Thursday, November 30, just after 7:00 a.m. Yuval Castleman left his apartment on Palmach Street in Mevaseret Zion and got into the rented Mazda (his car was disabled due to an accident). His friends and family were convinced that he was returning the same day to his reserve duty in the Home Front Command, but he had other plans. The day before, he called his commander in the army and asked to extend his leave a bit, saying that he had important things to close in his work at the Civil Service Commission. The commander said there was no problem, and they would meet next week.
Yuval was well acquainted with the way to the office on Kaplan Street. The immigration to Jerusalem, the lively traffic. But as he approached the entrance to the city, he heard gunfire coming from the direction of the bus stop on the other side of the road. Someone who was formerly a policeman and served in the Border Police had no doubt about the order of operations. He took the Glock pistol and charged off. Once someone from the office asked why he needed a weapon. "If something happens along the way," he explained.
Castleman crossed the street, strove for contact and hit the terrorists, but then came the unnecessary shots, which interrupted the course of his life. His attempts to explain that he was one of ours did not help by raising his hands and shouting in Hebrew, he was shot by reserve soldier Aviad Frija and later died in hospital. He was 38.
"During the shiva, two parents who recently lost their sons arrived – one in the fighting in Gaza and the other at a party in Re'im – and each of their children saved the lives of others," says Moshe Castleman, Yuval's father. "To one of them, who came to cheer, I said, 'I feel that my son was executed.' He said, 'Don't say that, he was a hero.' I replied that many heroes have emerged since October 7, but the circumstances in which my son found his death, that scenario of the last seconds, and how he felt when he realized that he was the target and did everything to save his life, and yet a soldier in uniform killed him - that's what is shocking."
, Photo: Arik Sultan
It's been a rocky two weeks for the Castleman family since then. It is not only the shocking death, but also a series of omissions that raise questions about who we entrust our security to. Just this week, the family was forced to bury their son again, after the body was exhumed for autopsy. "All the innocence that existed in us is gone," says Noga, Yuval's sister. "After all, they always tell the child, 'If something happens, call a policeman,' but how can we trust them now?"
Yuval is the only son of Moshe and Etty, who separated when he was in kindergarten. His parents started new families, his mother moved to Kiryat Yam, while his father married Tammy and stayed in Kiryat Tivon. Yuval often went there even when he was a pupil at a boarding school in Maalot, and until recently, for Friday dinners.
That Thursday, Moshe left for his regular volunteer service in the traffic police. "I started a shift at 7:00 A.M. and heard in the background that there had been an attack with dead people in Jerusalem. "My wife Tammy is not like me. Shaked, our son, also works and lives in Jerusalem, so she sent him a message and he said everything was fine. She didn't ask Yuval, because we knew that on that day he was returning to reserve duty in Petah Tikva."
Want to believe, and can't
No red lights went on when Rotem, Yuval's other sister, received a call at 10:20 A.M. from the Jerusalem Police Department. She thought it was a mistake and hung up. "At 16:50 p.m., we're sitting, having a leisurely coffee. Then they call Noga from the police and ask: 'Do you know why we have your brother's things?' She says no. Hang up. Two minutes later, they called again, so she handed me the phone and the policeman said: 'I have your son's cellphone, wallet and weapon. Of course I won't return the weapons, but if you want the rest of the belongings, they're in the Jerusalem court.' I asked: 'Can you explain why they are at your place?' He asked: 'Don't you know?' and hung up. Movie. A few minutes later, he called and said: 'Everything is fine. There was an attack in the morning, your son was apparently evacuated to Hadassah Ein Kerem.' They started shouting hysterically in the house, and I calmed down: 'He said everything was fine, what's the pressure?'"
Moshe, Tammy and Noga got into the car and made their way to Hadassah Hospital. "We called there from the road, read Yuval's ID number, and answered: 'We don't know. He may have come as an unknown person,'" Moshe recalls. "We kept inquiring. They said, 'He's probably at Shaare Zedek Hospital.' We called there and they said there was an unknown person in intensive care. We arrived around 19:00 P.M. and it turns out that he had already been identified, using a fingerprint. He underwent surgery all day, receiving more than 40 units of blood. When we got there, they said they were trying another procedure, because the bleeding in my stomach continued."
Prime Minister's Spokesperson's Office
Moshe announced the updates he had received to Amit Shelaf, Yuval's friend from military service, who rushed to the hospital. Guy Itzkovich, Yuval's close friend from the days when they shared a patrol car with the Haifa police, was also on his way from his home in Kiryat Haim. "A colleague called when I was in the car and said, 'You have nothing to come to,'" Guy recalls. "I refused to believe it. Yuval was my driver at the wedding, attended the birth of my children. We used to talk twice a day. I said that maybe a colleague is wrong, after all, he is a lawyer and not a doctor. Maybe he doesn't know. I stopped on the side of the road and cried."
