Missing in Israel
Since the founding of the state, there have been about 600 cases of citizens who disappeared without a trace in Israel. Every year, an average of about 20 new missing persons are added. Most of the missing are elderly people who got lost and were not found. So if you see a strange elderly person wandering around, don't ignore it. Approach them, try to find out if this person knows their way around or if they got lost, or call the police.
The Israel Police receives about 25,000 reports of missing persons per year, but most of them are found close to the time the complaint is received, located in the first 12 to 48 hours. The reasons for the absences are varied and include, among other things, running away from home, medical conditions such as dementia, psychotic conditions, criminal involvement, accidents or a personal desire to disappear in order to turn a new leaf under a new identity without leaving a trace. Sometimes these are people who are in great debt and flee the country or live under a false identity in a remote place, sometimes these are people who repent and disappear in yeshiva or return to the question and mingle in the city under a new name. There are also children who disappear.
The missing man who gave a divorce from hiding
One of the rabbis in Haifa once said that a man who was involved in criminal activities, in conflict with a drug dealer and violent groups, decided one day to disappear. He left the country under a false identity and moved to another continent, leaving behind his parents, his wife, and his children who declared him missing. No one knew what had become of him. The family was in anguish. They didn't know where to look, they thought he had been murdered, and difficult days passed. More than ten years passed like this, and then his father passed away, and as if out of nowhere the man made contact.
How did he find out? He probably followed the advertisements and saw a mourning notice. In a roundabout way, he contacted family friends in Israel, felt he wanted to comfort his mother, say Kaddish, perhaps inherit something. The friends reminded him that he left behind a wife and children in Israel, and that he should give her a divorce because she was agunah and could not continue her life. He agreed to do this on the condition that they not reveal his details and where he lived, and so, with the help of the rabbis, he passed the divorce on to his wife.
Every year, about 15 to 20 people are missing and considered long-term missing. Months pass and there is no trace of them. This small percentage of missing people who cannot be located in the first few days remains missing. Sometimes these are people who were killed or murdered and buried without leaving a trace, and only in a few cases is something found from them that will tell the story of the disappearance.
Families waiting for answers
A woman who came to me said that her 15-year-old daughter had gone downstairs in flip-flops to get the mail, and never came back. They searched everywhere, asked, investigated, tried to find out what had happened to her, and were unable to find out. They didn't know if she had a boyfriend, they didn't know if she had a falling out with anyone or was in contact with criminals. As far as they knew, she was a good, sweet girl who went downstairs to get the mail and never came back.
Since then, her mother has not stopped worrying, fearing, and suffering. Since then, her mother has not stopped wondering what happened to her, missing her, hoping that she is alive and that one day she will return. No one knew what happened, where she was, if she was kidnapped, if something happened to her, if she was killed or murdered and someone buried her body in the place where she disappeared. About two years after the disappearance, a man was caught who claimed to have been the girl's partner during the period surrounding her disappearance. Since then, the family has heard nothing about him or the girl.
The pain of the families of the missing is unimaginable. They are torn between hope and despair, between endless searches and the realization that they may never receive an answer. They deal with economic, emotional, and social difficulties – and without an organized support system. Unlike the families of military missing persons, who have accompaniment and support from the state, the families of civilian missing persons are left alone in their struggle.
In 2015 they established Varda and Shuki Minibitsky The association ""Without them," A year after their son דניאל The organization's goal is to help families and fight for their rights. It currently represents 69 families of missing persons, who continue to hope for a miracle.
Despite efforts to locate the missing, significant challenges remain in addressing the issue, both in terms of locating the missing and in supporting their families. Every year, approximately 15 to 20 people go missing in Israel, including children and teenagers. The Israel Police operates special units to locate missing persons and publishes details of missing persons, including children, on its website in the hope of receiving information from the public. However, there are challenges in tracking and locating, especially in cases that last a long time. The reasons for the absence of children and teenagers are diverse and include running away from home, kidnapping, accidents, or medical conditions. In some cases, especially among teenagers, the absence stems from a personal desire to get away or escape from difficult situations, which does not always end well. The absence of children and teenagers is a painful and complex phenomenon that causes deep sorrow in families. The process requires cooperation between the authorities, families, and the general public, to increase awareness and improve the search and assistance system for families.
