During our interview, a video arrived on the cell phone of Lieutenant N. Sarton.
A brief glance was enough to see that this was another emotional abuse by Hamas.
Noa Argamani, Itai Sabirsky and Yossi Sharabi, who were kidnapped on October 7, spoke in the video.
It later turned out that Svirsky and Sharabi were murdered in Gaza, according to a statement from Kibbutz Bari.
The phone passed between the girls sitting in the room, until Colonel R hissed angrily: "Playing with the minds of the families of the abductees.
These videos are psychological warfare and an attempt to send a message to the government, but our job is to get some more material out of them for the frame story, to understand when and where the video was taken, and as much information as possible for the full picture.
There was the case of Hana Katzir, that Hamas announced that she was dead, and we said, 'No, she is alive.'"
The four women are young, in their mid-20s, but you can be sure that they are the pinnacle of the pinnacle.
All of them were intelligence women in the special operations system, and in the regular service they were engaged in research.
in what?
It is classified.
Therefore, their identity and photo are also prohibited from publication.
All of them had already obtained citizenship, but when the war broke out they were called to flag for a position they did not know at all.
They are the ones who have to attach a status to each missing person and determine if he is alive, dead or kidnapped.
"When we were drafted into the reserves, we expected to do what we did in the regular service," says Colonel H., "only we very quickly realized that we were dealing with prisoners and missing persons.
We didn't know what the role was, it took shape and was built in the process, because this is an event that the state has not yet encountered."
Immediately after the outbreak of the war, when the mess was in full swing, the lists spoke of about 3,000 people whose fate was unclear.
Chief of Staff Hertzi Halevi tasked Major General (ret.) Nitzan Alon to be the commander of the intelligence effort in the field of prisoners and missing persons, and Alon had to organize a team around him that would operate quickly and efficiently.
On a tour of one of the kibbutzim.
"We took the opportunity and went to the houses of the guys we are investigating", photo: IDF spokesman
Lists of disconnected people
Major R. (26) was after a month of agricultural work in the Golan Heights and was preparing for the start of the academic year at Ben-Gurion University. Major H. (26) was preparing for computer science and neuroscience studies and along the way approached job interviews.
Captain S. (25) was on a trip to Italy, just before taking off to study in the USA at the prestigious Columbia University. While Lieutenant N. (24) was with her family in the USA, on a trip after her release, and upon her landing she was scheduled to begin medical studies.
"The war caught me in Los Angeles," Lieutenant N. says.
"They called in the morning and said 'come to the reserve'. I said 'fine, but all the flights to Israel were cancelled'. We looked for the first flight, and a few hours after I arrived I was already at the base."
Captain R arrived in Israel after three flights.
Since she did regular service as a volunteer, they refused to recruit her into the reserves.
She told them: "First recruit, after that we will manage."
Colonel H.: "As soon as the ground maneuver began, a lot of physical materials that had been collected from the Strip arrived, as well as the terrorists themselves.
We went through everything that came.
It was like finding a needle in a haystack.
It is possible that a certain abductor was confirmed two weeks ago, but we only now realized that he is dead"
In the headquarters established by General Alon, in the first days he had to deal with a pile of names of people who had lost contact.
"There was chaos," recalls Major General R. "There were a lot of missing people, some of them alive, but they couldn't find them.
We had to make sure they were with us and delete them from the list.
There were cases of murdered people that took time to identify, and the emphasis was on abductees - to understand who is in Gaza and give them such a title."
At first they received a list of names of missing people, and within a few hours they were asked to return with findings about them.
Update meetings were held every day - and back to the desk.
It started with phone calls to kibbutz members and information that flowed in from all sides, the main thing being to give an initial answer.
"We wanted to bring order to the 'dead-living-abducted' question," says Major General R., "and immediately move on to the next one."
Very technical."
Benir Oz
"We collected samples with people trained for this in order to cross-reference information. I felt like I was in an episode of CSI", photo: IDF spokesperson
Only when the dimensions of the disaster began to become clear was it decided to change the work order.
The girls were divided into kibbutzim.
If Menir Oz was kidnapped on October 7, 76 people - Capt. S. and Lt. Col. R. had to build a case with the help of their teams about each of them: how he was kidnapped, when, by whom, and if he is alive. They were helped by any means - from the terrorists' cameras who documented the horrors and even the remains of the bodies collected by the Zaka people.
"We had difficulty in the kibbutz, because in Nir Oz there was no fighting against the terrorists, except for the standby squad," says Major General R. "There were no things left behind because the terrorists left before the security forces arrived.
So we used other means: testimonials from friends, WhatsApp correspondence in the kibbutz groups.
Any tool to learn the story."
All four understood that a key part of their job would be to go through the horror videos filmed by the terrorists, in order to get a clue about some of the missing.
