Closure Still Eludes Families of Israeli Soldiers Killed in Yom Kippur War

For 41 years, the families of the four missing crewmen heard the same version from authorities – that their boys were lost and the state was continuing to do all it could to discover their fate. They declared the four – deputy company commander Capt. Meiron Altager, tank commander Sgt. Yaakov Keller, driver Cpl. Haim Mutzafi and gunner Cpl. Dan Gilat – KIA, with their place of burial unknown.
 

However, something changed a year ago. An internal investigative report from the IDF manpower division produced completely different findings. Examination of the data collected over years, with Egyptian help, led to the conclusion that the remains of the four fighters, killed in the first hours of the war, were returned to the IDF in July 1977, four months before Anwar Sadat’s historic visit to Jerusalem.
 

The bodies of the four were among the soldiers killed in battles on the Egyptian front that were brought back in 19 coffins and buried without being identified in a mass grave in Jerusalem’s Mt. Herzl military cemetery. The decisive ruling was made after more than 15 years of investigation, yet it is not enough for the state to adopt the families’ request to recognize their place of burial as known, thereby reducing their suffering a little, especially that of those parents who are still alive.
 

There was a stormy meeting a few months ago between the family of Dan Gilat and Gen. (Res.) Yaakov Amidror, who is responsible on behalf of the prime minister and the defense establishment to deal with MIAs from the Egyptian front, ended without resolution.
 

“The pain is yours, but the responsibility is mine,” Amidror told Cpl. Gilat’s brother. In his eyes, as a religious man he was bound even more to be careful in such cases because one day he would have to give an account to his maker. And as long as he had not decided that there was enough certainty that the four bodies had been returned to Israel, he could not adopt the conclusions and recommend changing the KIAs status.

 

Altager’s crew was among the regular armored forces called in to help the fortifications under attack on Yom Kippur afternoon. The mystery of the fate of the four from Lamed company remained unsolved for 40 years. However, the incident was not investigated in depth for most of that time. The IDF only began pursuing it determinedly in 1997, through the unit for locating MIAs, known as Eitan. Until last year, the findings did not point conclusively to where the crew of the tank, labeled A4, was buried.
 

Yet the IDF’s last inquiry, which led to the investigation’s completion last October, finally clarified the picture. The company in which Capt. Altager served as deputy commander was called to move westward to assist the fortifications after the Egyptians successfully crossed the canal. A pair of tanks moved toward Fort Lahtzanit but was hit in an ambush by an Egyptian commando force. The crews were killed. When Altager heard on his field radio about the battles raging north of him, he decided to assist his comrades. The two tanks moved northward and hit another ambush by Egyptian commandos, who had apparently crossed the canal on rubber dinghies.
 

Altager’s tank, which was first, broke the ambush while the second tank was hit. Two of the four crewmen inside were killed, and the other two fell into Egyptian captivity and were returned in a prisoner exchange after the war. Altager’s tank continued northward and was ambushed by Egyptian infantrymen. At this point the crew abandoned the tank. Lt. Yuval Nerya, who served as deputy commander of Mem Company in the same battalion, gave testimony that at about 6 P.M. he heard on his field radio Altager reporting that he was wounded. One can only conjecture what happened after the tank was hit and abandoned. Eitan officials surmise that the ambushers advanced toward the tank, and the four were killed at close range.
 

Egyptian officers who participated in the canal battles say their forces tended to bury dead enemies nearby their tanks. The first attempt to locate Altager’s crew took place already during negotiations in May 1974. Israeli teams scoured the canal zone with Egyptian teams, finding Altager’s tank intact, but nothing was inside.
 

In the years following the delegation’s visit, the area around tank A4 changed completely because of Egyptian works to expand the Suez Canal. Only recently did it emerge that the bodies of the four were most likely discovered during these works. Egypt returned some 200 coffins, in which the remains of 147 soldiers were identified, between October 1974 and 1987. Unidentified remains were interred in Mt. Herzl in the section for unidentified soldiers from the Yom Kippur War.
 

There officially remain 18 KIAs whose burial places are unknown, according to the IDF. The Egyptians returned the bodies of 41 out of 46 soldiers from the north canal zone, leaving only the four from Altager’s tank and another missing soldier.

