Take a look at the Wikipedia entry for Yair Lapid, and you will be surprised to find some extraordinary details concerning the prime minister's military service. Lapid did most of his service as a reporter for the IDF magazine Bamahane, however, there are discrepancies as to what he did in his first months of service in 1982 and how he came to be transferred to the IDF magazine. Over the years, Lapid has given two different versions of the story.
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According to the first version, Lapid began his service in the Air Defense Corps and moved to Bamahane after his health profile was lowered. According to the second version, Lapid served in the Armored Corps and suffered injuries from a smoke grenade at the start of the Lebanon War, and only then moved to Bamahane.
He has failed to resolve the discrepancies between the two versions and has not responded to questions that have appeared in both the established media and social media. There was however one exception in 2017 when in response to a post published by Avraham Haas, a correspondent for the ultra-Orthodox website Kol Hazman who questioned how it was that Lapid served at Bamahane, where service is blocked for soldiers with a combat profile, even though he is an avid amateur boxer. Lapid responded that he has suffered from asthma since he was a child, but hid that from military authorities so he could be enlisted into combat service. Lapid said that he was recruited into the Air Defense Corps "and toward the end of basic training, I suffered an asthma attack and was sent to Sheba Tel-HaShomer Medical Centre. There, unfortunately, my military profile was lowered to 45 and I was told I would not be able to continue in combat service."
It wasn't the first time that Lapid had spoken about his basic training in the Air Defense Corps. He did so at least on one other occasion in July 1995 in his column for the Maariv weekend magazine where he noted that "in my basic training in the air defense, on Palmahim Beach I was taught how to disassemble and assemble an M-16, to load a magazine, and to shoot to the center of the target."
There is no reason to doubt these descriptions especially as they have been supported by outside testimony. In a tweet posted on Twitter in September 2018, the social activist Eeki Elner formerly the CEO of the Constitution for Israel movement and among the founders of the Israel Leadership Institution wrote that Lapid was conscripted into the Air Defense Corps in the same cohort as him, and also wrote about the circumstances in which Lapid rapidly found himself out of the Corps. "We were in the same tent at first in Air Defense Corps basic training, February 1982… Very soon, he managed to find a way to move Bamahane." In response to a retweet, Elner added, "I remember very well from basic training his attacks of 'I have to get out of here.'" In conversation with Israel Hayom, Elner refused to expand on the subject but did not go back on what he had said.
Another person who knew Lapid for several years confirmed to Israel Hayom that to the best of his knowledge, Lapid indeed began his service in the Air Defense Corps.
However, Lapid has also proffered another version in which he was transferred to Bamahane after serving in the Armored Corps in Lebanon at the beginning of Operation Peace for Galilee, the 1982 Lebanon War. This version appears in his 2010 book, "Memories After my Death" an autobiography of his father, Joseph "Tommy" Lapid written by Yair Lapid in the first person in his father's name. "The early days of the Lebanon War were nerve-wracking," Lapid writes in the book. "Yair went into the war together with the Armored Corp's Brigade 500 and for a whole week we heard nothing from him."
In his father's name, Lapid tells the story of how he was hurt by inhaling smoke from a smoke grenade used to signal a landing spot for a helicopter and was evacuated to Rambam Medical Campus in Haifa, from where he returned home and went to sleep. "Two hours later," relates Yair in Tommy Lapid's voice, a soldier from the IDF missing persons unit knocked on the door. He brought Yair's kit bag and said he was sorry for our loss. It turned out that Yair was on a jeep with two officers and had got off to eat lunch while the two officers had driven about 200 meters ahead and were killed after going over a landmine. Yair's kit bag was found among the remnants of the burnt-out jeep. The people in charge concluded that he had been killed as well. If he hadn't been asleep in the other room, then I probably would have had a heart attack on the spot."
We tried to find soldiers or officers who had served with Lapid in Division 500 and perhaps remembered him. We turned to Colonel (res.) Ronen Itzik, a former tank division, who is involved in documenting and memorializing the history of the corps. At our request, Itzik posted a message on a Facebook group for veterans of Division 500 who served there at the time of the Lebanon War. "Friends, did Prime Minister Lapid serve in the Division during the Lebanon War?" he asked. None of the members of the group could confirm that he had.