They were asked if they would be able to cope with the task mentally, and even when they agreed it was made clear to them that at any stage they could leave, or get help from the mental health officers who would be at their disposal.
"Before that, I had never seen a body," admits Major General H, who was in charge of Kibbutz Kfar Gaza events. "I was the most cowardly person in the world.
I haven't seen any movies that have gunfights, but I understood that this was a mission.
You are doing the most important thing in the world and know that there is a family waiting for an answer.
At first it was complex, but we cut off the emotion and tried to look at it like we look at any other information.
One of the reasons I faced it was that I still can't grasp that it's real, or believe that such a terrible thing happened."
Major General R.: "You don't watch the videos to see, because these are things that are hard to digest.
You see that a certain person needs to be identified.
Sometimes I felt the need to watch, because it's a case I'm working on, part of the story of what happened to the kidnapper, and there is an advantage in seeing eyes.
So it's true that there are terrible atrocities there, but there are also terrorists in the background and you can recognize faces, get more information about the kidnapping."
Doesn't it penetrate deep into the soul?
Lieutenant N.: "Many times the feeling is that I am 'on duty', and I felt that for some of us it is a kind of protective shell. You go there and dive the deepest, and you forget yourself in a good way, because in the end that is what needs to be done. Between us there was a kind of saying, 'No stranger He will understand this', and we still feel the crazy dissonance between 'now I'm on duty' and 'I'm also a human being' and there are moments of breaking down and crying."
happened to you?
"We worked continuously, we didn't take breaks, and in the second week I went over material that was difficult for me to watch. It was the first time I said, 'I need air.' I left the PCC and went to breathe for a few minutes.
It was very personal."
Colonel R.: "The video that was perhaps the most difficult to watch is actually one in which the evil did not stand out very much, there was simply a frightened and helpless facial expression of an elderly woman and it was filmed in the most innocent and beautiful place.
The dissonance between the place and the expression caught me more than horrors that are much harder to see."
A few weeks after the outbreak of the war, they set out to explore the area.
"We were such jobbers that on the way we saw launches from Gaza and lay down on the ground. Fighters ran to us, because they thought it was an infiltration. We shouted: 'Don't you see the launches?'. They laughed and said they were launches to the center."
They went through the videos dozens of times to understand what happened and from every angle, because in the end the picture must be perfect in order to make an unequivocal statement.
"There was a video that we didn't know who the abductee was that appeared in it," says Major General R. "We knew how to recognize the area - Kibbutz Nir Oz, and they saw the man in miniature.
We put the material aside and I said we would come back to it when more information arrived.
At the end, one of the investigators on the team suspected that it was a certain abduction.
As soon as we analyzed the video and understood what time it was taken and knew how to cross-reference the time with the times when the other members were kidnapped, we gained enough knowledge to eliminate 'this one, that one, so it's definitely him'."
The story of Emily Hand
Lieutenant N., who was put in charge of the events at Kibbutz Bari, remembers the moving story of 9-year-old Emily Hand, who for many days was thought to have been murdered and her father Thomas even said: "I breathed a sigh of relief when I found out that my daughter was dead, it's better than a kidnapping."
"We tried not to delve into the question of what kind of news each family wanted to receive, but there it was the first time I really fell apart when we realized that Emily had been kidnapped and had to tell her father," says Deputy N.
"This is the first day I remember myself crying. In that case we had to work on two axes at the same time to prove that she was kidnapped and not dead, and her body was not left in Israel either. When she came back I cried from excitement."
Only in Kibbutz Ari there were quite a few tragedies.
Like the long days that passed until they identified the remains of 12-year-old Liel Hatzroni, whose family decided to bury her coffin even before her death.
It happened in the house of Psi Cohen, where 14 hostages were held, a place that was completely destroyed.
"Mostly we felt a circle coming full circle for the families, we went through name after name to understand what happened in that house," Lieutenant N. says.
"I was able to talk to those who survived and go as deep as possible in order to bring a final statement to the families. I am convinced that if thorough work had not been carried out, we would not have been able to determine what happened. It was almost a miracle to bring such awful accurate information and prove that someone is not alive, hard work of the intelligence personnel and the scans. Among other things, our job (in the case of Lyal, AL) was to completely rule out the possibility of a kidnapping, whether she is alive or dead, and as soon as you manage to rule it out, you say, 'She's there, you just have to find her.'"
Emily Hand with her father.
"We had to prove that she was kidnapped and not dead", photo: IDF spokesman
As the days passed, they became more and more professional, in less than four months of work.
They directed Shin Bet personnel regarding the questions to ask captured terrorists. And more than once, when news appeared about abductees who were murdered on October 7, but whose bodies were kept in Gaza, this happened, among other things, thanks to their hard work.
