Israeli MIAs

Israeli MIA are members of the Israel Defense Forces who are missing in action. Despite efforts to locate and repatriate them, their whereabouts remain unknown. Every year, a state ceremony is held at Mount Herzl, Israel's military cemetery in Jerusalem.

IDF prisoners of war

In the Yom Kippur War 301 Israelis were captured by Syria and Egypt, 232 of whom by the Egyptians, 65 by the Syrians and 4 by the Lebanese. The majority of them were captured in the first stage of that war. Some Israeli soldiers reported after their release about the difficult conditions they faced: they were severely beaten by their captors, sometimes making them unconscious, while many reported that they were being investigated under torture.

Known Israeli MIAs

• Yehuda Katz, an IDF soldier of the 362nd battalion declared missing after the Battle of Sultan Yacoub in Lebanon on June 12, 1982.
• Ron Arad, an IDF F-4 Phantom II navigator, was lost over Lebanon on October 16, 1986.
• Guy Hever disappeared on duty in the Golan Heights on August 17, 1997.

October 7th and aftermath

During the Hamas October 7 invasion of Israel, 251 people were abducted from Israel into the Gaza strip. Of these, at least 23 were IDF soldiers, while the rest were Israeli civilians (both Jewish and non-Jewish), and foreign workers. Seven of the soldiers taken hostage were taken from the Nahal Oz military base, near the Kibbutz Nahal Oz, during the Nahal Oz attack. All seven were females. One was rescued three weeks after being taken hostage, the body of another was recovered in November 2023, and the other five were released in January 2025 as part of the second Gaza war ceasefire. The remainder of the soldiers taken captive include Colonel Asaf Hamami, the highest ranking officer whose body was abducted, Sergeant Major Muhammad Alatrash an Israeli from the Bedouin community, and Edan Alexander, an Israeli-American citizen. Alexander was released on May 12, 2025 as a "gesture of goodwill toward US President Donald Trump."

Recovered MIAs and KIAs

The remains of several Israeli soldiers missing and killed in action have been recovered.

Procedure and guidelines

According to Reuben Yardor, a military intelligence leader of the Yom Kippur War, the automatic assumption they made was that all that's known to their captured soldiers is also known to the captors.

Several publicized stories of Israeli prisoners of war were:

• Corporal Uri Ilan, undercover soldier in the Golani Brigade who committed suicide in a Syrian prison in 1955, leaving a note in which he wrote, "I did not betray."
• Lieutenant Colonel Avi Nir, fighter pilot shot down and captured during the Yom Kippur War, died in captivity without revealing secrets to his captors. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Courage, for "[He] was tortured to death by investigators but revealed no information. Doing so demonstrates loyalty and supreme sacrifice."
• Lieutenant Amos Levinberg, intelligence officer taken captive by the Syrians in the beginning the Yom Kippur War, and gave his captors a lot of information. He was eventually released in a prisoner exchange.

See also

• Gilad Shalit
• Disappearance of Ron Arad
• Majdi Halabi
• List of Israeli prisoner exchanges

Notes

Further reading

• Kaplan, Danny (July 31, 2008). "Commemorating a suspended death: Missing soldiers and national solidarity in Israel". American Ethnologist. 35 (3). Wiley-Blackwell: 413–427. doi:. ISSN .
• , US Congress, November 8, 1999
• Alexander Bligh (16 March 2017). . Lexington Books. ISBN 978-0-7391-9472-0.

External links

• 2018-04-03 at the Wayback Machine of the IDF