Ron Arad
Ron AradFlash 90

Tami Arad, the wife of missing Israeli navigator Ron Arad, responded today (Thursday) to an article by Rogel Alpher in the Haaretz newspaper, according to which Mossad agents may have been killed in operations to obtain information about her husband's fate.

In a long post on her Facebook page, Arad wrote: ''I'll start with the bottom line that worries Alpher. Despite the many publications, the lives of the soldiers in question were not endangered in the last operation. I stand behind every word I write."

Alper wondered in his article whether it was moral to turn the children of the Mossad agents involved in the operation into orphans as part of the efforts to locate information about Ron Arad, who is believed to have been killed in 1988.

Tami Arad responded: "This is the opportunity to point out that during the years they searched for Ron, in the various operations that were carried out, no soldiers or Mossad personnel were killed. I do not know what is behind these publications, but I would expect people who publish material related to human life, to go over matters before they establish decisive facts."

Over the years, the Arad family has asked that missions to return Ron Arad not endanger soldiers or agents. "We also asked that if it was discovered that Ron was not alive, they would not pay a price to return him. But we asked and still ask that they continue to look for Ron as long as it is possible with the exception of not endangering life."

"Alpher writes that 'Ron was not a particularly important soldier in the IDF. He was another soldier, and his plane was intercepted, and he was captured, and a few years after he was captured - he died. In the operation in which his plane was shot down, Arad did not show extraordinary courage'. How simple it is to be a keyboard hero and sum up in one disparaging sentence what Alpher thought of Ron," Tami wrote.

"From the wording 'Ron was not an important soldier in the IDF' I can learn that if Alpher had served in the army he would not have found himself in positions where he would have had to risk his life because it is hard for me to believe that this would have been his wording had he been educated to be a combat soldier.

"IDF fighters are not suicidal. They are aware of the danger in combat service but they expect the government to do everything possible to return them if they are captured. I invite Alpher and people like him to sign a document exempting the country from returning their children if they fall Into captivity, living or dead.

"'The best way,' Alpher writes, 'to honor his memory, is to let him go. Far from the spotlight he was not looking for, far from the political PR exercises that cynically exploit and despise him.' Regarding the media interest, Alpher is right," Arad wrote. "Ron was never interested in the spotlight. His dream was to go to the Weizmann Institute. We, his family, also do not need the interest of the media and live better during the times when Ron does not 'star' in the headlines, but Alpher himself makes a living from the media, including the columns he wrote about Ron, and in his cynical way he denigrates Ron and exploits him for his needs no less, if not more, than journalists or other publicists."