Yekutiel Ben-Yaakov, commander of the Israel Dog Unit (a nonprofit specializing in locating missing persons), visited the Arutz Sheva studio to speak about the search for, and eventual finding of, the body of Sapir Nahum, who was found dead more than a week after disappearing from her home in Acre.
"There were tremendous efforts on the part of the Israel Police. We understood from the first moment that this was a high-risk case. Initially, the searches were concentrated in Acre; they later became far more complicated," says Ben-Yaakov.
Ben-Yaakov claims that "In cooperation with the police and other emergency services, we were able to search an area of one hundred fifty kilometers. Our main contribution is in areas of dense forest or brush, which dogs can penetrate to a far greater degree than humans and indicate the presence of a person or body well beyond a beaten trail.”
The searches were also conducted on Shabbat and through the holiday of Shavuot. "We called Rabbi Dov Lior, our unit’s Rabbinical authority. He explicitly instructed us to go to the search as an element of mortal danger was involved,” says Ben-Yaakov.
Ben-Yaakov’s participation was also required in the case of Moishe Kleinerman, a teenage boy from Modi'in Ilit, last seen in Meron approximately eighty days ago. "He could be anywhere in the country by now. We hoped that the ISA would play a more central part in this investigation because there is a chance that Moishe was indulging his love for the various Jewish holy sites in PA territory when something happened to him. After all, only last year he was injured in the PA city of Kifal Harris, in Samaria. We are looking for any lead on his whereabouts.”
Ben-Yaakov added that he believes not enough resources are devoted to the search for Kleinerman. "I will note that if we had mobilized a quarter of the resources devoted to the search for Sapir for the attempt to locate Kleinerman, we would have arrived at different results," he declared.