Hadar enlisted in Givati and was accepted to the reconnaissance unit's basic training. He excelled throughout and reached his goal – team commander in reconnaissance. He also got engaged to his fiancée Edna, and the two set a wedding date.

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The Prime Minister's Office said, "Following completion of the identification process by the National Center for Forensic Medicine, in coordination with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, IDF representatives notified the family of the deceased hostage, Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, that their loved one has been returned to Israel and his identification has been completed. The Government of Israel shares in the profound grief of the Goldin family and all the families of the deceased hostages. The government and the entire security establishment of the State of Israel are determined, committed, and working tirelessly to return all our deceased hostages for proper burial in their homeland. The Hamas terrorist organization is required to meet its obligations to the mediators and return them as part of implementing the agreement. We will not compromise on this and will spare no effort until we return all the hostages, every last one of them."

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In January this year, the body of IDF soldier Oron Shaul, who was also killed and abducted during Operation Protective Edge, was recovered before the ceasefire and hostage release agreement signed with Hamas earlier this year.

Hadar Goldin was killed in combat near Rafah on August 1, 2014, moments after a 72-hour ceasefire was announced – an agreement Hamas immediately violated through rocket attacks targeting Gaza border communities and mortar bombardments. The military unit, led by commander Maj. Benaya Sarel, along with Goldin and several combat soldiers and commanders, maintained operational activities searching for tunnel networks throughout the region. Hamas operatives emerged from an underground tunnel and launched an assault that claimed the lives of Maj. Benaya Sarel, Lt. Goldin, and Staff Sgt. Liel Gidoni.

"Throughout nine and a half years, we have consistently warned that leadership willing to abandon fallen soldiers will inevitably abandon wounded personnel and living hostages," Hadar's father, Simcha Goldin, stated. "This represents our current reality. We have transformed into a society that abandons its own, and I hold Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responsible for this situation, as he has maintained his position during this entire period. I similarly hold Naftali Bennett accountable, who served as prime minister for one complete year during this timeframe."

Negotiations between Israel and the Hamas terror organization remain ongoing following the absence of meaningful progress during discussions in Doha. Israel accepted the proposed framework, while Hamas refused the agreement. The negotiations reportedly stalled due to disagreements over the proposed map for an Israeli military withdrawal, as 50 Israeli hostages remain in Gaza.

"What actions should we take? Our response remains consistent – emulate Hadar. Become Goldins. We refuse to surrender, we reject despair," Simcha Goldin concluded.

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The International Criminal Court (ICC) announced on Thursday that it has formally notified Israel and the Palestinian Authority of its upcoming probe into alleged war crimes on the Palestinian territories.

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The act gives both parties a one-month period to apply for deferring the case, the ICC said; to do so, a party must prove that it is capable of investigating the matter on their own.

According to the Associated Press, the notifications were sent to all signatories of the Rome Statute, the court's founding charter, as well as Israel and Palestinians, on March 9, with Channel 13 News confirming that Jerusalem received it and had yet to respond.

Under Article 16 of the Statute, an ICC investigation or prosecution can be deferred for up to a year on a request from the UN Security Council, which must first approve the appropriate resolution.

According to the AP report, Israel could submit an overview of its own actions taken to probe the possible violations during Operation Protective Edge in 2014 in Gaza, which followed the murder of three Israeli teenagers by Hamas.

The murder itself does not fall under the ICC jurisdiction due when the PA joined the court.

Should the court accept the outline, Israel could potentially conduct the investigation on its own, with occasional supervision by the ICC.

The report comes as President Reuven Rivlin and IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen Aviv Kochavi are touring Europe, seeking to drum up support for Israel and its rejection of the ICC probe.

This article was first published by i24NEWS.

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A new report from the pro-Israel advocacy group Ad Kan presents testimonies from IDF soldiers that contradict the NGO Breaking the Silence's allegations that the IDF perpetrated human rights abuses during Operation Protection Edge in 2014.

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After the conclusion of the operation, which came after Hamas operatives kidnapped and murdered three Israeli teens, Breaking the Silence distributed a booklet containing 111 anonymous "testimonies" supposedly delivered by IDF soldiers, which led to IDF officers and soldiers being investigated on suspicion of having committed war crimes. The allegations were determined to be baseless.

The IDF Military Police investigated whether or not the soldiers in question had acted in accordance with IDF protocols and found that them to be in compliance. However, Breaking the Silence claims that the protocols themselves are problematic and launched an international campaign that included media interviews and newspaper columns translated into multiple languages, all of which served to solidify the claim that Israel and the IDF committed war crimes during the 2014 Gaza operation.

The Ad Kan report focuses on a few incidents described by Breaking the Silence and argues that the "testimonies" of the soldiers were presented in a biased manner. Some of the witnesses, when questioned, admitted they had not been present at the incidents they described, or even more seriously – that Breaking the Silence had edited their testimonies to change what was said.

One anonymous testimony from an Armored Corps soldier published by Breaking the Silence describes how members of the tank crew intentionally fired at innocent civilians, without any operation need to do so: "Like in a computer game." The soldier, Yaron Zeev, and his comrades were investigated by the Military Police and they explained that Breaking the Silence had "edited" their testimonies.

The NGO also published five different descriptions of another incident in which an elderly Palestinian who appeared suspicious approached a contingent of Nahal Brigade soldiers fighting in Beit Hanoun was shot and killed.

Breaking the Silence published the testimonies separately, creating the impression that they described five different incidents. Ad Kan reports that a debriefing of 10 soldiers and officers who had been presented showed that they had operated in accordance with regulations, and that the man had continued to move closer to them despite being told in Arabic to stop and after the troops fired warning shots in the air.