"As soon as the ground maneuver began, a lot of physical materials that had been collected from the Strip arrived," says Colonel H., "and the terrorists themselves."
We went through everything that came.
It was like finding a needle in a haystack.
It is possible that a certain abductor was confirmed two weeks ago, but we only now realized that he is dead."
Is it a hard feeling to find out that an abductee was murdered?
"From the moment you realize that the person is probably dead until you manage to prove it with certainty - you feel the need for the story to come out as quickly as possible. And when you provide the information that makes it possible to determine, there is a sense of relief that now the family also knows and not just you."
Lieutenant N.: "On the one hand, you feel relief and a feeling that we succeeded in the mission, but I felt at the end of every announcement of a death some kind of personal grief, certainly when you already know the abductee. When we know for sure that someone is dead and when it is announced, we change the status on the computer. Although we do not edit A ceremony, but it's a state of honoring the deceased: the team that dealt with the case is gathered and the status is changed."
During the tour they conducted in the kibbutz, they will question soldiers about what they saw in the first days of the war.
"I didn't believe there would be such an added value to the tour," says Captain S.
"The fighters walked the paths with us, entered the houses, remembered things, showed pictures they took, and that helped us close circles"
Determining the death of an abductee is done by a committee of experts of the Ministry of Health, the Institute of Forensic Medicine and the approval of the Chief Rabbi of Israel.
"We are not authorized to determine, but gather the information that can testify that it is a death," says Major General H. "There are cases that are approved by the committee and some that are not.
There were also times when we had to deal with very difficult things.
We had to dive and delve deeper into visual information we hadn't seen before and situations we didn't know her body could reach."
Major General R.: "There are times when you understand that the person is probably dead, but you will not bring him up for discussion in the committee if you have the slightest doubt.
You will arrive at the announcement of death only after you have turned the world over and checked all the directions and made extra tests, because you must not make a mistake.
It is better to make a mistake and say that someone is kidnapped and in the end he will be dead than to say that he is dead and in the end he is alive."
They have never been involved in criminal investigations.
Most of their military service was in the office, in front of intelligence data, and now they are required to solve difficult cases.
Captain S. and Major General R., who were entrusted with the events of Kibbutz Nir Oz, noticed during their work that something was not right for them. The soldiers who searched the kibbutz at the beginning of the war indicated that they found bodies in places where they assumed live people had been kidnapped.
The two took a security guard, and a few weeks after the war broke out, they went to the kibbutz to investigate the area themselves.
"We were such jobbers that on the way, on Route 232, we saw launches from Gaza and we just got out of the vehicle and lay down on the ground," Captain S. says.
"Several fighters ran to us, because they thought it was a terrorist infiltration, and we yelled at them: 'Don't you see the launches?', so they laughed and said they were launches to the center."
They toured the kibbutz with the soldiers of the division and questioned them about what they saw in the first days of the war.
"I didn't believe there would be such an added value to the tour," says Captain S.
"The fighters walked the paths with us, entered the houses, remembered things, showed pictures they took - and that helped us close circles."
Major General R.: "We took the opportunity and went to the houses of guys we are investigating.
I spent 50 minutes in a certain house, trying to analyze the scene of the battle, whether the shot from the window came from inside or outside and whether there were any traces of blood.
We collected samples together with trained people to cross-reference information.
I felt like I was in an episode of CSI."
And so what started out as chaos is now an organized file on each abductee: appearance, habits in life that may identify him, the story of the abduction, who was involved in it, when he lost contact, who he last spoke to, and of course all the videos related to the case.
And suddenly - flesh and blood people
On November 24, some of the folders on the computer became flesh and blood people when the first abductees returned to Israel: they were 12 of the Nir Oz abductees, the next day the people of Bari, followed by some of the Kfar Gaza abductees.
"On the one hand it was incredible, on the other hand it was accompanied by the breakup of families. You know that the wife comes back and they go to tell her that her husband was murdered," says Captain S.
"On the first day, Colonel R. and I really wanted to go to the hospital and hug the returnees, but we said they didn't know us.
They will have no idea who is jumping on them, and that you have been working for two months and just waiting for them to come back."
Major General H: "It was a strange feeling.
People who are computer characters, that we know everything about, suddenly get off the bus and they are real.
Every time I see Agam Goldstein-Almog being interviewed - as far as I'm concerned, she's mine.
I know her best, and she doesn't know about my existence.
It's wierd".
For Deputy N., the return of Jordan Roman-Gat was particularly exciting.
During the period of captivity, the officer met with Alon, Jordan's husband, who asked to tell about what happened on October 7.