At that time, the first video of what happened at the scene began circulating online in the morning. Shaked, Yuval's brother, saw and did not want to tell his parents, but when he heard from a forensic investigator that the body would be released for burial without an autopsy, he began to raise his first questions at the hospital.
"We didn't understand how he thought about it," Tammy recalls, "Shaked asked the forensic officer: 'Surely they won't need an autopsy? No bullets? It is important for us to know how this happened. Let there be no way we will be buried and God forbid we will have to exhume him from the grave.' The forensic officer said an officer decided there was no need for an autopsy."
The funeral was scheduled for the next day, Friday, at 12:00 noon at the cemetery in Kiryat Tivon, but as the hours passed, more questions arose. Those who raised doubts were mainly Amit, Yuval's friend, a criminal lawyer by profession, who said that something smelled bad about the conduct.
Shaked, the brother, received the phone number of Superintendent Nadav Kogan, who signed the memo stating that there is no need for an autopsy. The name was familiar to Shaked, and indeed - it turned out that the officer's son had trained with him in basketball. He picked up the phone, and Kogan agreed to come to the Castelmans' home in Tivon and explain. They arranged for him to arrive on Saturday afternoon, not at shiva, when the house is busy.
"He came with a binder that was all about the terrorists in the incident," says Moshe, the father. "Amit, Yuval's friend, sat here loaded and asked questions: 'How is it possible that an autopsy was not performed?' There was no need,' was the reply. "We are not investigators, not a commission of inquiry." We understand that there are enormous failures and failures here, and it is our job to cry out as a bereaved family."
Yuval's sister, Noga, says: "I don't really know the material, but its words didn't make sense to me. There were people here who said: 'He came to us especially, unpleasant, maybe he speaks the truth,' and you want to believe and can't. We gave the police two phone numbers of witnesses they didn't even know."
"It was an addicted game"
Crowds came to seven, many of whom did not even know the family, but were shocked by the tragic incident. There were also those who came to shed more light on the failure – among them Michael Tamim, who told the family that he was at the entrance to Jerusalem that day and approached Yuval, who was lying wounded on the road. He opened his wallet containing his ID card, saw that he was a Jew and alerted the security forces and medical teams, who did not approach Castleman in the first few minutes.
Tamim said that Yuval did not speak, but gestured to him with his hand "phone" and pointed in the other direction of the road. He realized that the wounded man's cell phone was in the car. He went over there, took the device and gave the items he found to a police officer at the scene. He said, "These are his."
, Photo: Arik Sultan
"Instead of sending Yuval an ID to the hospital, the police took his belongings and sent him with the key to the rental car," Moshe says. "He came as an anonymous person. I handle road accidents as a volunteer in the traffic police, and know how to proceed. There is a casualty officer whose job it is to notify when someone is killed in an accident. Coming to the family. Where was all that?"
During the shiva, the Castleman family was exposed to the failures of that black day. She heard soldier Aviad Frija tell Channel 14's "The Patriots" program about the incident: "All IDF soldiers are dying to do X, what do you think?" Frija replied: "Yes, we shot until they fell." Magal concluded, "Great congratulations, blessed be you. Thank you for what you are doing for the people of Israel."
Then came the video, which revealed the doubts. Yuval is seen begging for his life, raises his hands and is shot dead. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, when asked about the attack and the policy of distributing weapons, replied: "The presence of armed civilians often saves lives and prevents a major disaster. In the current situation, we must continue with this policy. We may pay a price for it – that's life."
"Yinon Magal and Netanyahu called me," Moshe says. "I used to have awe of officials, but this time I didn't stop. I said to Magal: 'You're a veteran interviewer, didn't you notice the smugness when he told you, 'We lay down, we ran,' didn't you see that something was wrong?' I told Netanyahu: 'They asked you about weapons policy. I am not warning about the distribution of weapons, but am talking about the skill and responsibility of the bearer of weapons. Refine procedures.' They came to me from Australian television and asked: 'Is the distribution of weapons here similar to that in the United States?'
I said there was no room for comparison. We are on the first line of confrontation, exposed to attacks from within and without. Only those who use weapons must be competent, aware of responsibility, know the rules of engagement and know that if they do not follow them, they will be severely punished. That's the message, and public leaders haven't conveyed it strongly enough. To say, 'This is life'?"
Did it happen because of the trigger-happy hand?
Moshe: "Something about the shooter was completely crooked, between arena, reality, facts, and what was interpreted in him. Everyone understood the scene and what happened in it, and it was as if he came from another world. Why was I angry? I have a weapon, and I was a fighter at the time. Every sensible person understands that when you enter the arena, if you don't understand what's going on, don't intervene. Intervene only when you are sure. If you see Yuval shooting at a terrorist, do you think he's a terrorist? It's incomprehensible."
