To date, it is unknown exactly how many soldiers fell in the 18 years of the security band • Three fighters carried out a huge investigation: "Sure it is not the full number"
Soldiers leave Lebanon // Photo: Roni Schitzer
Fighters who served in Lebanon's 18-year existence have been battling for years that the State of Israel did not recognize during the Lebanese period as a war. As a result, there is no accurate record of the fighters who fell in battles, ambushes and attacks that have occurred over the years.
Haim Har-Gold journalist Oded Kramer and Yossi Kaufman (Yosipun) embarked on an independent gathering to reach the exact number of fallen in Lebanon, as part of a broad demand for recognition of staying in the Security Strip as a war, and they now report that, according to their examination, 675 soldiers fell in Lebanon, September 1982, End of Operation Galilee Peace, until the withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000. Of these, 414 soldiers fell in the security zone.
They did the research independently, based primarily on the Yizkor website as well as further in-depth research to identify the place and circumstances of the fighters' fall. This is a significantly higher number than the number that appears in various places, including Wikipedia, and they say it is not the final number. "We will emphasize that it is clear to us that not all the names appear on the list - quite a few of them, since they are not at all cataloged as falling in Lebanon on the Yizkor website on which we were based," they point out. "The number is unofficial: it is the result of a manual check that we did among all the IDF's to find the fallen in 18 years of Lebanon - because the state refuses to do so. It's time for Israel to officially recognize this war. "
Speaking to "Israel Today," Kaufman explains that the investigation is part of a struggle he has been waging for many years to get the full numbers from that nameless war. "As early as the 2000s, I asked for a list from the Ministry of Defense and said there was no such thing. I was presented with a list of falls from the first Lebanon war, which ended in 1982, but I want to know about those who fell in the pumpkin, basil and beaufort, not the Lebanon war. Such, but our war - there is none. "
Kaufman says that the investigation was very in-depth, "there were those on the Yizkor website that had nothing written on. Everybody had to check. There was a soldier who went on a chase for terrorists and boarded a cargo, the last soldier we found was a tracker who appears at the 77th memorial. We understood what the tracker's connection to the 77th Battalion was, and we discovered that he was in Lebanon and killed in the Battalion's activities. "
Although the new number is significantly higher than the numbers they have spoken to date, investigators are convinced that this is not the full number. "We are sure that this is not the full number and there are those we did not find. The number we came to, 675 dead, is more than those killed in the Six Day War. Someone should recognize them as war casualties.
In a statement issued by the three, they asked for forgiveness in advance if one or the other person was injured as a result of posting the list. "We collected them ourselves because we learned how to do this: leave no one behind, and do everything to make sure. We apologize in advance to anyone who erred in his case, and to anyone who might be hurt."