Eyal Avitan, 30, is a native of Tiberias, the largest city in the Sovev Kinneret (around Lake Kinneret) region of Israel that is partnered with Milwaukee in Partnership 2000.
He works as a project manager in a technology company. He lives in Netanya, has a wife and a 2-year-old son, and in his free time studies for a university degree and likes to play basketball.
But Avitan also comes from one of thousands of Israeli families wounded by the loss of a loved one in the Jewish state’s perpetual battle against its many enemies.
In October 2000, Avitan’s younger brother Adi and two other young Israeli soldiers were patrolling along the border with Lebanon when they were kidnapped and killed by members of Hezbollah, the anti-Israel Islamist terrorist organization.
Hezbollah kept the soldiers’ bodies for some 1,200 days, releasing them in exchange for prisoners in January 2004.
Today, five other Israeli soldiers are still being held captive: three kidnapped this past summer, Gilad Shalit in Gaza, and Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev in Lebanon; Guy Hever, who disappeared from the Golan Heights in 1997 and who a Syrian group this past February claimed it was holding; and Ron Arad, an air force navigator shot down over Lebanon in 1986 and whose whereabouts and condition remain unknown.
The International Coalition for Missing Israeli Solders also lists Zachary Baumel, Tzvi Feldman and Yehuda Katz, captured in 1982, as “presumed to be alive.”
Rakefet Ginsberg, shlichah (Israel emissary) to Milwaukee and director of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s Israel Center, said the Milwaukee Jewish community’s ceremony marking Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day for its fallen in wars and terrorist attacks, will be dedicated to those soldiers.
Avitan will come to Milwaukee to speak about his brother, his family’s efforts to get him back, and “all the peradventure and helplessness that we were feeling in those days,” he wrote in an e-mail interview.
Avitan said he has spoken in Israel and “around the world” during the time his brother was in Lebanon, but “we went back to our anonymity” after the body was returned.
He wrote that it is not difficult for him to speak about his brother now. “We want to remember Adi’s story” and mention it at every opportunity.
And he believes he can help Diaspora Jews to “learn about the Israeli MIAs [missing in action] and learn about our story and how the families survive in this nightmare.”
Milwaukee’s Yom HaZikaron ceremony will take place on Sunday, April 22, 6 p.m., at Congregation Sinai. Activities and child care for children 8 and younger are available from 6 to 7:30 p.m., at no charge, but registration is required.
For additional information, contact Ginsberg, 414-390-5705, or Dorene Paley, 414-967-8217.
Loading ...