Yehuda Wachsman, father of kidnapped IDF soldier, dies age 73
The late Wachsman was the father of IDF soldier Nachshon Wachsman, who was kidnapped and murdered by Hamas in 1994.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFThe father of IDF soldier Sergeant Nachshon Mordechai Wachsman who was kidnapped and held hostage by Hamas for a period of 6 days, where after he was executed during an attempted rescue operation, visit the parents of abducted soldier Gilad Shalit in a protest tent set up across from the residence o(photo credit: MIRIAM ALSTER/FLASH90)
Yehuda Wachsman, father of slain IDF soldier Nachshon Wachsman who was kidnapped and murdered by Hamas in 1994, died after a long struggle with illness on Thursday at Hadassah University Hospital Ein Kerem. He was 73 years old at the time of his passing. His family expressed deep gratitude to the Ein Kerem palliative care ward for allowing their father “to die without suffering." The details concerning his funeral have yet to be announced.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he heard “with sorrow” about the passing of Wachsman and that following the tragic murder of his son he “chose life, educated and taught [his pupils] to have values, [love of] torah and the land [of Israel].” He expressed his condolences as well as those of his wife Sara and the people of Israel to Wachsman’s widow, Esther, and their family.President Reuven Rivlin called Wachsman “a man of peace” who had his life “turned upside down.”Rivlin remarked on the solidarity shown by the IDF unit that attempted to rescue Wachsman noting that they “went to rescue their brother without asking what his background was.” Wachsman’s son, Nachson, was taken hostage by Hamas terrorists 26 years ago and used as a bargaining chip that Hamas hoped would secure the release of its founder, Imam Ahmed Yassin, from Israeli prison. Israel offered to release him in May of that year due to his ill health, but Yassin refused. He was eventually released in 1997 and killed in an Israeli airstrike in 2004.An IDF attempt to rescue Wachsman from his kidnappers proved unsuccessful. While Sayeret Matkal soldiers killed the three kidnappers they were not able to save Wachsman, who was killed when the kidnappers realized they are being attacked, and the commando unit lost one of its soldiers, Captain Nir Poraz. The failure of the mission led to the IDF creating a special unit focusing on rescue operations involving breaking into homes and other urban spaces.The kidnapping and botched rescue attempt occurred during the years Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin led the nation. In 2019, Esther Wachsman told The Jerusalem Post's sister publication Maariv that Rabin visited her and her husband and took responsibility for the failure to rescue their son.“My husband wanted to be alone with Rabin,” she said.“[My husband] told him: 'you are responsible, you did not prepare the rescue attempt as you should have done, you did not do all that you could have done.' Rabin left [our home] in tears.” She added that their neighbors also shouted at Rabin “traitor! traitor!” because he signed the Oslo Accords. Rabin, who was assassinated in 1995, called the Wachsman family each Saturday evening and holiday in the year before his death, she said.She added that her husband used to say that “our heavenly father is allowed to say no to our prayers.”“No is also an answer,” he used to say, “despite it not being the one we wanted, we don’t know why our heavenly father said no to us, but that was his reply.”In an interview he gave in 2019, Wachsman said that “we only have one country, God forbid we will do something silly to lose it,” Arutz Sheva reported at the time. Wachsman stressed the importance of solidarity, love of country, and having values as the foundation of humanity in this interview.
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