Yom Kippur War, Haim’s brother Benny died. In fact, Haim and Edna Avraham were married on Oct. 25, 1973, with his brother missing but not yet declared dead. "My father, following Jewish law, insisted that we proceed with the wedding," Avraham remembers, his eyes misting. "We have pictures of people weeping as we married." The next day, the sad news arrived, ending the Avrahams’ honeymoon.

The Avrahams had three children—two daughters, Efrat, born in 1975; Dafna, born in 1977; and a son born in 1980, Benny, named after his late uncle. On Oct. 7, 2000, Hezbollah terrorists masquerading as UN peacekeepers kidnapped Benny Avraham at the Lebanese border along with Adi Avitan and Omer Souad. Israel had withdrawn from Lebanon in May, and the United Nations had recognized the border. Hezbollah, so committed to exterminationist anti-Zionism, laid claim to one area, which Arabs call Sheba Farms, and Israelis call Har Dov. Since that awful day, Haim Avraham’s passion, community-building skills, and moxie have fueled his singleminded quest to bring Benny and his comrades home.

For months, even as casualties mounted from the Palestinian war against Oslo, the story of the three kidnapped soldiers, along with the tale of a fourth Hezbollah victim, Israeli businessman Elchanan Tennenbaum, riveted the Israeli public. With its citizens’ army, Israel is uniquely sensitive to the plight of missing soldiers and their grieving families. The four families felt engulfed in the nation’s tearful embrace. Cards, posters and bumper stickers shouted from Metulla to the Negev: "Eema michakah babayit," "Mom awaits you at home."

Then, on Oct. 29, 2001, without detailing much information to avoid compromising "intelligence sources," the Israeli Army declared the three dead. The families question the conclusion, but do not wish to appear disloyal or delusional. As Adi Avitan’s father explained, "Our rabbi told us that, based on the Army’s announcement, we should sit shiva immediately, to give proper respect in case they were dead; if the boys are alive, such respect merits long life." Avraham, who also sat shiva, offers three reasons why he is convinced that Benny remains alive. "Number one, I can hold in my hand things that Benny had on him when he was attacked. Benny told me that if he was kidnapped, he would throw these things on the ground—and he did (proving that he survived the initial assault). Number two, there has been no new information proving anything from that first day. Number three, the government claims that Benny died immediately, yet I tracked down a picture of Benny (and Adi) in a Lebanese hospital. Even Israeli intelligence concluded that there is a ‘very high probability’ that it is Benny."

Since the government’s announcement, Haim’s quest has been lonelier, less popular, but no less determined. Sometimes with the other families, sometimes alone, he has circled the globe in search of his son—or for morsels of information. He has met dozens of public officials, and held enough clandestine meetings to fill a James Bond script. He has visited the United States 10 times, including a visit in October to testify before Congress with the other families. He has visited "every European capital at least once." He has met with Tony Blair, Colin Powell, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Kofi Annan and every ambassador serving in Israel.

Haim Avraham usually starts softly, respectfully, but he does not hesitate to shout when necessary. In December 2001, he browbeat U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan into finally, belatedly, allowing the families to view the U.N. videotapes of the incident in Jerusalem, "the capital of the Jewish people," and to retrieve some of the soldiers’ personal effects the U.N. had held for more than a year. As Avraham tells it, he confronted the Secretary-General at a synagogue in Oslo, just before the U.N. Secretary General received the Nobel Peace Prize, saying, "How can you stand here as a man ready to accept the Nobel Peace Prize when you hold in your hand material with the blood of our children on it? Tomorrow, Mr. Kofi Annan, you will be in a very special club, the club that includes killers, a killer who sends people to shoot our people on our roads, to put bombs in our restaurants, to blow up our buses. Mr. Kofi Annan, you will be in the same club with Mr. Arafat the killer." Annan stood to walk out, and Haim boomed: "Sit down, we are the ones who pay the bills for what you say publicly and the Jewish people are the ones who pay the bills for what you are doing!" Avraham said that it would be a shame to upstage the Nobel Prize ceremony with demonstrations—and the next day, the videotape and personal effects were on their way to Jerusalem.

More recently, in June, after Jacques Chirac rubbed shoulders with Hezbollah’s leaders at Beirut’s Francophone summit (a conclave of French-speaking officials from around the world), Avraham made headlines for snapping at the French Ambassador Jacques Huntzinger—"I see you have new friends in Lebanon." The Ambassador pounded his fist on the table and walked out—as Haim shouted about French anti-Semitism and Israeli diplomats scurried to cool tempers.

The quest has taken its toll. Haim has spent more than half a million dollars of his own money to finance his efforts. He needs financial assistance but refuses to fundraise for fear of cheapening his campaign or blurring the focus. He has refused to take money from the Israeli government, so that when representatives of Amnesty International and other humanitarian organizations berate him about the

Palestinians, he can say, "I’m just a father looking for his son."

Forced to play the Jack Lemmon role in this Jewish variation of the classic Costa Gravas film Missing, Haim hopes desperately for a happier ending. He challenges the Jewish community to remember the Talmudic injunction to make every effort to free captives or their corpses, while challenging the world to condemn Hezbollah’s deliberate strategy of imposing cruel purgatory on the boys and their families. Even those who doubt that the three still live hope the continuing pressure will at least save Elchanan Tennenbaum. Haim, of course, continues to believe. "If I didn’t feel right here in my gut that my Benny is still alive, do you think I could possibly continue?" he asks.

Haim tells of an IDF study of soldiers on a multi-day hike. Different groups received varying amounts of encouragement and information, ranging from a detailed itinerary to none at all. The group that received minimal support and no indication of how much longer it had to go suffered the most dropouts. Despite little encouragement, few milestones, and no end in sight, Haim Avraham’s quest continues.