 

The Gilat family.Moti Milrod
 

Eitan’s investigative team concluded that Egyptian infantrymen buried the four Israelis some 50 meters from their tank. The Egyptian army spokesman announced in July 1977 that the bodies of 19 IDF soldiers who were buried during the war were discovered during works to expand the Suez Canal on the eastern bank. IDF Intelligence examined aerial photographs indicating the works were carried out in the area in which Altager’s tank was hit.
 

The military rabbinate did not find a match to Altager’s crew among the remains of the 19 soldiers returned in 1977, but tests during that period did not include DNA samples, so it was very difficult to identify the remains. The Egyptians attached to the coffins a list detailing the location where the remains were found – eight between kilometers 20-28, where Altager’s tank was hit.
 

Based on this data, the team made a firm conclusion that the remains of the four fighters from tank A4 were found by the Egyptians in July 1977, and returned to the IDF. The team report recommends that military authorities list the remains of the four soldiers as buried in the mass grave on Mt. Herzl for Yom Kippur soldiers.
 

Amidror’s approach
 

The report’s laconic language paints a hair-raising picture. For years on the 7th of Adar, the traditional death date of Moses, the families of the four KIAs would participate in the main memorial ceremony at Mt. Herzl for IDF soldiers whose burial places are unknown. But in retrospect, for most of that period the bodies of their four loved ones were buried not far from them, without any tests being done to permit their identification, without the army being in control of all the details, or the families knowing of the possibility that this had happened.

The 1970s were a different time with different norms, when Israeli society was suffering a collective trauma in the wake of the surprise attack and the heavy losses that the Egyptian and Syrian armies inflicted.

 

Gila YanivMoti Milrod
 

In June 2014, after insistent pleading by Gilat’s family, they met with members of Eitan, headed by then-commander Lt. Col. Gabi Elmashaly. Only then did they first hear of the conclusion that was coming together in the report which would overturn the reality they had known until then. Last May, the family held the pivotal meeting with Amidror, members of the wounded soldiers department in the manpower division, and Eitan members who had dealt with the case. At this meeting, the Gilat family was present for the first time with authoritative findings of the test and its conclusions. The other families had yet to meet with IDF representatives at this point.
 

Amidror said at the meeting that he still harbored a doubt over whether the bodies had been returned to Israel. The source of this doubt, he said, was the 1977 report by the military rabbinate and the pathological institute. So he decided on the need to add the word “probably” to the Eitan team’s final conclusions. The Gilat family commented that the work methods the rabbinate employed in 1977 were outdated in light of modern identifying techniques, and so the rabbinate’s report was not reliable. Amidror disagreed with them, at which point the meeting got testy.
 

At the end of this meeting, it was agreed that the family would be granted access to the October report and another meeting would be held a month later. However, no follow-up meeting was held, and requests by the Gilat family to hold one have not been answered. It also emerged in the May meeting that the military rabbinate’s 1977 documentation on the return of the coffins from Egypt was very thin. According to what the Gilat family heard in the meeting, it is impossible to know where the remains were interred. IDF officials promised to look into the matter, but they have yet to report results to the family.
 

Gila Yaniv, the only sister of Sgt. Yaakov Keller, was eight years younger than her brother in the armored corps. “We were children then,” she says. “It took us a real long time to understand that things weren’t done as they should be, that nothing was investigated in depth, that for years they didn’t visit the area to check, even though the tank was still in the place of the incident. The only check was superficial and done at night, without managing to locate the bodies. The state was helpless for many years.”
 

Every discussion about the incident, says Yaniv, “floods me anew with all the feelings. If, as Eitan investigators say, there is a probability of over 90 percent, the time has come to end this story. We should know that Yaakov wasn’t left behind, and that we know where he is buried. Let them put a stone on his grave. Only then will I be able to be in peace.”
 

The IDF spokesman responded, “The report regarding the Altager tank incident was examined by Gen. (Res.) Yaakov Amidror, who heads the committee for investigating MIAs in Egypt from the Yom Kippur War, which he does fully voluntarily. After the report was presented to him, he asked to complete a number of things to prevent any doubt as to the findings. When the relevant examinations are finished, the report’s conclusions and recommendations will be submitted to the head of manpower in the General Staff for approval. The IDF is in constant contact with the families and continues to accompany them. In light of the investigation’s sensitivity, we do not provide details on the investigation process or decision making on this matter.”