"Publishing the testimonies, which are baseless, benefitted the organization [Breaking the Silence] by causing its donations to double as a result of the storm, also baseless, that it created," Ad Kan says.

Breaking the Silence issued a response: "This is a pack of lies. As former combat soldiers, our criticism has never been toward IDF soldiers but rather toward policy and the decision-makers. We will dismantle the rest of Ad Kan's false claims in court, like we have done in the other proceedings waged against us."

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The families of Naftali Frenkel, Gil-ad Shaer, and Eyal Yifrach – three Israeli teenage boys who were abducted and murdered by Hamas terrorists in Judea and Samaria in June 2014, an act that would spark Operation Protective Edge later that summer – released a letter to the public on Monday expressing grave reservations over the International Criminal Court at The Hague's recent ruling to investigate Israel for alleged war crimes in Judea and Samaria and Gaza.

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The families slammed as "evil cynicism" the ruling, which was issued on June 13, 2020, and was reinforced last week. It is important to note that the ICC's mandate to investigate the events surrounding Operation Protective Edge pertains to the period beginning on June 13, 2014, a day after the boys were abducted.

"Had [ICC chief prosecutor] Fatou Bensouda truly and honestly wanted to investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity, she would have ordered an investigation into the greatest crime that was perpetrated a day earlier on June 12, 2014, when our three children were abducted – three Jewish boys who wanted to return home safe and sound," the letter said.

"IDF soldiers turned every stone and risked their lives to find our children healthy and whole and bring them home until they found their bodies. Had we met the chief prosecutor face to face as parent to parent, we would have told her about our feelings that day, how in the blink of an eye our lives changed forever – on that day that she, as the prosecutor, decided to erase from the investigation," continued the letter.

"We would ask her – how can you ignore justice for us, for the soldiers who defended our people against aggression from our enemies? The miserable decision to launch an investigation certainly won't bring back Gil-ad, Eyal and Naftali, but more than that – it pours salt on the wounds we all share, on the aching heart that cries out against the gross injustice toward the truth.

"Such a decision was made in sin and will inevitably end in sin. Such a decision can only glorify the despicable terrorists who murdered our sons and encourage the next murder. The very decision to investigate the IDF, only beginning the day after our children's murder no less, is already enough to determine what the nature of the sentence," the families concluded.

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If it hadn't been for a certain speech on Holocaust Remembrance Day five years ago, former GOC Northern Command Maj. Gen. (res.) Yair Golan would have become IDF chief of staff. That is neither a guess nor an analysis. Golan has been told that explicitly by the person who decided to nominate Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, instead – former Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

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Five years on, Golan admits for the first time that if he had known what the response to his remarks would be, he would have expressed himself differently. For anyone who might have forgotten, speaking at the Massuah International Institute for Holocaust Studies as then-deputy commander of the IDF, he said, "If there is one thing that is scary in remembering the Holocaust, it is noticing horrific processes which developed in Europe – particularly in Germany – 70, 80, and 90 years ago, and finding remnants of that here (in Israel) among us in the year 2016."

"I didn't believe the speech would cause so much fuss," he tells Israel Hayom. "Call it naiveté, but I didn't realize I was heading into an incident like this. Who had ever heard of Massuah? I was speaking from my heart, because I had seen the insanity that unfolded here after the Elor Azaria incident [in which Azaria shot and killed a Palestinian man who was already restrained following an attempted attack on IDF troops in Hebron], the wave of nationalism that isn't us. If I had known that what I said would echo so loudly, I would have expressed myself differently."

Q: Now that time has passed, are those processes really happening with us?

"We are in the midst of very dangerous processes. We aren't unusual. Look at what is happening to democracies in the world. There is a book by two guys from Harvard, Jews, called How Democracies Die. They looked at over 40 countries in which there is a populist leadership – and Netanyahu is a populist leader – and you see how democracy is being shredded everywhere. So it's not that we're becoming Nazis, but rather that there are processes here of offensive nationalism and the destruction of democracy."

Q: Why do you think what you said created so much uproar?

"Because the politicians said to themselves, 'He sees us.' He sees what we try to hide. So they went after me so strongly. The approach of the Right today is to go full-steam against any opposition, including campaigns of slander and lies. They spread it around that I'm dismissive of soldiers' lives, that I told IDF soldiers they were Nazis. They signed 100 bereaved families on a petition not to appoint me chief of staff. It was a campaign to silence me."

Q: Because of it, you didn't become chief of staff.

"It doesn't consume me. I don't wake up frustrated. True, there was an element of unconscious choice, but the responsibility is mine and I feel fine with it."

'Don't fight the deal'

Yair Golan was the most militant of the generals in the General Staff. If anyone had asked back then what political party he would join upon retiring from the IDF, most people would have thought he was firmly on the Right. That image was built up not only from years of combat service in the toughest roles, but also because of his character.

When he was commander of the Judea Samaria Division, he approved the use of the "neighbor" policy in arresting Palestinian fugitives, in which the IDF has a neighbor or relative ask the fugitive to turn himself in, against the explicit ruling of the High Court of Justice. He paid for it by having a promotion delayed, but he was at peace with the decision – I did what I had to do to protect soldiers' lives, he said at the time. As GOC Northern Command, his role when the Syrian war erupted in 2011, he ran an independent policy that created major friction between him and then-chief of staff Benny Gantz. In this case, too, Golan was convinced he did the right thing for Israel's security.

His IDF colleagues find it difficult to explain the apparent discrepancy between the hard-core officer Golan was while in uniform and his almost opposite public image now. But for Golan, everything is clear: "When there's a need to fight – I fight. And I think I fight well. I know the profession pretty well. When you're dealing with things at the political level, it's political tactics, not a battle between thugs in a dark neighborhood," he says.

