Missing IDF officer Second Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, said to have been captured by Hamas, was declared dead by Chief Military Rabbi Brig.-Gen. Raffi Peretz on Motzei Shabbos, at 11:25pm.
The army said the Chief Military Rabbi considered halacha, medical and other relevant considerations, as well as findings from the battlefield, before making the decision.
The family was told there were enough pathological findings at the scene to declare Hadar’s death, and these findings also allow his burial.
The IDF has released a statement that missing soldier Hadar Goldin is dead. The Givati commander died in combat on Friday, August 1, 2014, in Rafah when a terrorist emerged from a tunnel in the southern Gaza Strip and detonated himself near an IDF force, killing another officer and a soldier from Givati Brigade – Major Benaya Sarel and Staff Sergeant Liel Gidoni.
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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15 Responses
So sad!
BD”E
Burial??? What do they have?
This article does not say!
im so tired to reading the news
.. so sad .. so depressing…
i cant take this anymore ….. i feel hopeless i dont know when will this end already..
HOW MUCH LONGER
YYYYYYYYYY GOD YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
Are they saying he is dead, just in order not to have another Gilad Shalit story? (I hope not)
Apparantly they have “pathological findings”.
Baruch dayen haemmes.
May Hashem give the family the courage and strength to get through this difficult time.
My thoughts and prayers are with you.
May his neshomo have an aliyah.
why did they announce this ? they had the perfect excuse to go all out…..i wonder if they didn’t make big deal out of it with the US and UN, if he would still be alive. Chamas only lost from the kidnapping so they probably just killed him to quiet everyone down. ימח שמם וזכרם
They know nothing more than when they said he was kidnapped. But they don’t want to get into another shalit situation so they decided to have their internal idf rabbi declare him dead so that they need not have to save him.
Sounds fishy.
Yaapchik: Are you sure you want to know what’s left of him to bury? Use your imagination like I did. Sadly, the picture’s not a pretty one.
HY”D
@#1 I was wondering the same thing. Am I missing something? Are they sure he’s dead?
BD”E
Something doesn’t make sense.
If someone is dead he’s dead. Why do they need pathological findings, halachah, decisions in order to allow burial? Did Hamas sent his body back?
Was he captured by Hamas or not? Was he killed by the suicide bomber or was he killed afterwards by the IDF once he was abducted when they shelled the tunnel in Rafah?
Yaapchik-
That is exactly the reason why the IDF are the only ones in Israel that use coffins. It is absolutely irrelevant to us what they have. That is between the family, the IDF and the ribono shel olam.
May G-d avenge his death.
It seems that the second paragraph to my above dilemma is the answer to the first. To my understanding, the IDF entered the tunnel after they bombarded it and pulled out the dead bodies including Goldin’s for which they needed pathological evaluation. The policy of theirs politically is to avoid headaches by not allowing live POW.
That is not for us to ask.
Our response, as members of Hadar’s extended family, should be to join with the aveilus for Hadar and increase our davening for Klal Yisrael and a permanent peace for Israel and the world.
The funeral is today in Kfar Saba at 1730.
HY”D