We also directly approached several other officers. One of them, Danny Savorai, was deputy commander of the 430th battalion and at one point during the war, he replaced the battalion commander after he suffered a heart attack. In a phone call from New Zealand, Savorai told us that he too does not remember that Lapid served in his battalion or the division. "It's the first time I've heard about this. I have never heard previously that he served with us." However, Savorai said he could not rule out the possibility that he does not remember Lapid, who at the time was not a well-known personality. Colonel (res.) Ami Even who, at the start of the Lebanon War, served as commander of the division's 195th battalion, said: "Lapid didn't serve in my battalion, but I can't rule out the possibility that he served in some other position in the division during the same time frame." Even, as we shall see later on, was directly involved in some of the events described by Lapid.
That's not how you throw a grenade
"Memories After My Death" may have enjoyed poetic license, but it is not the only source of information. Further details about how Lapid suffered injuries from a smoke grenade were supplied in an interview he gave to a Haifa University student magazine in 2005. "I was in a tank division in the Lebanon War and someone threw a smoke grenade and I suffered an asthma attack," Lapid recalled. "So then I went, took the exams and wrote a sample article for Bamahane, and became a military correspondent. So officially that was the beginning of my career." Later on in the interview, Lapid described how the smoke grenade came to be thrown at him. "When you land helicopters, you throw smoke grenades at cross-angles to create an X shape out of the smoke, and the helicopter lands in the middle. The thrower was likely some frustrated baseball pitcher and threw it across the whole court and it hit me. Unfortunately, there was nothing heroic about it."
Colonel Itzik clarifies that the procedure described by Lapid never existed. "There is no such thing as throwing smoke grenades at cross-angles. Unless Lapid has supernatural powers that enable him to control the winds the description he provides is not possible because it is contrary to the laws of physics. When you throw two smoke grenades close to each other the smoke from both of them is taken in the same direction and there is no X shape made out of the smoke for the chopper to land in the middle. It's simply impossible. When you mark a landing sport for a helicopter you throw a single smoke grenade which is aimed at signaling to the pilot the closest landing spot and the direction of the wind."
Major (res) M, an active cargo helicopter pilot, confirms that Lapid's description does not fit with the protocols he is familiar with.
Q: When ground forces make a landing spot for a helicopter how many smoke grenades do they throw?
"First of all, they don't always throw smoke grenades to signal the landing spot. If the landing is in our territory and the pilot requests then you throw one smoke grenade to identify the landing point and the direction of the wind."
Q: I will describe a situation to you and please give me your professional opinion. We signaled to the chopper to land by the Qaroun Lake in Lebanon and when you signal a landing spot you throw two smoke grenades at cross-angles to create an X shape and the pilot lands in the center.
"Absolutely not! No chance! That's nonsense. Smoke grenades don't create an X shape. It's completely dependent on the direction of the wind."
Driving into an ambush
But before even getting to the point where he was injured by a smoke grenade, Lapid describes a tragic episode in which he was in a jeep with two officers who went over a land mine and were killed shortly after he jumped out of the jeep to get some lunch. His kit bag was found among the remains of the burned-out jeep and returned to his parents. Lapid presented a version of this story in a column he published in Bamahane in 1994. This version is more trimmed down and in it, Lapid states: "I entered Lebanon almost by chance. I had just finished a course and I was sent to the border crossing, in the hope that somebody would find something for me to do." He then described how "one particularly enthusiastic Lieutenant Colonel decided to place him as a radio operator on the jeep with the two officers…After two days, I got off to grab something to eat and they drove into an ambush and were killed. I was sent to help another tank unit and then to a logistics base, and after that, to the helicopter landing site. In this column, by the way, Lapid doesn't describe how the smoke grenades were thrown at cross-angles, but he does describe how the third smoke grenade thrown in his direction "flew in the air, made a nice arc, and then roll toward my legs."
