ISRAEL COMPUTER CONTAINING HISTORICAL INFORMATION ON SOLDIERS STOLEN FROM IDF MEMORIAL SITEMaariv InternationalMemory stolen at IDF memorial site

Families' grief compounded when computer records of hundreds of fallen Signal Corps soldiers stolen.
Meir Suissa


Tamar Talbi lost her son Yossi in June 2002, when he was killed in IDF action in the Arab town of Kalkilya. Two weeks ahead of Memorial Day, a day when Tamar and thousands of parents and families all over Israel remember their fallen loved ones, an IDF computer containing a detailed record of Yossi’s life and the circumstances leading to his death, has been stolen.

“I can’t believe that there are such evil people in the world”, sighed Tamar. “What good will it do? Not only did they physically kill Yossi, now they’ve erased him from the memory”.

Nissim Ohayon, the manager of the IDF Signal Corps memorial site in Yehud, discovered that the central databank containing over 550 names of fallen soldiers had been stolen last week. Thirteen years of painstaking fact-finding, piecing together the lives and deaths of hundreds of young men and women who sacrificed their lives for their country, has been lost.

“We’re slated to have the main memorial ceremony here in less than two weeks”, said Ohayon. “All we’re interested in now is restoring the data. A technical team is working around the clock to try and reproduce all the information”.

Tamar is keeping her fingers crossed for the technicians’ success. “Yossi’s entire life was in there: his friends, how he died. I really hope they manage to get it all back, so at least we can bring back the memory”.

Ohayon filed a complaint with Yehud police, naming possible suspects in the case. “We employ convicts on the site in all sorts of work”, said Ohayon. “I suspect that it could be one of the newer workers. At any rate, I hope we’ll be able to conduct the ceremony as planned for the hundreds of families expecting to attend”.



(2004-04-14 10:15:11.0)