Defense Minister Benny Gantz on Tuesday approved the recommendations of a committee appointed by his office last month to expand recognition of all Israeli navy divers forced to train in the polluted Kishon River as disabled veterans.
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The decision gives all troops who were exposed to the Kishon's waters "continuously and in an intensive manner exceeding 30 days" access to additional benefits and services, after years in which the Defense Ministry had refused to do so.
Until now, these soldiers had not received this designation as a group, as investigations were unable to definitively prove a connection between their illnesses, including cancer, and their time in the polluted river. Some of these soldiers were recognized as disabled veterans, specifically those who developed their illnesses while still in the military.
Gantz said the decision to recognize all of the "Kishon divers" as disabled veterans was an "historic justice."
"The goal was to send a clear message to IDF soldiers: We are responsible for sending you to battle. We want to bring you home safely, and we will escort those who are injured. This is our responsibility and it doesn't have an expiration date," he told reporters.
The committee was appointed in December by Defense Ministry Director-General Amir Eshel, after Gantz ordered a review of the matter in conjunction with the Zahal (IDF) Disabled Veterans Organization.
It spent hundreds of hours studying reports of past committees that examined the Kishon, court rulings, various studies and data from Israel and around the world that examined the possible effects of the different substances in the water and their effect on troops exposed to them.
Ultimately, the committee found that the exposure to hazardous substances, which had been there for many years, was an "extreme, complex event with unique and unusual characteristics."
The decision was made as part of a wider effort in the Defense Ministry known as "One Soul," or in Hebrew "Nefesh Ahat," which aims to improve the treatment of IDF disabled veterans.
The "One Soul" initiative was launched after a veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder, Itzik Saidyan, who set himself on fire in April 2021 outside a ministry office to protest alleged neglect by authorities, causing a national reckoning over care for military veterans. He has been hospitalized at Sheba Medical Center ever since.
Brig. Gen. (res.) Ran Bashvitz, who served most recently as head of IAF Materiel Command, was appointed to lead the investigation and was instructed to take a "holistic view, including scientific figures, illness rates, compounding influences and the trends in new research about exposure to dangerous chemicals," the Defense Ministry said.
For years, the Kishon River in northern Israel was used as a dumping ground for hazardous waste by petrochemical companies in Haifa, turning the stream into one of the most polluted bodies of water in the country. The river was found to contain high levels of particularly toxic chemicals, like mercury and arsenic, killing off many of the fish and other wildlife that previously lived in it. It was also known to occasionally catch fire.
Despite this, however, the river was used as a training area for the navy's elite Shayetet 13 commando unit and its scuba unit until the early 1990s, with soldiers swimming and diving in it regularly. In total, more than 10,000 soldiers were exposed to the river's polluted waters over the years, the IDF determined in 2000.
Bashvitz's probe determined that the soldiers' exposure to toxic chemicals in the Kishon River was such an "extreme, unusual and unique case, it cannot be compared to any other case. This requires a unique policy that is limited and adapted to the circumstances."
The package approved by the Defense Ministry is wide-ranging and includes benefits such as discounted municipal taxes, education grants and property tax exemptions.
Though any such veteran will be eligible, former cadets from the Israeli Naval Academy during the years in question will be fast-tracked for recognition as they spent particularly long periods of time in the river, the Defense Ministry added.
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