Q: Give an example.

"Take Iran. The idea that the only thing to be done is to threaten and attack is simply foolish. That's not how you manage a strategy. Anyone who has some understanding of the issue knows that it would be irresponsible for Israel to handle Iran without the US. What Netanyahu did with his speech to Congress in 2015 was irresponsible, and caused enormous damage. That's not how it works. You need to have the US with you.

"The nuclear deal, which Netanyahu condemns morning, noon, and night – joined, horrifyingly, by the chief of staff [Kochavi] – is a good deal. That doesn't mean it doesn't have flaws. We knew about them from the start. I was deputy chief of staff when the deal was signed, and I was responsible for Iran in the General Staff. When the deal arrived we held a discussion with all the officials and said to ourselves that if Iran complied with it, it would be an amazing achievement. The fact is that without the deal, they'd be closer to nuclear weapons than with it, so we need to take action to improve the deal and then create a new one, rather than fighting it and losing."

Golan does not hold back criticism. As a colonel, he was at his wits' end at how the 2006 Second Lebanon War was fought. As someone who grew up in the area, fought there, and was even wounded when serving in the security zone in southern Lebanon, he thought that the IDF was making every mistake possible. At the time, he was in charge of the Judea Samaria Division, but that didn't keep him from sending a harshly-worded letter to then-Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz.

He did the same during Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014, of which he wasn't in charge. He had been made GOC Northern Command, but his opinion echoed in meetings of the General Staff.

"We were behaving hysterically from the moment the three teens were abducted. It was a terrible event, but the hysteria involved in the decision making was unneeded. I'm not squeamish about using force. And when there's a need to use force, I do. But how things were handled there was scandalous."

Golan does not direct his criticism at Netanyahu, of whom he expects nothing, and whose handling of strategic matters Golan does not admire. His criticism is aimed mainly at the military: How Gantz ran Operation Protective Edge, how Kochavi is dealing with the Iranian issue, and in general, what he calls "the paradigm of intelligence and fire." He says that Israel has learned nothing from the last four big events: The Second Lebanon War and the three major Gaza operations that followed it.

"Einstein defined foolishness as doing the same thing and expecting different results. That's what we do. Lebanon was a huge failure. We missed an opportunity to beat Hezbollah to a pulp. To send three divisions in and give it a real blow, explain to them that they don't mess with us. That's the kind of warfare I want to see. War comes with terrible costs, and we need to do everything possible to avoid them. But if we've made the decision to go to war – we wage war with all our might."

The same goes for the Gaza operations, he says. "Again, we're in the same pattern in which we bomb and get frustrated, bomb and get frustrated. What happens in these operations? The first day is always very successful, because you initiate it and come in with good intelligence, and achieve your goals. But it takes the enemy 24 hours to understand what's holding him back, and from then things start to die down, and tensions rise in the General Staff because the operation isn't succeeding. In Operation Protective Edge the IDF dug in and basically told Hamas how far they would be going, so Hamas went on a stronger offensive than us, the strongest army in the Middle East. How can that be?"

'The army doesn't have confidence'

Q: Who can guarantee that the next war or operation will look different?

"No one is guaranteeing that. When I see the direction in which the IDF is headed, I realize that it won't change. It's legitimate to say that we don't intend to maneuver, just attack and bomb. I don't agree with that approach, but I respect it as someone else's strategy. But that's not what they say – they talk about maneuvers, maneuvers, maneuvers, and it's all drivel.

"The investment in the ground forces is just lip service. The ground army isn't prepared, no one should have any doubt about that. It has units that are prepared, but on the whole, as an army, it isn't … How do I know that? Because if someone says repeatedly that they intend to maneuver, and never does, it's a sign that something's wrong. The ground forces have lost their confidence."

When Golan says, "the IDF today has no instinct for war," it should worry us.

"Show me a single division commander in the Second Lebanon War or in Protective Edge grabbed a GOC or the chief of staff and said, 'What is this?' Show me one of them who shut off the radio and went out to kill Hezbollah or Hamas. When there's an opportunity, you need to take it. Unfortunately, the army now says, 'Keep these people way, give me conformists.'"

'How many Israelis have been to Judea and Samaria?'

As someone who is willing to go as far as necessary in battle but will do everything to prevent another war, Golan is somewhat surprised that people are surprised he's on the Left of Israeli politics. As far as he's concerned, he's in exactly the same place as generations of generals before him, who saw Zionism like he does: "loyal to the original definition of Zionism as 'a national home for the Jewish people, a free and democratic state.'"

From that perspective, he thinks that Israel must not avoid the Palestinian issue and that Israel needs to take its fate into its own hands. If there is no partner for peace – and at the moment, there is not – it should take unilateral action. The idea that the problem will disappear he sees as absurd, and mostly, dangerous.

"The settlers are really pleased with themselves, but they don't have a reason to be. The settlement enterprise is a terrible failure. 215,000 of the people considered settlers live in Jerusalem. None of them is there for ideological reasons. Even the 200,000 who live in the big settlements don't care about territory, yes or no. The people who live in Modi'in Illit or Betar Illit lives there because they need a place to live. And anyone who lives in the settlements close to the Green Line doesn't understand the issue. They were given a gorgeous villa in Beit Arie at half price, so where does ideology come in? Under a permanent arrangement, they'll be within Israeli borders, anyway. In short, we're left with the Jewish parts of Hebron, and the hilltop settlements in Samaria. That's the heart of the problem, and for that they're demanding that the entire state of Israel come crashing down."