Tami: "If Yuval had been injured in the incident because he was shot by a terrorist or by a report (two-sided fire), we would have been hurt and sad, but we would not have been angry. In this case, Yuval managed to neutralize a terrorist and it was all over. If I hadn't stumbled, nothing would have happened to him. Even when he raised his hands, he opened them to show that he did not have a switch to activate an explosive device. Follow the book."
Noga: "I see him in the video so helpless that I understand that no matter what he did, he would just kill him. Addicted game."
We want reliable police
Moshe said that the rabbi of Kiryat Tivon said that Frige's family had contacted him and asked for a letter to be forwarded through him. "I told him: 'I'm ready to check it out next Yom Kippur. That's not on the agenda right now.'"
In Freige's first remand extension, Lt. Col. Toby Hart, Vice President of the Beit Lid Military Tribunal, wrote: "It is not possible to determine clearly whether already at this stage (the soldier's fire) the deceased was hit by gunfire, whether the suspect's gunfire or whether he fired from another source. Taking into account the fact that no bullets were found in the body of the deceased and no autopsy was conducted, it is highly doubtful whether it will be possible to determine beyond a reasonable doubt at what stage the deceased sustained injuries that would have led to his eventual death."
., Photo: None
Frija was placed under house arrest, and there were already those who raised the possibility of exhuming the body from the grave and dissecting it. "It's a tough decision. It's not contrary to Jewish law, but it's an affront to the dignity of the dead," Moshe says. "I asked if there had been such cases. Rabbi Landau, who is the rabbi of the Institute of Forensic Medicine, called and said that once, say, a person lived in a certain place and they didn't have time to get to bury him before Shabbat began - then they would bury him temporarily and then transfer. There are lenient laws, but I was pretty much directed not to do so. They said, 'Only if you're sure,' and left the decision to me because they understood how difficult it was. My inclination was not to. Only then they said that a CT scan determined that there were metal parts in her body. If so, the autopsy is inevitable, otherwise they won't be able to prove what happened."
It emerged that when Castleman arrived at the hospital on 30 November, a CT scan revealed metal parts of his body, but the hospital explained that police investigators had not spoken to them. Castleman's body was exhumed from the grave and not only metal parts, but also a bullet were extracted from it. "I said, 'Where is the moment when they say, 'I was wrong, right, we'll check'? They continue to spread lies and justify their actions," Moshe is furious at the conduct of the investigation. "I'm sure they prayed all night that nothing would be found, and the fact that they found it broke everything in us."
Did someone call to apologize?
"The police commissioner entered into a private conversation with me during the swearing-in. He came to comfort, and not to say, 'We're not okay.' In the room he said: 'They'll say so, don't believe it, wait for the end of the interrogation.' I knew I was going to be interviewed that night, and I felt uncomfortable. I called a police officer I know and said, 'Send a message that we're angry. Huge omissions have been discovered.' The commander of the Jerusalem Special Operations Unit called me: 'I understand that you are angry, charged, I want to come and answer questions.' I told him: 'We intend to come to Jerusalem on Monday, we will decide and sit down.' I was interested in who would come to the meeting, I said there would be two lawyers with us. I got a message that he was only willing to meet if we came to his office at the court.
"I said that in the situation I'm in, I don't have to feel like a suspect and come to the media for a photo. What in the end was? We asked the SWAT officer for medical documents, they said: 'Let's take it,' and when our representative arrived, they issued a statement that they had met with a representative of the family. We have no other country, no other police. You can't say, 'That's what's there.' We want strong, reliable police. They will investigate, find who is guilty, bring justice and clean up the system so that such things do not happen. That's the requirement."
This week, State Prosecutor Amit Isman instructed the Police Investigations Department to examine the conduct of the investigative team that handled the circumstances of Castelman's death, and also asked the head of the Police Investigations and Intelligence Division not to conduct an investigation on their behalf until the Police Department has completed its work. "Why did you have to scream for so many days for this?" sighs Tammy. "Every day something more was discovered."
Man of Justice
On Monday of this week, the Castleman family went to Jerusalem for the Civil Service Commission, where a ceremony was held in memory of Yuval, who worked in recent years in the senior staff administration. "Every senior appointment you want to make to the Appointments Committee, there are materials that the Commission prepares," says Ilan Ram, head of the Senior Staff Administration. "We examine the materials relative to the requirements and see if the candidate meets them. Yuval was one of those responsible, so think about how much work he has had over the past two years, with the change of governments. This week, a meeting is planned with materials that Yuval has prepared. I look at it with tears in my eyes."
