The preliminary probe into the Thursday night the eve of 15 Sivan call by one of the captive youths shows it was answered by a soldier on loan to Israel Police, referred to as Shacham ( שרות חייל במשטרה). The probe shows the soldier dispatcher acted appropriately, calling a veteran policewoman to assist, but she failed to act as she was trained and instead of acting on the call, she decided not to address it as a serious cry for immediate assistance.

The experienced policewoman failed to realize the urgency of the call, and therefore she did not pass it to an officer immediately as she should have. She also failed to make an effort to track who the owner of the phone was by the number and she neglected to contact the family of the youth who was trying to report they had been abducted. The investigatory committee is expected to present its findings to Police Chief Yochanan Danino next week.

The emergency call arrived at 22:25 on that Thursday night. It was perceived to be a nuisance call and therefore the information was held until 04:00 in the morning. Action was finally taken after parents of the three boys filed reports with police their sons were on their way home on Thursday night but never arrived. Someone woke up and connected the dots, albeit after critical hours passed.

It is reported that the investigators into the botched call state the fact the policewoman did not try to find out who owns the phone was a failure on her part. Investigators explain that had she done that, they would have learned the caller was a youth and they would have then gotten in touch with parents. This would have prevented the loss of the critical hours following the kidnapping as the IDF and ISA (Israel Security Agency – Shin Bet) involvement would have been almost immediately instead of the following morning.

Names for Tehillim:

1. Yaakov Naftali ben Rachel Devorah

2. Gilad Michael ben Bat Galim

3. Eyal ben Iris Teshurah

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)