Golan is concerned that Israel isn't taking initiative when it comes to the Palestinians. "It's much more important than the Iranian issue. This is where our fate will be decided, not in Tehran. And we are running away from it. The right-wing leadership is really blind. And lacking in vision. All the people on the Right I talk to are talking about the dangers only. About 'What will happen it…' None of them has a plan. No solution. No long-term vision."

Golan says that the leadership is "taking advantage of the fact that Israelis don't' care about the settlements. For most citizens of Israel, they're the dark side of the moon. How many Israelis have ever been to Judea and Samaria? How many can take a map and point out Shilo or Eli? But the leadership should behave differently. It should lead. This problem won't go away. It will only get bigger, and Zionism cannot live in peace and be free and democratic if it controls another people."

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However, Golan also thinks that the Zionist Left is getting it wrong, and that there should be one large left-wing list in the upcoming election.

"This division between Meretz and Labor, and then [Ron] Huldai and [Ofer] Shelach is unparalleled stupidity. This has to change. That's why I got into politics, to create that unity, In the meantime, I'm sorry to say, I haven't succeeded."

Q: The Left is just getting weaker. Meretz is hovering around the minimum electoral threshold.

"We can't drop out. I believe we'll pass [the minimum threshold], and I'm working really hard to make that happen. But the Left is in trouble. Together with Labor, the base of the Israeli Left is 11-12 seats, on a good day. That's a base to start with. My job in politics is to shake up the Left, unite it, and get it started on a new path. I'll remind you that in 1992, when Rabin was elected, Labor had 44 seats and Meretz had 12. It's just insane what has happened to the Left since then."

Q: Oslo. Terrorist attacks. The Second Intifada.

"Oslo killed it. There's no doubt about that. But since then, the Left has been delegitimized, and it behaves likes its scared and doesn't put any effort into building political power. Ehud Barak, who was the most important figure on the Left from the time he was elected prime minister in 1999 until he left politics in the middle of the last decade, didn't focus on building power. That has to change."

Golan thinks that the path to this kind of change leads to an alliance with the Arab public. "They say we love Arabs. What is that nonsense? This isn't a romantic matter. They're 20% of the public, citizens of the state, and we have an interest in connecting with them. If we bring them in, we can ensure that there will never be a united Palestinian front against us."

However, most of these issues won't be in play in the upcoming election. Like the previous ones, the vote on March 23 will be primarily a referendum about Netanyahu. Golan is urging his fellow Meretz members, who think that the party must not join a government with Naftali Bennett or Avidgor Lieberman to stop being so self-righteous.

"Netanyahu is corrupt, and today he's the biggest danger to the state of Israel. If they want to get rid of him, we need to cooperate. I wouldn't rule out anyone, except for considerations of corruption, or someone like [Itamar] Ben-Gvir, who is an Israeli fascist. But other than them, I'm willing to sit with anyone – the Haredim, the Arabs, Bennett, Gideon Sa'ar. To agree about what we will be addressing and what we won't, and get started," he says.

Q: Some people would say this is a betrayal of the Meretz principles.

"A betrayal is doing something different than what you promised. Amir Peretz took his base of support and betrayed them. He violated his voters' trust, and I think that history will hold him accountable. You can't shave off your moustache and say that you won't join Netanyahu's government, and then join it. And he shouldn't tell me he had to – he didn't. He could have wished Blue and White luck and stayed in the opposition."

Q: And Benny Gantz?

"Benny Gantz has a weak character. He's a good man, wise, worthy, a good professional, but he's weak-willed. This stuck out in his military service, when I was his deputy. And because he has a weak character he gives in."

It's not easy for Golan to say this about Gantz – they have known each other for decades, fought side by side, lost mutual friends.

"What holds me up is the loyalty to what I see as the truth. I don't live with a lie, and I don't tell stories. I'm not Yoav Gallant, who built an image and feeds it, or Bennett, who is a fiction. He doesn't understand COVID, and he doesn't understand security. He was defense minister for six months, and behaves as if he invented the job. I think that after the army I'm the same person I was in the army, who is loyal to his truth, and I don't intend to change."

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Hamas is holding the bodies of two IDF soldiers, Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul, who were killed in Operation Protective Edge in 2014, and civilians Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, who crossed into Gaza voluntarily. In recent years talks have sluggishly progressed, but over the past few months have accelerated amid the backdrop of the coronavirus. Hamas was afraid the healthcare system in Gaza would collapse and another exacerbation of the humanitarian crisis in the coastal enclave, and sought to incorporate the prisoner swap into a broader agreement with Israel.

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Now, however, it appears that despite Hamas' willingness to finalize a deal, the talks between the sides have again tapered.  The Israeli officials, as stated, placed the brunt on the blame on the Israeli side, for two main reasons: the lack of attention on the part of the senior political leadership that is supposed to move the matter forward; and the lack of impact from the special negotiator for hostages and prisoners of war, Yaron Blum.

The officials said that in contrast to other individuals who held his position in the past, Blum holds limited sway with the decision-makers and on the decision-making process. According to the officials, the person filling Blum's vacuum is a senior Shin Bet security agency official known only as "Maoz," who has been working with the National Security Council and is considered the person most close to National Security Advisor Meir Ben Shabbat.

"Maoz" manages the Division for the Middle East, Africa and Intelligence Relations, including clandestine ties with Muslim countries. His history in the Shin Bet and intimate familiarity with the Palestinian and Egyptian arenas – along with his fluent Arabic – have made him the central figure in Israel's negotiation efforts opposite Hamas and consequently talks over a prisoner exchange. Some officials believe his close relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now the key to securing a deal.

With that, the officials added, the decision-makers have a "very limited and partial" attention span for the prisoner issue. Netanyahu and Defense Minister Benny Gantz are primarily focused on contending with the coronavirus pandemic, the economic crisis, the sovereignty issue and variety of political matters, and are devoting very little time to the prisoner issue.