The Brave Dog and Volunteer Unit
Has been operating for 20 years The National Canine Unit, Which began as a local defense and has become a central civilian body in locating missing persons. This is a unit that relies solely on volunteers, without state funding. They use dogs, drones, boats, jeeps and advanced technological means. But above all – they stay in the field. "We search for 3, 5 days in a row, we don't leave until there is no finding," says My uncle Miblom The commander of the northern dog unit, the man responsible for the activity from Hadera north. "Unfortunately, recently there have been more cases of missing people from the northern region," says Meblum. He says that the unit has different types of dogs and innovative equipment - drones, boats, jeeps and other means, with the valuable resource being the volunteers who know the country well.
Uncle Mayblom: "We know every corner of the urban and natural areas very well because we scout a lot, walk the entire State of Israel. There is no place in the north that we haven't gone to. There is always activity. Either we are training or handling cases. The budget comes from donations, and people give of themselves without any payment, donating their time and their skills. The state does not budget for this. We are in cooperation with the police units. The police units are more active in locating weapons and drugs, and we come to help anyone who needs it, whether it is the army, police, security forces, emergencies and any situation that requires locating and searching.
"Most of the volunteers are working people, and only about 30 people are constantly active for the benefit of the issue. There are guys before the army, there are retirees. We have our own school where we teach the subject of searching, and the young people who study become very sought after in the IDF. The retirees are constantly on alert and if they are needed, they come immediately. We have people in every city, and the association keeps the dogs. People want to give us dogs, but they are not always suitable. We train attack dogs, for situations where deterrence is needed during searches, or when it is necessary to catch a suspicious person who is running away, and search dogs. There are suitable dogs for each task. During the task, the handler has complete control over the dogs. Noise, dust, explosions, nothing distracts the dogs from the task, and the handler also has to stay focused because the dogs sense it.
"We arrive in the field and don't go home. We stay in the field for 3, 5 days. We don't stop searching, neither at night nor on holidays, in every direction and in any weather. This is different from other units that come for a few hours. We take a command center (command room) to the field, bring equipment and do everything to find the missing person. This is an area where you only know how it starts. You don't know what will happen and how it will unfold. Most missing persons are found very quickly. If they are not found within 3 days, it is a very serious case. There are cases where we have not been able to find the missing person. In the Safed and Meron area, there are still about five missing persons who we have not been able to find.
Unknown and unsolved cases
"The missing are of all ages, from 9 to 60, and each case is a separate event. In Ein Hod there is a missing person, Itamar Schlesinger, a 33-year-old man, who disappeared a year and a half ago. He is a young man from the center who came to Ein Hod – adjacent to Ein Hod – it is not clear for what purpose. His vehicle was found, and he himself was missing. We searched the forest, brought in excavators, used all sorts of means and he was not found. Notable cases of missing children and teenagers are Haymanot Kassao, a 9-year-old girl from Safed who disappeared in 2022. She immigrated to Israel from Ethiopia at the age of 7 with her family, and since her disappearance, no leads have been found regarding her whereabouts. Moishe Kleinman, a 16-year-old boy from the village of Modi'in Illit, disappeared in March 2022 after going on a trip to Meron. Alexandra (Sasha) Brandt, a 10-year-old girl from Ramat Gan, disappeared in 1994 and her fate has not been known since. Chaim Albert 10 years old, disappeared in 1988 and no trace of him has been found since.
