Daughter of missing airman Ron Arad: ‘We were also told they were doing everything they could’

The daughter of missing airman Ron Arad issues a plea for the government to make a deal for the return of the hostages held by terrorists in Gaza, saying that like today’s families, they too were told to just be patient.

“From the first week after that black Saturday [October 7], when I began to understand the magnitude of the disaster that happened to our nation, I have been retracing our family history, and all I want to do is scream,” Yuval Arad writes on the Facebook page of her mother, Tami Arad.

“For the past three months, I memorized the names of all the hostages, I read the life story of each one and I felt how the hole in my heart that my father left in me only widens,” she writes.

“We were also told, ‘Everyone is coming back, did you see the pilots from the Yom Kippur War.’ We were also told ‘we are doing everything.’ We were also told ‘patience.’ We also counted days, nights, weeks, months and years,” she writes.

“And we also begged the Red Cross, and we also flew around the world to meet with international officials to exert pressure. And there were yellow ribbons and blue balloons, videos to raise awareness, media interviews and requests for help. And that’s why I write these things. Because not only is history repeating itself in front of my eyes, it seems people refuse to learn from history, and I can’t take it anymore,” she writes.

“In order to bring the hostages home, the decision-makers, the government and its leader, have to make difficult decisions,” she writes. “You have to negotiate with a murderous terrorist organization, and above all give up things, make painful concessions. They will hurt us as a people and as a country, and they will hurt the ministers of this government politically. And that is exactly why there is no deal.

“I suppose there will be those who think that the kidnapped have five years and four months [the time Gilad Shalit was held captive by Hamas in Gaza]. According to the evidence from the hostages and the recent photos that were released, it doesn’t look that way,” she writes.

“For a deal you need to take responsibility, stand in front of the cameras, look straight ahead and say ‘we have made a decision.’ And it doesn’t happen because leadership and responsibility are two qualities that have fallen captive as well. And they must be brought back home, along with 136 injured and hurting civilians,” she writes.

Ron Arad bailed out of his plane during an operation in southern Lebanon in 1986. Israel believes he was captured by the Shiite Amal movement before being handed over to Iran, and moved from Lebanon to Iran and then back again.

Several signs of life were received in the first two years of his incarceration, including photos and letters, the last of which was sent on May 5, 1988.

Arad has long been assumed to have died many years ago, although intelligence reports have differed as to the circumstances, timing and location of his death.

It is believed that 132 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza. The Israel Defense Forces has confirmed the deaths of 25 of those still held by Hamas, citing new intelligence and findings obtained by troops operating in Gaza.

Hamas is also holding the bodies of fallen IDF soldiers Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin since 2014, as well as two Israeli civilians, Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, who are both thought to be alive after entering the Strip of their own accord in 2014 and 2015 respectively.