"If the decision-makers' focus of attention is extremely limited, there's little chance of advancing the issue," the officials said. "Such complex deals require intensive, daily attention for an agreement to be reached. This is very far from the existing reality." The result, they argue, is that "Hamas appears far more serious than us."

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On Monday, more than five after his brother Maj. Benaya Sarel was killed on Black Friday in Operation Protective Edge, David was getting ready to depart the most dangerous and volatile zone in Israel.

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"I haven't finished with Gaza," David says. "This was a very challenging mission from every aspect – both in terms of the military combat and personally. This is the hottest zone in terms of ongoing security measures and daily missions. I don't know if I can say if closes a circle, but I had the privilege of returning to the place where my brother was killed. It gave me a lot of strength and reminded me that I didn't break, that my family didn't break. We are going on."

Q: How do you handle it? Do you look at Gaza every day and say, 'This is where my brother was killed'?

"Not exactly, because most of the day I don't think and I work like a well-oiled machine. But there are moments when you catch yourself, at morning or night, in the command center or on patrol, and suddenly you miss him."

David Sarel had been in the army for only 12 days when he was informed that his brother had been killed. That same morning, Benaya had called him, but David couldn't answer. Later, he was the one who opened the door to the local army liaison who brought him the life-changing news.

"It's easy to think, in retrospect, what I would do differently, but that's the way it is with every decision," he says.

"I don't regret the path I've followed, but I do regret that I suppressed what I was undergoing for so long. I went through something really tough and I chose to get back to my routine really quickly and continue with business as usual. Within two weeks, I was back to basic training with the Golani [Brigade], without any favors. Like everyone else. It helped me a lot at the time and centered me, but looking back I realize that I'm now dealing with a lot of things I had to work through then, and today the wounds are deeper."

In the past five years, David has undergone a major process. He finished officers training successfully, served as a commander at the Golani Brigade's commando school, then later as reconnaissance company commander. The past few months, he has been in charge of combat soldiers near Zikim on the southern coast, the northernmost part of the Gaza Strip – only a few kilometers from Ashkelon. On Monday, he and his soldiers left for training, and when that's done, they are slated for operations in another very tense zone – Mount Dov, in the north.

David is full of praise for his troops: "We have Spartans who are protecting the people of Israel," he says proudly.

"These are soldiers who are sacrificing their lives for them, very special people with a very strong sense of mission and devotion who handle this reality from a strong basis of values and combat spirit. It's amazing to look at my company and realize that everyone here has a common goal, to protect the people of Israel."

David's father has only visited him on the Gaza border once.

"My dad happened to be here. I saw it was very hard for him," David says.

Q: How did your parents respond when you told them you were headed for Gaza?

"My parents are heroes and are very adept at detaching some of their personal feelings and doing what needs to be done. I feel as if what I've chosen to do is hard for them in general, with the price they've already paid. They feel it every day. But at the same time, I'm sure that it also gives them a lot of strength."

Q: May you live to 120, but if I were in place of your family, I'd automatically think of the family of Miriam Peretz, who lost two sons in battle. Isn't that scary?

"No. I believe that every person has a role in this world. It's scary to drive, to go out, or be in the country at all … Aside from that, I can say that if I am ever asked to go into a situation where I have to sacrifice my life, I'll do it."

Q: Do you feel that your story has made your service different? Something bigger?

"I don't think I'm different from other people and the fact that my brother was killed doesn't make my blood any bluer or give me any privileges. There are a lot of people who understand the importance and the value of devotion, and anyone who serves under me and around me is like that. Indeed, not everyone has paid such a heavy price. I'm motivated both by values and ideology, which are the main reason why I'm here, but it's not just about values. You need to be good at what you do. I'm not here from a place of 'poor me' or ongoing suffering. I do it out of love, not out of a desire for revenge or because anyone is forcing me. Revenge is a very animalistic instinct, and it's not what motivates me. I'll do everything I can to defend Israel."

David says he wanted to serve in Gaza: "I needed to bring that to a close."

He is very honest, and doesn't hide the fact that sometimes he has a hard time with the fact that his brother was killed only a few kilometers from where he has been serving.

"There's something very sad about bereavement and grief: on one hand, a hole opens up, but on the other, with time a little sprout grows in that hole that softens the loss, kind of heals the wound. I admit that I'm kind of in denial about what happened, because I can say that if I focus on it, I won't be able to do what I do. I funnel the sorrow, the pain, the loss into action."

Q: Do you ever break down?

"Yes. I break a few times a day, but they're little breaks and I know that every one of them also comes with an uplift in spirit. I always remind myself why that's important. And when I look to my left and to my right and see the soldiers and commanders, when I look back and see the people of Israel backing us up, when I look at my family and my wife, my home and this country, I don't  have any more questions."

David is very frank about his feelings, and hides nothing. Not even things that aren't easy to hear. He sees that as carrying on Benaya's values and legacy.

"He was a legend, in life and in death, and I never go anywhere and tell people my last name without them telling me where he met them while he was alive. It warms my heart, and his memory has to guide me to a place of action.

"If I can touch one or two people, give them something and cause them to do something meaningful, the way Benaya would, then I've done what I had to – even if it demands a lot of effort and spiritual strength."

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The searches continued for 18 days until the boys' bodies were found, almost by chance, near the Palestinian town of Halhul. Thousands accompanied them as they were laid to rest, but the drama wasn't over. For three months, the Shin Bet security agency, the IDF, and personnel from the Israel Police Counter Terror Unit continued to hunt the terrorists who had abducted and murdered the three teens. Meanwhile, Israel tumbled into Operation Protective Edge against Hamas in Gaza.

