Ori Shachak, a lt.-colonel in the IDF reserves and a phantom pilot called on the government to give the captive soldiers the benefit of the doubt if there is even a remote chance that they may still be alive.

Shachak knows because his wife a number of years ago received a letter from the Interior Ministry informing her that her husband was officially declared dead. At the time, they had one child, 5, and she was in the early stages of pregnancy with their daughter. He fell into Syrian captivity during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Shachak was imprisoned for eight months, four months in solitary. He tells how he was tortured, physically and mentally, but what kept him going was the fact that he was certain the country that sent him would come and rescue him.

Shachak told Galei Tzahal (Army Radio) on Sunday morning that there were those who even tried to persuade her to abort the pregnancy so to avoid having to raise two children alone.

A number of weeks later, Jerusalem received word via a Christian agency that he is alive and in captivity and today, he is home and raising their children with his wife.

He explained that other pilots saw his plane explode yet no one saw parachutes open, aware that “no one could survive such and event,” yet he did. The navigator was Gilad Regev.

(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)