MONTREAL — The news on July 12, 2006, was better than expected, Karnit Goldwasser said: Israeli officials informed her and her family that her husband, Ehud (Udi), had been kidnapped and was not necessarily dead.
Karnit Goldwasser
“When we heard he was kidnapped, we started to laugh, to smile, to hug,” she told an audience of about 200 last week at Beth Israel Beth Aaron synagogue.
“At that point, we knew what we had to do. We had to work to get back Udi.”
Sadly, it was not to be. Not until July 16, 2008 – two years almost to the day after her husband and Eldad Regev, both IDF soldiers, were believed kidnapped by Hezbollah terrorists near the Lebanese border – did she or anyone else know for a fact that her husband, who was only 30, and Regev were dead.
They were unceremoniously returned to Israeli soil, in a prisoner exchange.
“I knew [his fate] when you did,” the young widow told the audience. “It was a very sad day in Israel. Everyone was crying.”
Still, they were home, and they would be buried in their beloved country, two years after Karnit Goldwasser, her family and the Regev family made it their mission to determine the fate of Udi and Regev, as well as of Gilad Schalit, a soldier who had been abducted by Hamas terrorists in a separate incident a few weeks earlier in Gaza.
Schalit’s fate is still unknown.
In a story she has told to Jewish groups many times over the past year – she also spoke the next day to students at Bialik High School – Goldwasser, poised and articulate, poignantly described how life changed for her so fatefully from the moment she heard about an incident “in the north” while cooking in her kitchen.
Goldwasser said her husband, ironically in retrospect, was relieved he would be on “safe duty” in Israel’s north.
The first reports of an incident there came at 9 a.m. Goldwasser continued cooking.
She then tried to reach Udi by cellphone, to no avail. There were reports of casualties, but Udi was not listed among them.
“The ground vanished beneath me,” Goldwasser said. “When you know someone is killed, you know how to react, but what do you did when someone is kidnapped?
Following the advice of Israeli officials, Goldwasser went to be with family in Nahariya, which was being rained on from Lebanon by Hezbollah’s Katyusha rockets. She then had to drive home again because the army needed a DNA sample of her husband.
Then the two-year mission began. She immediately contacted Tel Aviv lawyer Ori Slonim, famous for securing the release of Israeli hostages. He wanted to meet “sometime next week,” but reading her sense of urgency, quickly agreed to see her the same day.
Goldwasser travelled – to London, to Paris, around the world – asking governments to help her. The refrain was repeated over and over: she told world leaders that “with terror, no one can get anything.”
Ears were sympathetic, but there was little action. The Red Cross, she said, “did nothing.”
Goldwasser said she spent the two years sleeping with her cellphone and two regular lines, her laptop at hand. Every two hours, she checked for updates on the Israeli website, ynet.
“I realized I was doing this 24 hours day, seven days a week,” she said.
For a little respite, she decided to cycle. Initially, she was stricken with guilt, but she came to realize that the exercise would help her maintain her energy to carry on the mission.
She tried to normalize her life, or at least make it appear normal, while the mission went on: she went to her best friend’s wedding, celebrated the holidays, tried to put on a happy face so as not to detract from others’ simchahs.
She was not afraid to ask for help from others, she said. “Only the strongest people ask for help.”
Then, in July 2008, it was over. According to Arlazar Eliashiv, president of the Canadian Zionist Federation’s eastern region who came to befriend the family and organized last week’s event, there is divided opinion over when exactly Udi Goldwasser and Regev died. Most now seem to think it was the moment the incident happened, when their Humvee, near the Israeli village of Zar’it, was struck by anti-tank rockets. Others think they might have been killed some hours later, while in captivity.
“We may never know,” Eliashiv said.
This much, however, is known, new Israeli vice-consul Avi Lewis said: Karnit Goldwasser is “truly a remarkable figure,” with an indomitable spirit that has allowed her “to pick up the pieces” after the tragedy.
She continues to help determine the fate of Schalit.
The synagogue’s Rabbi Reuben Poupko said that after the tragedy, Goldwasser carried on “with elegance, poise and courage.
“We prayed every night for [the soldiers’] safe return, but it was not to be.”