Who were the two officers for whom Lapid served as a radio operator on the jeep for two days and who went over a mine or drove into an ambush and were killed? We asked Colonel (res.) Dr. Benny Michaelson, a former head of the IDF history unit and today, chairman of the Israeli Association for Military History, who also works as a historian with the Armored Corps memorial society. He says that he only knew of one case during the period described by Lapid that fits the description of two officers from Division 500 being killed in a jeep. The two officers were Major Menachem Ben Tzur and Major Zadok Ben Menachem. "I remember the incident very well," says Michaelson. "During the attempted extraction, the division commander, the late Doron Rubin, went missing and there were fears that he had been killed or kidnapped." In the end, Rubin turned up, alive and well.
Avi Segal, who served as an adjutant officer in Division 500 at the time, was with Ben Menachem and Ben Tzur in the week in which they were killed. Segal has been asked in the past about Lapid's presence and said there was no soldier by that name who was present. In an interview with Israel Hayom, he refused to expand on the topic but did confirm that he stands by the things he said in the past as to whether it is possible that Lapid served in Division 500 in a different role even if he wasn't involved in the incident. Segal said that he cannot answer that question for certain because as an adjutant officer in the division hundreds of soldiers pass through his hands.
No way that could have happened
It is here that Colonel Even comes into the picture. Even served as the head of the division's 195th battalion during the war and more importantly concerning Lapid's case played a central role in the operation to extract the officers who had been hit in the incident.
Q: Is it possible that Lapid was posted with the two officers who were killed in the jeep?
"Absolutely not."
Q: How can you say that with such certainty?
"I was there. I took part in the extraction together with Doron [Major General Doron Rubin]"
In both versions of the incident, Lapid says that he was on the jeep together with two officers, but Even says that although there were three people on the jeep, Lapid was not one of them. "When they crossed the line, they were three: the logistics officer and his deputy, and the quartermaster. Two of them were killed and the third managed to escape and return to our lines," says Even. The officer that managed to escape died of an illness a few years ago.
In a column that he wrote, Lapid claimed the jeep was caught in an ambush immediately after "I jumped off by chance to eat something." In "Memories After My Death" Lapid claimed that the jeep went over a mine and blew up. According to Even, there was no ambush, nor was there a landmine. After being given wrong directions, the officers drove the jeep into territory held by the Syrians after a ceasefire had been declared. "On Friday, June 11 at mid-day, a temporary ceasefire was declared. The deputy division commander wanted to convene his staff officers to a meeting and he gave the officers directions to the meeting point. When they reached a mound that marked our lines they reported that to him but he told them, 'You're behind our lines, put the pedal on the gas and move forward. Of course, it was an innocent mistake. People there told the officers that there were no Jews ahead of the line, just Syrians, but they went with what the deputy division commander had told them. He too died a few years ago so you can't speak with him."
Lapid wrote in his book that his kit bag had been found "among the ruins of the jeep" and that's how the IDF determined that he had been killed in the incident. But Even says that the jeep was almost untouched and the officers kept going until they managed to get back to IDF lines. "The guys crossed over our line like I told you and they ran into the Syrians. Two of them were hurt, but the third wasn't and he managed to get back to us with the jeep. He managed to drive the jeep out by himself. The two officers who were killed were found by the extraction force that went in on foot. They were found out of the jeep and it's possible that they weren't in it when they were hit."
Q: So you didn't find a totally burnt-out jeep and remove bodies and belongings from it?
"No, not at all. Yaki, the officer who survived, came to us in the jeep as a result, Because the jeep had been on the Syrian side for a long time with the radio operating, the battery had run flat. Luckily for Yaki, the route from where he was to our position was downhill and he managed to coast the jeep down in neutral gear."