"While we were talking, 3-year-old Gefen arrived, a stunning girl. I heard from Alon that he told her that mom was lost and they are looking for her, and you can't ignore it. As much as you feel like you have infinite motivation, now even more so. For me, there was no way that the girl wouldn't You will receive her mother, and when Jordan came back I had rivers of tears. I didn't get to meet them, and I have a dream to meet some of the freed people, but there is also something right about being the most involved and on the other hand doing the work separately."
Yordan Roman-Gat in a meeting with her daughter Gefen.
Emotional involvement,
Major General R: "The emotional connection is inevitable.
Many times I ask if the essay contributes or harms my work.
At the end of the mission is to investigate, and in order to help them I have to be the best.
If the connection gives motivation and strength - it's good, but if it hurts - you have to find the balance."
Captain S.: "I developed a good relationship with the brother of one of the abductees, and at some point he wanted to know what the intelligence was about his brother and I couldn't go into detail. So there was a moment when I called him and burst into tears that I'm sorry I can't tell. It's heartbreaking to know that he wants to do everything for His brother and you prevent him from knowing more. The only situations in which I cried were when I felt that we disappointed families who were waiting for a final answer, and we were unable to give them enough. You see intelligence material in front of your eyes and you cannot say one hundred percent that it is the specific abductor. This is the most frustrating feeling, because there is a family that is waiting for an answer ".
For Deputy N., the return of Jordan Roman-Gat was particularly exciting.
During the captivity she met Alon, Jordan's husband.
"While they were talking, their daughter, 3-year-old Gefen, arrived. Alon told her that mother was lost and they were looking for her. When Jordan returned, I had rivers of tears."
Captain S. actually met with some abductees.
She came to Shiva for the death of the late Ronen Engel, who fell in battle while protecting his family and his body was kidnapped, and met his family there as well as Yochaved Lifshitz, who had returned from Gaza.
I remember there was a conversation about tattoos and where he had tattoos and we were silent, but we knew exactly where they were.
You don't want them to feel embarrassed that you know them so well, while they don't know you at all."
I asked where they are in the discussions on whether to continue the war until Hamas is defeated, or return the abductees as a first priority.
"It's lucky that we don't have to decide," admits Colonel R. "I feel that my experience of the war is being kidnapped - and that's it.
I have no idea what's going on in combat.
Yesterday I sat with a friend, who is in the reserves, and our language is completely different.
We are both dealing with war, but on different issues."
But you can understand what it's like to be held captive for more than 100 days.
"I can understand how unimaginable it is."
"The fighters walked the paths with us, entered the houses, remembered things, showed pictures they took - and that helped us close circles."
The three female officers, photo: Eric Sultan
"It's a terrible feeling to disconnect"
Captain S returned to the US at the end of the month to begin her studies at Columbia University. She wanted to stay, but the university pressured. "It's a terrible feeling to disconnect," she admits. "The feeling now is a kind of guilt, you're no longer there and there are strange signals.
Let's say, I'm walking down the street, I see objects, and I think 'maybe they belong to one of the abductees' - and then I realize I'm in the US."
What was it like to start school? The universities in the USA are not really in our favor.
"You feel the disconnection and alienation. We had a class on race theory, and one of the students said he would be happy to hear the professor's opinion on race theory in connection with the war in Gaza. A heat wave went through my body, my pulse went up, and the professor responded in a good way and said there was nothing to do with it. On the day I arrived, they asked the students where they come from and I was afraid to tell. I kept silent. The dean asked me at the end where I was from, so I answered 'from Israel'. She said that I would always feel safe at the university, and it was quite exciting."
Lieutenant N.: "At the end of every death announcement, I felt personal grief. When we know for sure that someone has died, we change the status on the computer. We don't hold a ceremony, but it is a state of honoring the deceased: the team that dealt with the case is gathered and the status is changed."
The rest are still in uniform, going through new details every day, returning to old videos, trying to complete another piece of the puzzle.
"I've always been interested in dealing with intelligence, and even more so when the ultimate goal is people," says Major General H. "Although I'm starting a new job at Microsoft, I know that people will get along with the current operating system and the world won't collapse if there isn't a new one.
This world really appeals to me."
Major General R.: "We got to work a little with the police, with researchers whose profession is quite similar but also different, because in the end there is also the world from which we come - the intelligence research, and something in combination creates a new role.
I don't know if I'll want to deal with it in the future, but I feel that the service here has given me tools for any role I'll take - task management, dynamism, creativity, redefining yourself and changing on the fly."
Lieutenant N., who started medical studies, also knows that the last few months have changed something in her perception.
"There was a stage when working here really challenged me, because we dealt a lot with death and this changes the perspective since I have never met him so intense and violent. For me, it actually sharpened the understanding that I want to do something good. It sounds big, but we saw so much Bad, that I have to balance."
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