A collection of personal letters written by missing-in-action Israel Air Force navigator Ron Arad to his family during the first few weeks of his captivity has been released. Arad was taken captive in Lebanon in 1986, after being forced to eject from his airplane. Officially classified as still missing in action, Arad is believed to have later died in captivity, after being transferred to Iran. The letters, handwritten on pages torn out of books, are mostly addressed to Arad's wife, Tami, and to his daughter, Yuval, who at the time of his abduction was only 1 year old. Get the Israel Hayom newsletter sent to your mailbox! On Nov. 1, 1986, two weeks after being captured, Arad wrote in his first letter, "And now to those who are dearest to me, Tami and Yuval: I try to forget you because every memory strangles me, but know that I love you and it appears that you two are the only reason that prevents me from doing the worst thing ... I promise you the following things at the very least: a) I will return. In a year? Two years? b) I will never ever leave you again, even if I have to stop flying. c) We will have a warm and loving home, such that we never had before." The personal letters expose Arad's difficulties in captivity, his intense yearnings for home, his pleadings with his wife not to forget him and a special poem to Yuval. Arad also planted hints about his location in the lines, in the hopes that he could direct rescue forces to him. In the third of five letters, written on Nov. 3, 1986, he wrote, "yesterday I thought that I could send you these letters but it did not work out. Now a guard is in the cell and have I stopped [writing] ... I ran out of paper and I am tearing pages out of English books to write you." In a letter with no date, Arad wrote to Tami: "Last night I dreamt about you and it was fantastic. It was just the two of us meeting after a day at work on the lawn; we talked as usual, and suddenly I was with you again. It was hard to wake up from that, believe me, but it also gave me a few minutes of joy." The pages of his diary remained in Lebanon for 22 years; a copy only reached Israel in 2008 as part of the prisoner exchange deal made for the bodies of soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, captured by Hezbollah in 2006 setting off the Second Lebanon War. Tami Arad immediately recognized her husband's handwriting when she saw the pages but at the time decided not to publicize them. Only now has the family decided to publish them, in almost their entirety, excluding only a few personal lines. In the same deal in 2008, Israel also received two pictures of Arad. One in which the viewer sees his left shoulder drooping and part of his hand. The other picture shows him with Persian writing in the background, reinforcing the assumption that Arad had been transferred to Iran. "This year marks 25 years since my father's capture," Yuval Arad, now 26 years old, said. "After so much time, it was important to our family to remind people that behind the pictures, there was a man, and that was Ron. In his diary, he speaks openly, in a chilling and painful way, and we were left speechless." Ronen Meirav, a colleague from Arad's pilot's training course, said that the members of Arad's squadron saw the letters soon after they arrived in Israel. "To receive such letters after so much time was a stinging reminder of our friend who was left behind. It is painful and difficult, proving to us that the mission is not over." Over the course of the 25 years that Arad has been missing, only three of his letters reached Israel, all written in English. These were less personal, including lines that appeared to contain messages that Arad's captors wanted to deliver to Israel in order to push a deal forward. In Sept. 1987, communication was partially cut off and, in May 1988, contact with Arad was lost completely. In 2000, a secret government report expressed fears that Ron Arad was no longer alive, but then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon did not accept the report. The same report claimed that Arad appeared to have been held in Iran until 1994. In 2006, Lebanese television broadcast a short film that apparently was made in 1988, in which Arad answered short questions about his captivity. Born to Freedom Foundation head Maj. Gen. (res.) Eyal Ben Reuven said on Saturday night that, "to my great sorrow, this only increases the intensity of our failure in 1988 not to have brought Ron back home."
The full letters will be broadcast by the investigative news program "Uvdah" on Israel's Channel Two on Thursday.
