Soldier suspected of faking his own kidnapping after going AWOL
IDF, police, and Shin Bet invest six hours in searching for serviceman who called to say he was being abducted
Michael Bachner is a news editor at The Times of Israel
An IDF soldier reportedly faked his own kidnapping on Wednesday, causing the military and other security agencies to spend six hours in intense efforts to locate him.
The soldier was eventually located in the northern city of Tiberias, where he was vacationing with his friends.
The Air Force soldier, who has been missing from service for several weeks, called a military operations room, claimed he was being kidnapped and could not speak any longer, and hung up, Hadashot news reported Thursday.
The military immediately deployed large forces and bolstered its presence at checkpoints throughout the West Bank, fearing he had been abducted by Palestinian terrorists.
While mobilizing the forces, Israeli security forces suspected it had been a prank call, according to the TV report. Nonetheless, the IDF launched a comprehensive search for the soldier, which included locating his cellphone and list of calls and involving police and the Shin Bet security agency, in accordance with a lesson tragically learned in 2014 when a suspected “prank call” turned out to have been real and presaged the killings of three Israeli teenagers by Palestinian terrorists.
Eventually, the soldier was picked up by security forces, with his phone, in Tiberias. He was taken in for questioning and claimed his phone had been stolen, the Hadashot report said.
An army statement said it “treats with seriousness any alert about the personal safety of its servicemen. Immediately upon receiving a report of the possibility that a soldier had gone missing, the issue was thoroughly checked and shared with military police and Israel Police.”
“Shortly afterward, it became clear that it had been a false alert, the issue was transferred to military police and a probe has been opened.”
In the 2014 incident, Eyal Yifrach, Gil-ad Shaar and Naftali Fraenkel were kidnapped by a Hamas cell at a junction in the West Bank, and police received a call from Shaar a few minutes later. Officials said he was heard whispering, “We’ve been kidnapped,” before the call was abruptly disconnected.
However, the IDF was only informed of the kidnapping hours later, after one of the teens’ parents notified police that he had lost contact with his son. For hours, police had thought it was a prank call. A comprehensive search for the teens only began the following morning.
It was later discovered that three had been shot and killed shortly after they were abducted, their bodies dumped in a field. A subsequent investigation revealed that in the original two-minute phone call, at least 10 shots could be heard.
The incident led to a drastic upsurge in tension between Israel and Hamas, ultimately leading to the 50-day Gaza War.
In 2015, two Israeli men were involved in a fake kidnapping plot over a failed love affair that sent Israeli forces frantically combing through the West Bank. The State of Israel later charged the pair and sued them for the expenses incurred by the search. The search, which took several hours, cost the state several million shekels, police said, as helicopters were deployed, war rooms set up and massive forces were mobilized.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.