From there the family went down to Mevaseret Zion, where Yuval lived, under the house of the apartment owner Yaffa Pinchas. "During the sirens, we sat together in the safe room," Pinchas says. "I've been dysfunctional since the incident, I can't digest how such a good person ends his life like this. Lying in the hospital without knowing who he is. If I had known, I wouldn't have left him."
Tammy laughs and says that this is the first time they entered Yuval's apartment without him. "He kept his privacy and was laconic in descriptions. ' We went there with the guys,' 'We were at a party.' He only made headlines, but after checking off a few things, he told us and his friends that he was ready to settle down, including a relationship. He wouldn't like the publicity now. He was happy to be complimented on the professionalism with which he operated, but nothing more. We learned a lot about him in the seven."
Gondar Arik Yaakov, commander of the Northern District of the IPS, was the commander of a company in the Border Police that supervised the Mount Gilo area near Jerusalem, when Yuval was a soldier. "I set up a special operations team in the company, and he was one of the commanders," Yaakov said. "One day we received a report about an incident on the Ein Yael route leading to Jerusalem, and his team was one of those who caught a terrorist squad on its way to an attack. A fighter with a high work ethic, punctual, brave. I saw the videos, and his reaction was that of a skilled fighter, even though he hadn't been in the line of fire for years. I told his father: 'If you had told him just before he stormed out that these were the risks, Yuval would still have responded.' A hero."
Guy Itzkovich, who shared a patrol car with Yuval in the Haifa Police Department 15 years ago, and since then they have been inseparable, said: "A man was right. Wouldn't sleep at night if something wasn't done properly. There was a night shift when I was home. He called and said: 'There's an apartment that's supposed to be empty, and I suspect there are prisoners in it. Tomorrow, when we work overnight, we'll check.' We followed up, brought in another force, and there were 13 prisoners inside the apartment, three of whom were wanted Shin Bet agents. Until they emptied the house, he didn't calm down. Yuval loved to do things until the end."
This week, on Sunday, at 22:00 P.M., Castleman was buried again in the Kiryat Tivon cemetery. There is no dull moment in his tragic death. A small funeral of family and friends. "It was one of the worst moments of my life," says his sister Noga. "Suddenly, members of Chevra Kadisha put a sealed bag in the grave. We asked what it was, and they said it was his clothes. We were agitated, shouting: 'Wait, wait!' We wondered if something else should be removed from the grave. My heart was pounding, and then they said, 'This is the shroud and sheet we wrapped it in.'"
Tammy looks at Noga and says, "Usually when a tragic event happens and there are seven, you get sucked into private grief and get to know another life. That's not where we get to that. Every time there is something new. Yuval would make sure things were checked, that's his will."
Since October 7, we have known great people every day who pass away too soon. Defend, fight, save. But here we are talking about a hero with a completely unnecessary ending. "We were 15 years apart," says Noga, 23. "He would always do the unbelievable for me, someone with tremendous powers. Next year I wanted to study in Jerusalem, and since he and Shaked live there, I felt that I would get closer to them and have a common experience. I've heard from others that Yuval maintained the honorable status of Big Brother, saw himself as someone who should be an example for us, and I still can't understand how he fought with such courage. There was a moment when I tried to digest the deed, and I felt my legs shake with fear. How did he go decisively, with steady hands, how?"
Frige's lawyers, Adv. Shlomi Zippori and Adv. Ran Cohen-Rochberger, said in response: "Aviad Freija is an IDF reserve soldier, a normal citizen, with no criminal record whatsoever. He cooperated fully with the investigation and answered all questions. Frija said immediately after the incident that he believed in absolute good faith that the deceased was one of the terrorists, who was still a danger and was trying to get up and escape. This belief was reasonable under the circumstances, as unfortunately happens more than once in operational activity, when there is a mistaken identification.
"Several other shooters were active at the scene, and as the judge wrote, the investigation materials provide significant indications that the deceased was significantly injured by gunfire even before he waved his hands and threw down his weapon. This is a terrible tragedy in which the hero of Israel, Yuval Castleman, z"l, lost his life, but its correction will not come in another tragedy and injustice against Aviad Freija, who strove to make contact with terrorists who shot civilians indiscriminately. Frija will continue to cooperate with the MPIU investigation. Since the soldier learned of the death of Adv. Castleman, z"l, his soul is in pain and knows no rest. The hearts of the warrior and his wife and the hearts of his family go out to the grieving family of the deceased, who was one of the best sons of this country."
The Israel Police said: "Our hearts are with the family and we share in our sorrow over the tragic loss of their son Yuval z"l in the murderous shooting attack. Since the matter has been referred to the DIP for examination, we are prohibited from commenting until the investigation is completed."
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