The Picture

For close to 40 years the Israeli government and military had officially considered three soldiers as Missing-In-Action from the battle:
Zechariah Baumel, Zvi Feldman and Yehuda Katz.

This is the acceptable practice when there is no evidence to the contrary, and like many people, I trusted and believed there was reasonable doubt surrounding the circumstances of their disappearance. However, after reading articles and seeing testimonies online, it became clear that the three soldiers were all confirmed dead on the day of the battle by fellow soldiers. It was painful to hear eye-witness accounts confirming each death.


And so I add to my list another thing that I cannot fathom - why the MIA myth was so callously propagated for so many years.

This is a picture of Zachary Baumel, one of the three soldiers who died in the battle. I took that picture sometime in 1980 in front of the lunchroom at a West Bank settlement where we were both stationed for about a year. We shared a dorm room there and after the war I gave the picture to his parents.

We all called him Zak, and we had both originated from New York where we grew up on 60's TV program like Get Smart, Gilligan's Island, Beverly Hillbillies ... we had fun matching up some of those TV characters to some of the real-life characters we encountered in that cold, drizzly grey Messianic settlement. One guy reminded us of Yogi Bear, another reminded us of Fred Flintstone. One day we decided to get up in the middle of the night, put on our boots, take our weapons, bundle up and hike around the surrounding hills. We walked through muddy fields with just a drop of moonlight, at some point it even started to rain, but who cared? In those days we felt we would live forever. Suddenly, like in those scary amusement park rides, we were startled by a loud FLA-PA-PA! FLA-PA-PA! sound - a flock of birds were probably startled by us and took off. That was scary! On our way back to the settlement it dawned on us that the guards might think we were terrorists and fire at us, so as we approached the settlement we spoke loudly so they would see us approaching. It worked, and we slept the whole morning.

The settlers were an odd group who didn't talk or smile much. They were preoccupied with their cause. Little did we know at the time that some of them spent their evenings shooting into neighboring Palestinian villages, slashing tires, cutting holes in irrigation pipes, smashing windows. They were part of a larger underground group who were eventually caught and convicted, some for murder (see here for more). We were living right in their midst and had no idea. We called it the Wild West Bank, and Zak and I would kid around and call out to each other in our best Festus drawl: "Welcome to the SHY-LOW Bungalow Colony!"

Zak was very popular and had lots of friends, and I slowly got to know some of them. One went on to become a scholar and social activist in the US, and one studied engineering and built a successful technology company. A childhood friend of Zak's had always wanted to be a cop, which we thought was a bit odd, but many years later I bumped into him, and he had become an Inspector in the Israeli Police.

Zak had very warm and open parents, and a wonderful sister with whom he was close. He had an older brother who was never around and whom I never met. It was fun to visit their home, there was a relaxed atmosphere, his parents and sister would join in the conversation, they treated us as equals.

It was 1980-1981 and we used to hang out in downtown Jerusalem, walk around the Old City, Richie's Pizza, Chocolate Soup, Tea and Pie... One of the guys was staying at an apartment owned by his family in ultra-orthodox Mea Shearim, and we used that as our base for our forays downtown. We would go to see the same movies over and over again - Rust Never Sleeps, Life of Brian, Ordinary People - from which we would quote lines all the time. I wasn't very up-to-date with music in those days, but Zak liked listening to Supertramp, Dire Straits, and Pink Floyd, and I started to listen to them too.

Zak was witty and very confident. He was easygoing, accepting, friendly. I never saw him argue with anyone. He was a natural people person, people were drawn to him. We were both going to study Psychology at the Hebrew University, but Zak never returned and I wasn't up to it anymore. I think Zak would have been very successful, a great father, and always surrounded by lots of friends.

After the war we all dispersed and have never met since then. I don't know why. I loved hanging out with these guys. We had lots of laughs, deep conversations. I thought perhaps there was something I did or said. A few years later my mother died, and I felt that immediate, infinite finality of being completely cut off from someone. I tried to contact some of them, but this as pre-internet and email and I didn't have any address. One day in 1995 I came across an article in the NY Times about a technology company and the name of the founder rang a bell. I somehow got the phone number, and I called him and we spoke for a bit. But that was it. I felt shunned. About 2 years ago I found another one of the guys in an online search, and sent him an email. He wrote back, and I wrote to him again. But that's it. I really miss these guys.

After the war I sold my camera and never took pictures again. And for many years after the war, whenever I heard Supertramp on the radio, I had to turn it off or leave the room.

Thinking back to the picture I took above, I am reminded of another thing that Rev. Billy Kyles said, regarding a picture of Dr. Martin Luther King: 

"I look at Martin's picture and see that he's the only one that didn't get old".

This is for Zak Baumel, who loved Dire Straits, and never got to be old.

	These mist covered mountains Are a home now for me But my home is the lowlands And always will be Someday you'll return to Your valleys and your farms And you'll no longer burn To be brothers in arms Through these fields of destruction Baptisms of fire I've witnessed your suffering As the battle raged higher And though they did hurt me so bad In the fear and alarm You did not desert me My brothers in arms	There's so many  different worlds So many different suns And we have just one world But we live in different ones Now the sun's gone to hell  And the moon's riding high Let me bid you farewell Every man has to die But it's written in the starlight And every line in your palm We are fools to make war On our brothers in arms
Songwriters: Mark Knopfler