‘I am a captive’: Leah Goldin urges return of son’s remains from Gaza

The mother of an Israeli soldier whose remains are being held in the Gaza Strip published a video Tuesday in which she urged the return of her son’s body, saying that she, too, was being held captive by the situation.

Leah Goldin, whose son Hadar was killed during the 2014 Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, released the video ahead of the annual Memorial Day for fallen soldiers and terror attack victims, which began Tuesday evening and continues Wednesday.

“I am a mother in captivity,” she said. “While hundreds of thousands of Israelis visit the military sections in the cemeteries, I will remain captive. It is 1,740 days, more than four years and nine months, that we are in captivity.”

“In particular on Memorial Day, it is important for me to mention: Our Hadar, a venerable commander in the Givati Brigade unit, who was sent by you into battle in the Protective Edge war, is a fallen soldier and not a body. Hadar is not missing, but held captive by Hamas in Gaza, an hour’s journey from the Defense Minister’s office in the Kirya [military base] in Tel Aviv.”

This is not a personal struggle of the Goldin family, we are fighting for the national ethos — soldiers from battle are returned in any situation.”

Hamas, which rules Gaza, is believed to be holding the remains of Israeli soldiers Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin, whose bodies were captured by the terror group after they were killed in the Strip during the 2014 war.

The group is also assumed to be holding Israeli civilians Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, who each entered Gaza of their own accord and are both believed to be mentally ill.

The families of the captive Israelis and of the slain soldiers have often expressed their frustration and disappointment with efforts by the government to return their loved ones to Israel.

Promises to reclaim the remains of the two in Gaza as well as others believed interred in Syria were a central theme in remarks by Israeli leaders at Memorial Day ceremonies Tuesday, weeks after the remains of soldier Zachary Baumel were returned following almost 37-year-long search.

“I vow we will continue to work to return our fallen, our missing, our captives just as we returned Zachary Baumel,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a ceremony Tuesday afternoon at the Yad Lebanim memorial.

The remains of Baumel, a Brooklyn-born IDF soldier who had been missing since a 1982 battle in Lebanon in which he was presumably killed, were returned earlier this year from Syria, via Russia.

President Reuven Rivlin also referred to Baumel in a speech at the main state ceremony launching Memorial Day at the Western Wall in Jerusalem Tuesday night.

“We will not cease until they have all been brought back,” he said.

At the same ceremony, IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi vowed to try and lower the number of Israelis killed in war and otherwise, and to continue efforts to return the missing soldiers.