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Five years later, the main players speak for the first time in the new film "Kidnapping in Real-Time," which will be broadcast on Israel's Channel 12 at 9:15 p.m. on Saturday. The film includes testimonies from the commanders of the mission that was doubly complicated – both in terms of the effort to find the boys and the pursuit of the terrorists, which ended in a dramatic operation in Hebron where the kidnappers were killed in a carpentry workshop.

It happened on Thursday, June 12, 2014, at 10:22 p.m. The kidnappers, Marwan Kawasme and Amar Abu Aysha arrived at the Gush Etzion junction in a stolen car that they had acquired ahead of time. They had been there the previous night, but hadn't found a likely target. So they went home and tried again the next night.

The kidnappers spotted an Israeli teen looking for a ride at the hitchhiking post at the entrance to Alon Shvut. That was Eyal Yifrach, 19. The kidnappers stopped, told him they were going to Ashkelon and beckoned to him to hop in. Two other teens, Gil-ad Shaer, and Naftali Fraenkel, both 16, stepped out from the post and joined the ride. All three sat in the backseat.

Shaer and Fraenkel, who were classmates at Yeshivat Mekor Chaim Yeshiva in Kfar Etzion, didn't know Yifrach. Immediately after they got into the car, the terrorists turned around and pointed a gun at them. Shaer managed to call the police emergency line and whisper, "We've been kidnapped."

The operators tried to understand what was going on, but they dropped the matter.

"They were sure someone was playing a prank," says Israel Police Supt. Shai Cohen, head of the emergency dispatchers department at the National Police Headquarters and a member of the investigative committee that probed how the emergency operators responded to the call.

"They tried to contact the [Shaer's] number, and when he didn't answer, they assumed it had been a prank call because a large percentage of the calls directed to the Judea and Samaria emergency line are pranks," Cohen explains.

Seconds after the kidnappers shot the boys, they turned the car around and drove back in the direction of the junction where they had originally picked them up. By the time an hour had passed, Shaer's parents had begun to look for him after he neither arrived home nor answered his phone.

"We called everyone we could, but the boy had vanished," says Shaer's father, Ofir. Shaer's parents reported him missing. Police went to Fraenkel's house to see if the boys were there.

"We were woken up at 3:30 a.m. by [the police] knocking," says Fraenkel's father, Avi.

"Police were standing at the door, looking for Gil-ad. I went upstairs to Naftali's room and they weren't there. It came as a 'boom.' When I realized that the phone had pinged in the Hebron area, it was obvious that the situation was bad," Fraenkel says.

The security establishment got involved only early the next morning. After consultations, a decision was taken to announce a "test of truth" – the code for a kidnapping.

"Right away, I realized this was something different," says Maj. Gen. Tamir Yadai, currently commander of the IDF Homefront Command, who at the time was the commander of the IDF's Judea and Samaria Division.

"I remember packing a bag and telling my wife that I had no idea when I'd be back," Yadai says. Like the rest of the people involved in the events that unfolded, it would be more than three weeks before Yadai was back home.

The searches focused on a ravine near Bayt Kahil. After examining the highway cameras and communication data, it turned out that the terrorists had stayed in that area after the abduction. The prevailing assessment was that they were holding the boys captive there, or had buried them somewhere nearby.

"We turned over every square inch. There's not a single home we didn't search, no point where we didn't dig," Yadai says, adding, "We hoped at least one of them was alive."

The working assumption was that the boys were alive, but the searchers' gut feeling said otherwise.

It was clear to the Shin Bet that it would take a miracle to find them alive. "Hamas in Hebron has a tradition of not leaving kidnapped victims alive," says Assaf Yariv, who at the time was head of the Jerusalem and West Bank district in the Shin Bet and oversaw the intelligence-gathering aspect of the search.

The feeling was bolstered when officials listened to the recording of Shaer's emergency call. Yariv was one of the first to hear it. He thought he could hear shots. Others in the Shin Bet situation room thought differently. Yariv asked Shlomi Michael, then-commander of the Israel Police Counter Terror Unit, to listen to the recording. Michael confirmed that shots could be heard.

For the first 24 hours, security forces had nothing to go on. Information trickled in slowly. On Friday night, Kawasme and Abu Aysha were already the prime suspects after security forces received a report that they had been seen in the vehicle used in the kidnapping. Special units raided their homes but found nothing. Other attempts to find the two were in vain. A few hours later, it was obvious to the Shin Bet that they were the kidnappers, but no one had any idea where they were or what the condition of the boys was.

The next decision was to work in two directions: field searches, based on an analysis of the route that the car took, and intelligence-operational work that would probe every report and every suspect. The search was named "Operation Brother's Keeper."

For days, there were no developments. The terrorists hadn't made contact to negotiate for the boys' release. "My biggest fear was that we would get to the kidnappers and kill them, and would never know what happened to the boys," says Yariv.

Only on Saturday, June 28, 16 days after the abduction, did a Shin Bet field coordinator who had joined the searches find Yifrach's glasses at the side of the road, in a place near the village Bayt Kahil that had been swept dozens of times already. A few yards away he found a pen and bloodstains. This was the first time the searches had turned up anything that brought security forces closer to either the teens or the kidnappers.

That night, Shin Bet personnel visited the Yifrachs' home to ascertain that the glasses found had belonged to Eyal. They wanted to find out where the glasses had been purchased, and the same night the owner of the shop was located. He confirmed that he sold glasses from that manufacturer.

The next day, Sunday, June 29, the three boys' parents were taken to the place of the kidnapping. They asked to meet with the soldiers who were searching for their sons so they could thank them.

