Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu has ordered Israel’s negotiating team dealing with Lebanon to seek information about 11 leaders and members of Lebanon’s Jewish community who were kidnapped and murdered during the 1980s, reopening a decades-old case in which the burial places of 10 of the victims remain unknown.
The Prime Minister’s Office announced last week that the fate of the murdered Jews, and efforts to recover their remains, would be raised as part of Israel’s negotiations with Lebanon. Separate reports indicate that attempts have also begun on the ground to determine where the victims’ bodies may have been left.
Col. (res.) Dr. Jacques Neriah, who was born in Lebanon and has extensively researched the country’s Jewish community, recalled the events surrounding the abductions in an interview with Israel National News. Neriah previously advised Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin during diplomatic negotiations involving Lebanon and Syria and today serves as a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs.
According to Neriah, the Jewish presence in Lebanon stretches back approximately 3,000 years, with communities documented in Sidon, Baalbek, Tripoli and elsewhere. The community grew and changed over the centuries as additional Jewish populations arrived, among them Jews expelled from Spain and, much later, Ashkenazi Jews escaping Nazi persecution. Lebanese Jewry eventually included indigenous Lebanese Jews alongside Jews with roots in Syria and Iraq, descendants of Spanish exiles and European refugees from the Holocaust.
Neriah said that after Britain established the border separating Lebanon from Eretz Yisroel, Lebanese Jews generally remained loyal to the Lebanese government. Curiously, he recalled, the identity cards issued to Lebanese Jews — including his own when he was young — identified their religion as “Israeli.”
That longstanding community began unraveling amid Lebanon’s growing instability.
“The community prospered until the first civil war in 1958. Some of the Jews realized that this was not the place for them. This intensified in 1967 following the Six-Day War and riots, when Kurds and Shiites invaded Jewish areas and attacked them, and many Jews fled, leaving behind property and homes. The Shiites and Kurds took over the homes. This weighed heavily on the Jewish presence in Lebanon, as they felt unwanted and began to emigrate. However, they did not view Israel as their destination and preferred the United States, France and South America.”
As the Jewish population steadily declined, Neriah explained, Hezbollah began emerging as an increasingly powerful force in Lebanon, developing out of the Shiite Amal movement, known as the “Movement of the Deprived.” By 1982, the organization had become deeply involved in fighting Israel’s presence in Lebanon.
Two years later, according to Neriah, Hezbollah sought a way to increase its standing while pressuring Israel to free Shiites being held in Israeli prisons. Its strategy was to kidnap Lebanese Jews and attempt to use their lives as leverage for the prisoners’ release.
By that point, only a fraction of Lebanon’s once-thriving Jewish community remained. In 1984, Hezbollah abducted 11 Jews, among them the president and secretary of the community. Others were ordinary working civilians, including an electrical engineer, a plumber and a clerk. Their captors threatened to kill them unless Israel released Hezbollah prisoners. Rabin later said that accepting such terms was never considered an option.
When it became clear that Israel would not accede to its demands, Hezbollah began killing the hostages. One of those murdered was the father of Dr. Edy Cohen. He is the only victim among the 11 whose burial location is known today.
The killings continued over the following years. By 1987, all 11 abducted Jews had been murdered, with Isaac Sasson reportedly the final victim to be executed.
For Neriah, the story is also deeply personal. He returned to Lebanon in 1985 and visited its Christian-controlled area. During one meeting, Neriah was informed that a man was outside waiting to see him. The visitor was Dr. Eli Hallak, a physician known for treating impoverished residents of Wadi Abu Jamil.
“I said to him, ‘What are you doing here?’ He told me, ‘I’m guarding the Jewish property.’ I told him, ‘Get yourself out of here.’ He said his family was already in France. I told him to join them because he was in danger here. He refused and said we were exaggerating and that he felt safe. A few months later, he was kidnapped, and a year later he was executed. It pains me that I was unable to convince him to leave Lebanon. It weighs on my conscience,” Neriah said.
Even after Hallak was abducted, Neriah said, the doctor provided medical care to Hezbollah members while being held captive. His assistance ultimately did nothing to save his life, and Hezbollah executed him as well.
Netanyahu’s directive has now placed the unresolved fate of the victims back on the agenda, with Israeli negotiators instructed to obtain information about the locations of the 10 bodies that have never been found.
Neriah, however, expressed little optimism that the remains themselves can still be recovered. According to his account, Hezbollah did not bury the murdered Jews in identifiable graves, but instead disposed of their bodies in a garbage dump, making their recovery decades later exceedingly unlikely.
Even if the remains cannot be located, Neriah said there is still value in pressing for information. Details held in Lebanon could potentially provide answers about the victims’ captivity, the circumstances of their deaths and what was done with their bodies afterward.
The Israeli effort has also generated questions in Lebanon. Neriah said Lebanese media outlets have struggled to understand why Israel is pursuing the case, noting that the murdered Jews were Lebanese citizens, not Israelis, and questioning on that basis why their remains should ultimately be brought to Israel.
