Ron Arad (pilot)

Ron Arad ( Hebrew רון ארד; born May 5, 1958 in Hod Hasharon ) is a weapons systems officer in the Israeli Air Force . He has been missing since his plane crashed near Sidon ( Lebanon ) in 1986 . He likely died between 1988 and 1997.

Life

Arad joined the Israel Defense Forces in 1978 and was trained as a weapons systems officer. In 1985 he began studying chemical engineering in Haifa . Arad is married to Tammy and has a daughter named Juval, who was only 15 months old when her father was captured.

crash

On October 16, 1986, he crashed during an attack on PLO positions on board an F-4 Phantom II over Sidon. A bomb that exploded too early damaged the aircraft itself and made it necessary to use the ejector seat. Pilot Yishai Aviram was able to get to safety by holding onto the landing skids of an Israeli helicopter in a dramatic action . Arad, on the other hand, was captured by the Shiite Amal militia . At the time, Amal was under the leadership of Nabih Berri , who later became President of the Parliament of Lebanon. The Israeli government negotiated with him for months through middlemen about the release. In the following period Arad was the subject of various negotiations between Israel and Hezbollah with the participation of the German Federal Intelligence Service .

Disappearance

In response, Israel captured several members of the Amal, including their leader Mustafa Dirani in 1994. During interrogation, the latter stated that he had initially hid Arad in a small village on the Bekaa plain . In 1988 he handed him over to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard , which probably took him to Iran . In February 1995 the then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin declared that German negotiators had negotiated with Iran to release Arad, but had not reached an agreement.

Hassan Nasrallah , head of Hezbollah, told Lebanese reporters in 2006 that Arad was most likely dead and his body had disappeared. Hezbollah searched for his remains and handed over human bones to Israel; Based on DNA analysis , however, it turned out that it was not Arad. Hezbollah published this account in a 2008 report, according to which Arad was shot either immediately after his capture or in 1988 while attempting to escape. A kidnapping to Iran is not mentioned in the report. In October 2007, Hezbollah handed over to the Israeli government a letter probably written by Arad in 1986.

In 2009 a secret report was made public that was alleged to have been drawn up by an Israeli army committee responsible for the case. After that, Arad was brought back to Lebanon seriously ill in the early 1990s and died there between 1993 and 1997, probably in 1995.

See also

Lebanese prisoners as bargaining chips

Web links

• Biography of Ron Arad

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Israeli MIAs. Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, October 23, 2011, accessed April 16, 2012 . 
2. ↑ Navigator Ron Arad has been held hostage for 15 years In: Israelnetz.de , October 17, 2001, accessed on July 25, 2018.
3. ↑ The riddle is solved. Der Spiegel , January 24, 2000, accessed April 16, 2012 . 
4. ↑ ^{a b} Christoph Schult, Holger Stark: Born for freedom. Der Spiegel , September 7, 2009, accessed April 16, 2012 . 
5. ↑ Germany Tried Talks With Iran for Israeli. The New York Times, February 22, 1995, accessed April 16, 2012 . 
6. ↑ Yoav Stern, Eli Ashkenazi: Nasrallah: Hezbollah assumes missing IAF airman Ron Arad is dead. Haaretz , September 6, 2006, accessed April 16, 2012 . 
7. ↑ Israeli pilot missing for years, presumably dead. Neue Zürcher Zeitung , January 19, 2006, accessed on March 13, 2019 . 
8. ↑ Jörg Bremer: The missing Israelis. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , July 15, 2008, accessed on April 16, 2012 . 
9. ^ Israel: Hezbollah Turns Over 1986 Letter From Missing Airman. In: The New York Times of October 23, 2007 (English)
10. ↑ Thorsten Schmitz: Everything imaginable. Süddeutsche Zeitung , September 13, 2009, accessed on April 16, 2012 .