"The affair" Haymanut It's a case that's been talked about a lot. A 9-year-old girl who disappeared in Safed and has been searched for since February 2024. We set up a special framework to involve as many people as possible to try to find a breakthrough, and so far there are no clues. We searched the entire Safed area, a thorough search with both dogs and technological means over a fairly large area. We did what we could to exhaust the possibility that we might find something that we hadn't seen before. There was a boy in Meron named Moshe, Moishe Kleinerman, whose traces disappeared on March 22 and have been searched for ever since. Moshe Elovitz, a family member who has been missing since May 2019. Another missing person since November 22 named Haim Hadad and another missing person since October named David Fadida They can't find him either.
"In Israel, every year there are between 10 and 20 missing people who are never found. Some are children, some are 30-40 years old whose fate is unclear, and many older people who lose their way, or go to a certain place, fall and remain in the area. If they are not found in a short time, they die and wild animals come to their bodies. This requires a quick, immediate response, and under no circumstances should we wait too long."
When an adult is missing, you need to contact us and complain, not wait. Many families contact us, they also contact the police, which is the body responsible for this issue, and then they begin the search. We need to check everyone involved, investigate who saw, what they heard, and understand exactly what happened in this case. This is a very broad field. With the help of the professional search by volunteers and the search with dogs, we often find signs and clues, sometimes after other units have not found them, because we stay in the area for many hours both day and night.
The advantage of dogs is that they can very quickly smell what a person has difficulty diagnosing. We also have dogs in the unit to locate and rescue survivors in the event of buildings collapsing, to check if there are people under the structure. Our company, as scouts, need to know if there is something to enter such a building for, and we enter despite the danger in an emergency when it turns out that there are people inside the rubble.
Adults who have lost their way
A woman whose father had disappeared from home told me that they had searched for him in all the places he used to go, and there was no sign of him. He suffered from mild dementia, but they were sure that at least he knew the routes home from the main points in the neighborhood where he lived, even with his eyes closed, and they postponed the matter of the caregiver until further notice. One day he went out and did not return. The search lengthened, the days passed, and after almost two weeks they received a message that his body had been found on a bench by the sea. What was he doing by the sea? "He loved the sea, but it's far from home, it's a long walk, we never imagined he would get there."
My uncle Miblom Says that there is not a day when things don't happen and every case is a whole world. "There was another missing person that we searched for many months in Kiryat Ata, we spent hundreds of hours searching there. In the end we only found his bones. In Haifa, there was Tzachi Noy's mother, Sara NovobroderWe did a lot of searching for her. It turned out that she went to one of the city's neighborhoods far from where she lived, entered an area where there were farm animals, and found her death there.
"Searches are a professional field that needs to be learned. We have a lot of experience. The unit's extensive experience plays a central role. The police and security forces help us. They know that if we arrive, we will help with everything and carry out the mission. A few days ago, we were on a search mission in a certain place. Search dogs are not attack dogs, and when we arrived at a place where it was more complicated to conduct a search, we switched dogs because the second mission required attack dogs whose presence provides protection and they can respond immediately to a threat, which allowed us to conduct the search in the area.
"Many of the missing are elderly people who have lost their way. It is very difficult for elderly people to survive in the field without water and food. But there were cases that we found and they were still alive. There was a person missing from the Kiryat, who we received information that he was in Haifa and we carried out searches. In the end, we found him in Kiryat Eliezer. There was an elderly person who was missing from a nursing home. He left the nursing home several times because he was not feeling well. He was out of the nursing home for several days and we managed to find him twice and bring him in. We wanted to try to move him to another place so that he would stop leaving. Not long ago, a woman was declared missing from Haifa. She disappeared five times, and each time she was found. The last time she was found right next to her house.
"It usually happens at night or on weekends and holidays. On days when people are resting and are with their families, and then things happen. There are girls who escape from institutions, there are cases abroad. There are cases every day. And that requires a lot of forces in the searches, in addition to the security issue. We can't handle everything, because we are ultimately a volunteer unit. So we look into the case and see how much and what we can help. In most cases, we participate, come and do everything possible."