"Instead, they thanked us," says Racheli Fraenkel. "They said they wouldn't stop looking until they found them."

Yadai remembers that meeting.

"People didn't go home [on leave] for weeks. There were soldiers who gave up their end-of-service vacations or decided not to visit their parents abroad just so they could keep looking. If there are moments that make army service worthwhile, this was one of them."

That evening, a solidarity rally took place in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv. Searches went on in areas determined by the Shin Bet based on evidence and intelligence. An analysis of the territory was conducted by people from the Kfar Etzion Field School, who had joined the search efforts a few days earlier. They pointed out mostly abandoned spots and wells where they suspected the victims, or their bodies, might be.

On Monday, June 30, the bodies were found in one of the locations identified, Khirbet Arnab, near Hebron. Searchers intended to look into a well, but after they discovered it to be empty, something caught the eye of one of the field school guides.

"There was a pile of dried bramble. It was obvious someone had piled it up," says Maj. Hani al-Quran, then a tracker officer with the Etzion Brigade. "The guide and the tracker spotted the brambles and saw a pile of rocks, dug a little, and then hit something. It was part of a body."

After all the bodies were found, most of the forces moved southward to Gaza, where an escalation was taking place that would turn into Operation Protective Edge. Although Gaza had been simmering in the previous weeks, the abduction and the search efforts heightened tensions. In Judea and Samaria, hundreds of Hamas operatives were arrested, including leaders of the organization and many terrorists who had been freed in the prisoner exchange deal for captive soldier Gilad Schalit. Hamas responded with rocket fire, and Israel launched counter-attacks until everything blew up into a ground conflict that lasted 50 days and saw 73 Israelis, a Thai foreign laborer, and 2,000 Palestinians killed.

As the operation was underway, security forces continued to hunt for Kawasme and Abu Aysha. "We arrested anyone who might have ties to them," says Chief Supt. O, who was then head of the combat branch of the Israel Police Counter Terror Unit. "The special forces alone carried out over 40 major arrests of people who were closely associated with them. It seemed to me that other than their first-grade math teacher, we arrested everyone."

Yariv, who directed the hunt for the terrorists, says that hundreds of people were arrested in the process of finding the kidnappers. "Every time we thought, now we're there, we'd find ourselves at an impasse. Among other things, it had to do them making no mistakes."

"They cut themselves off from the world as if the earth had swallowed them up," said Arik Barbing, who was head of the Shin Bet's cyber division. "They didn't talk on the phone, they didn't surf the net, they didn't send texts, and they didn't do anything different that would allow us to reach them."

The security establishment was familiar with the kidnappers: they had been under administrative arrest but were later released. There were hundreds like them in the Hebron area.

In mid-July, exactly a month after the kidnapping, the Shin Bet investigation led to an operation in east Jerusalem in which Hussam Kawasme, who owned the land where the bodies were found, was arrested. The interrogation was difficult. Kawasme played innocent and refused to admit that he had any connection to what had happened. Only after several days did he admit to leading the terrorist cell responsible for the kidnapping.

"He told us he approached his brother, who had been deported to Gaza in the Schalit deal, and asked him for money for a military operation. His brother sent him 150,000 shekels ($43,000) in cash through a female relative, and that money was used to buy the cars and weapons," Yariv says.

Hussam Kawasme told interrogators that the terrorists had planned to kidnap one Israeli and keep him hidden in a barbershop in Hebron where Marwan worked while they negotiated to release him in exchange for Israel freeing Palestinian prisoners. But after three Israelis got into the car, the kidnappers decided to murder them instead.

"They dropped the bodies at one end of the wadi and went into Hebron. Marwan got out of the car and went to Hussam, and Amar took the car away to burn it. Hussam and Marwan got into Hussam's car and drove together to bury the bodies on Hussam's land, and then Hussam dropped Marwan off in Hebron. There they went their separate ways," Yariv says.

The arrest of Hussam Kawasme didn't lead security forces to the murderers. The breakthrough came in mid-September as a result of a creative operation by a Shin Bet coordinator in Hebron. Police counterterror and Shin Bet personnel carried out a series of operations in Hebron, each of which yielded a little more information that led to progress. There was a concern that during the High Holidays, which were around the corner, the pressure of the operation would ease up and any leads would be lost.

"I reached the conclusion that we wouldn't be able to improve our intelligence, so we decided to take action," says Yariv.

"We realized we had one chance to get our hands on them. If we didn't catch them, the holidays would be here, and they could think we were on to them and cut themselves off again, and we'd need to start from the beginning," Yadai recounts.

The morning of Sept. 22, 2014, a few days before Rosh Hashanah, Yadai was at his son's brit milah. At the ceremony, he received an encoded phone call saying that there were signs that indicated an operation should take place that night.

"I finished up the brit quickly, went back to the army, and got the plan approved," Yadai says.

"That night, we approached four targets in central Hebron that the Shin Bet had identified," O. says. Counterterror police made up the innermost circle, surrounded by combat troops from the IDF's elite Duvdevan counterterror unit, which made sure that the area was clear of threats. Yariv sat in the command center and directed the operation. The details have never been made public.

"It was one of those moments you don't forget. There was a tense silence, fear, you could really feel it."

One of the targets that was surrounded was a carpentry workshop on the main street. At the same time, police counterterror personnel raided the home of the workshop owner and arrested him. A Shin Bet interrogator attached to the mission questioned him in the field. After a few minutes, he admitted that the terrorists were hiding in his workshop.

The Shin Bet interrogator took a piece of paper and a pen and asked the owner to sketch out where exactly they were hiding, so that forces could aim the operation at the right place. That drawing, which remains in the possession of the Shin Bet, is now published here for the first time.