Another of the claims made in "Memories After My Death" was that it was thanks to the kit bag found in the jeep that a soldier from the IDF missing persons unit had come to his house holding the bag and gave his condolences to his father. This description is completely contrary to IDF procedures for informing a soldier's family of his death. "Unfortunately, I've been in a lot of such incidents where we informed a family of the loss of the loved one," says Colonel Itzik. "It simply doesn't happen that you determine death from a kit bag found in a vehicle – that's completely not realistic baseless. Then of course there is no way that a soldier would come on his own to notify the family of the worst possible news. There is always a whole group of soldiers that comes together with a notification officer and a psychologist and usually a representative of the soldier's unit – all the more so in the event of a missing soldier.
Assigned from above
Air defense or armored corps, or perhaps air defense and then armored corps. Either way, Lapid claims to have lowered his military profile and only then joined Bamahane, either during air defense basic training or after landing a chopper in Lebanon. And as already mentioned, he also describes how he took the tests for Bamahane and became a military correspondent Where exactly was Lapid assigned to in Bamahane We attempted to receive the information from the IDF, but were turned down on the grounds of privacy and were forced to look for reliable indications elsewhere.
In an interview with Israel Hayom published here for the first time, D. who served in a central administrative role at Bamahane at the beginning of the 1980s describes the circumstances in which Lapid was assigned to the magazine. According to various reports, this happened in the autumn of 1982. In other words, a few months after he was hurt by a smoke grenade in Lebanon.
"One day we received a telephone from the bureau of the head of the IDF Manpower Directorate, Major General Moshe Nativ. The general's secretary told me that in an hour a new soldier by the name of Yair Lapid would arrive and that we were to take him as a correspondent. When I questioned the extraordinary instruction, which was not in line with how correspondents came to the unit after a proper selection process, she responded, 'Don't ask questions just take him in. Find him something to do and don't touch him.' Her response was unsatisfactory, and I protested that a soldier who we hadn't even requested would take up a position. She replied, 'Don't worry about that. He won't be counted among your staff positions.' It was only after he turned up that I realized that he was the son of the director-general of the Israel Broadcast Authority, Tommy Lapid." D.'s version of events is similar to versions provided by commanders who served at the time in Bamahane and who, on various occasions, told the story of a young soldier who, contrary to Lapid's version of events, was "assigned from above" to the magazine without having gone through any selection process.
In February 2018, the country was rocked by the revelation by the investigative TV program Uvda that MK Jacob Perry, the former head of the Shin Bet, had lied for years about his military service. In an interview with Globes in 2002, Perry said that he was released from service after a few months in basic training in the paratrooper corps after suffering an injury. On a previous occasion in a book he published in 1999, Perry, said that as a result of the injury, he had been transferred to the IDF orchestra, where he completed his service. The investigative report found that Perry was not drafted into the IDF in the first place as he suffered from a cardiac defect. Perry was forced to resign from the Knesset and Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid published a statement in which he set an unequivocal moral bar for public servants who lied about their military service. "Jacob Perry's decision brackets to resign reflects the values of Yesh Atid and the public norms it has established." Lapid set this strict standard when he knew that there were questions about significant discrepancies in the versions that he had provided over the years about his military service. Perry received an exemption from military service because of a medical issue and later joined the Shin Bet where he excelled and became head of the service, and he was also injured during his service. Lapid, according to various sources, was assigned to Bamahane shortly after leaving Lebanon. According to various testimonies, the orders came from above in the midst of the fighting, and Lapid did not go through the selection process that other candidates went through.
Lapid didn't claim that Perry had been released from service in inappropriate circumstances, only that he had lied about those circumstances. Lapid determined that this was enough to force Perry to retire from public life. The Perry affair and Lapid's vocal position on that affair, only highlight the situation in which the Israeli public does not have credible information about the prime minister's military service.
When Lapid was a journalist and a TV star, and even when he was a minister, public interest in the affair was perhaps only minor. But now that he is prime minister and is currently requesting the public's vote to continue to lead the State of Israel, we believe that the time has come to clear the fog.
Israel Hayom contacted Lapid's office and asked for additional details regarding his first months of service; his account of events while serving in Lebanon; and the circumstances surrounding his assignment to Bamahane. The office issued the following statement: "Prime Minister Lapid served three years in the IDF."
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