The commemoration on the 27th anniversary of the helicopter disaster was held yesterday (Wednesday) at the IDF's memorial base in Beltron and not at the memorial to the fallen in Kibbutz Dafna in the north of the country. The reason for this is the problematic security situation in the north as well as the fact that the people of the kibbutz, including the students of the Har Vagy school, who always participated in the commemorations, were evicted from their homes.
22 years since the helicopter disaster (archive - 30.01.2019) // Ofer Freeman/Frames production
The chairman of "Yad Labanim" Eli Ben Shem, whose son Kobi fell in the disaster that struck Israel in 1997, is pained by the fact that this year the commemoration is not held in the area where the tragedy occurred. Mountain and gorge, it is very difficult," he says in a conversation with Israel Hayom.
"It is very difficult not to do the ceremony there, it is to be far from the place of the fall. Furthermore, until this year, the Chief of Staff and many senior officials in the IDF participated in the ceremony together with the President of the State. This year, no one confirmed his arrival at the ceremony and everyone answered us that if they could, then they would They will come, but it is not certain. We understand that, we understand the situation and the fact that today the top of the IDF cannot come, but it is difficult, the helicopter disaster is the greatest disaster that has happened to the IDF since its establishment and it has always been noted in a much larger way with Lots of public figures. The reduction of the ceremony is difficult for families.''
The helicopter disaster memorial, photo: Eyal Margolin - Gini
621 families were added this year - "It's an amount of about 15 years usually, and it hurts a lot"
Beyond the difficulty in reducing the ceremony and changing the location, Eli Ben Shem spoke with great pain about the families of the fallen who were added to the "Yad Labanim" organization following the Iron Swords War.
"This situation of so many families that were added this year is tearing the old families apart, it hurts us. For example, I was at a family's place to comfort the bereaved and then when I returned home I slept from 6:00 PM until 9:00 PM."
"This reality reopens our wound. In the first days of the war, there were 90 funerals a day and our people participated in all these funerals. Every funeral like this reopens the wounds and it is a huge pain. We have about 1,500 volunteers in the organization and there was, for example, a day with 89 funerals on Mount Herzl, My people are sleeping in the mountain. There is no such situation that we will not come and hug a family and be with them in their shiva despite all the pain," he says.
The memorial to the victims of the helicopter disaster in the Shaar settlement and Kibbutz Dafna, photo: Oren Cohen
400 orphans at very young ages - 2,000 siblings under the age of 18
A very painful point for Ben Shem is the young ages of the widows and orphans in the Iron Swords War.
"Usually we take care of parents over 60 years old, people who are already adults, and those "white hands" usually take care of. But here we have a lot of young widows. We have a lot of young orphans, 2,000 bereaved siblings under the age of 18 and all this at once. The security system and we really go out of our way to help everyone, but this is something we didn't have, it's really a general looting of systems."
"The situation is simply unimaginable, and the Director General of the Ministry of Defense assigned us additional resources and we are reinventing ourselves, but for a long time we have not taken care of such young ages.
The IDF has recruited 80 wounded female officers into the reserve, but it is not enough, there are also psychologists and social workers missing, and we, who actually reach every family, it also takes longer for us now, but we will not leave any family without our support and help. And you have to understand each visit Such, every participation in the funeral is really a dedication of our volunteers because it repeatedly opens the wound that does not heal over the years, yet we come everywhere with love."
A project to commemorate the victims of the 1997 helicopter disaster in Shaar Yishuv and Kibbutz Dafna, in Rabin Square, Tel Aviv, photo: Yehoshua Yosef
"Every day I choose to live anew and it's not easy"
Ben Shem refers to the support that his organization gives to families, and he describes how the activists help to get the family members back on their feet when it comes to Operation Atitan, which is particularly painful: "Unfortunately, a whole family is like a newborn baby. It's a house that was destroyed and now we have to rebuild it, and it's really not easy. People don't go to work, don't get out of bed, the children don't go to school, and we come to this family and together we work to bring it back to normal. For example, there is a couple of parents who, every morning, instead of working, go to visit their daughter's grave. I told them that it was not healthy and that they You have to choose life and move on. And I myself know what it means to choose to move on in life, I get up in the morning with my son and go to bed with him at night, I choose to live anew every day and it's not easy."
Destruction and devastation as a result of the air disaster in which two IDF Yasir helicopters collided in the air and caused the death of 73 fighting soldiers,
"Not every day there are the same forces, it's a constant struggle. And this struggle in the last months is full of pain. Here, today we have 3 funerals, and last week there was a day with 20 funerals, we need to reach these families, wrap them up and we hand over the Our very souls."
were we wrong
We will fix it!
If you found an error in the article, we would appreciate it if you shared it with us