The Palestinian drew a crude plan of the workshop. The bottom section of the drawing shows the doors that opened to the main street, and the top part shows the back façade of the workshop that could be entered by a side alley. It also showed a double wall where the terrorists were hiding.

"The entrance to the hiding place was behind a chest that was up against the wall. They had been hiding there for about two months, and the owner would bring them food and water. He would come to work in the morning, move the chest, they would go out, stretch, and eat, and go back in. And then they would go on planning the next terrorist attack," Yariv says.

Meanwhile, O.'s unit had begun working in the area surrounding the workshop. The soldiers moved civilians out of the way and called for the terrorists to come out. "No one answered. We know that's how terrorists behave at the start, in the hope that they can still escape. After a long while, I asked the command center for authorization to launch the operation," O. says.

The forces opened fire at the outer doors, but nothing happened. "We were really hoping for a response, even a volley of fire, because that would tell us they were there and the story was over," O. says.

At this point, O. was given the drawing of the workshop. He learned that the terrorists' hiding place was located below street level and that trying to reach them from the entrance to the workshop would be a problem.

"The drawing made the battle more comfortable for me, but not easier," he says. "It was a very complicated area for us because of the density of the home and the fact that it was located on the main street. We had to shut everything down to prevent the slightest chance that they'd escape."

"We fired a few shots at the workshop. We even fired a few anti-tank missiles, but there was no response," he says.

In the forward command center, which was located on the roof of a nearby building, Yadai was waiting. "At the start of the operation I expected we'd be able to get our hands on the terrorists right away, and when that didn't happen, I started to think that maybe they weren't there. That once again, we'd failed to find them."

A different tactic was needed, O. decided. Instead of trying to breach the walls, the forces would go in through the ceiling.

"I asked the commander of the second platoon, who had finished the operation, to arrest the workshop owner and join me. I placed him across from the place where I wanted to dig, and I got everyone ready for me to detonate an explosives load over the terrorists' heads, where we thought they were hiding, based on the sketch. I told them on the radio to place the explosives on the ceiling, between the two concrete walls, hoping that would end things."

A heavy-duty tractor was brought in to clear the area, and then the soldiers placed the explosives. The detonation went off as planned, but nothing happened.

"We started to have doubts. We said to ourselves, either we killed them, or they aren't there," O. says.

A few more minutes passed, and then the two terrorists popped out of the hole and began firing assault rifles. "I think that was the first time in my life that I was happy to be shot at," says Yadai. "I said to myself, tonight, it's over."

The counterterror police returned fire. One of the terrorists was killed and fell down, but the other one fell back inside the hole and it wasn't immediately clear whether or not he was still alive.

"The problem was that he'd gone back underground, to a place that was very difficult to reach from the start, and now a fire had broken out and there were flames and smoke, which made it very difficult for the forces," says O.

The forces were afraid that the second terrorist, who turned out to be Marwan Kawasme, would take advantage of the uproar to escape. While the soldiers were debating about what to do, he popped up out of the hole and began firing. One of the bullets struck the oil pipe of one of the pieces of engineering equipment that the soldiers were using, putting it out of commission.

"We managed to fire a few shots at him, and he fell back into the hole," says O. "But it was obvious he was alive, and we needed to continue."

Dawn was breaking and the commanders were worried that the city morning would bring riots and clashes. "We realized we needed to end the event. We decided to put a large number of explosives inside the workshop so the shockwaves [from the explosion] would do the work, bring down what was necessary, and not leave the terrorist any chance of getting out," O. says.

"We got the forces ready. And confirmed with the Duvdevan soldiers that the area was hermetically sealed, so we could operate in peace."

He asked his second in command to prepare a load of 4 kg. (9 pounds) of explosives, place them on a power shovel, and simply drop them into the hole that had been created in the first explosion. "It was an explosives load with a long lead time, but we shortened it so the terrorist couldn't throw it back out."

The explosives were placed inside the hole and a few seconds later detonated.

"All the walls of the workshop collapsed, and all the doors flew off. They were massive Arab doors, and I told myself that if they were blown off, there was no chance that human tissue could remain alive inside."

Yadai: "I look at the fire and the enormous damage and said, there's no chance anyone is coming out alive."

Palestinian firefighters were called in to put out the fire. Police counterterror troops and soldiers from the Duvdevan Unit stayed on-site to make sure the affair finally was over.

"The counterterror unit has a mantra we recite at incidents – 'There's no body until there's a body.' We want to see the body for ourselves because there have been cases where the terrorists came out alive and shot at us, or fled. So we needed to close the book," O. says.

It took an hour to extinguish the fire. Kawasme's blackened and burned body was found. His family and Abu Aysha's were summoned to identify them. When authorization was received, the affair was finally over. "It put a smile on our faces. We could celebrate the holidays happily," O. says.

Yadai: "The kidnapping incident is the kind of event we take with us to the grave, that carries with it a sense of guilt that it happened in your patch and on your watch. It's not that anyone will show up and accuse you of being responsible, but after you get to know the families, you feel even more of an obligation to bring the story to an end."

Yariv drove back to his office. "On the way, I called two people – [then] head of the Shin Bet Yoram Cohen, and our staff member who was responsible for contact with the families, so she could let them know that it was over."

"Ultimately, you're responsible for the territory and everything that happens in it, for good or for bad, it's your responsibility. And that responsibility goes with you 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, and there's nothing you can hide behind. That's the sense of responsibility that accompanied me both as a junior manager and now as a senior manager in the Shin Bet, and it was clear to me, after more than three years on the job that I wasn't leaving the obligation [to the families], or to whoever would succeed me. The day after wasn't a happy one for me, but I felt easier. I told myself that we'd gotten even."

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