The police are asking for the help of the spirits

The use of mystics to locate missing persons, which reached its climax in the Hodia Kedem case, is an accepted procedure in both the police and the IDF. An Israeli scientist has never been able to locate a missing person, but police and soldiers are repeatedly sent on sensory search missions. The families are pressing, and between us, you know

By: By Sara Leibovitz-Dr. Illustration: Efrat Belussky Published in "Haaretz" *

The use of mystics to locate missing persons, which reached its climax in the Hodia Kedem case, is an accepted procedure in both the police and the IDF. An Israeli scientist has never been able to locate a missing person, but police and soldiers are repeatedly sent on sensory search missions. The families are pressing, and between us, you know

The mystic who called the police was adamant. I see Hodia Kedem in a residential apartment in Ramat Gan, she said. There are two women in the apartment, one dark-skinned, the other light-skinned, she continued. They quarrel and accuse each other of kidnapping the baby. Hurry to Ramat Gan before it's too late, the warning. Police were dispatched to the scene. The apartment was empty.

About 100 mystics called the Kedem family and the police during the three days of searching for Hodia. Every request is checked. Following information from mystics, police were sent to abandoned warehouses, residential apartments, pits and ravines. "The police always use them," says former police commissioner Assaf Hefetz, "they are always asked, consulted with." It was in my time, it was before and continued after. In any case of the slightest absence, they are immediately reached."

The army also uses mystics to locate missing persons and even acts according to their instructions. As is published here for the first time, soldiers were sent to the territories to search for Nachshon Waxman who was kidnapped in October '94 and for the soldier Sharon Adri, who was kidnapped and murdered in September '96 following information from mystics. "Soldiers risked nothing," says Shlomi Adri, Sharon's brother. Mystics also participated themselves in the search for the missing in the IDF. They instructed the soldiers where to look for bodies, supervised the excavations but found nothing.

In a pattern that took root and became a kind of procedure, military officers, dressed in civilian clothes, visit mystics and Kabbalists. They arrive with maps and ask the mystic to point out where he thinks the missing are. An army officer consulted Baba Sali on the question of locating Zachariah Baumel, who had been missing since June '82 after the battle in Sultan Yaakov. Officers consulted with mystics in an attempt to locate Zvi Feldman, also one of the missing from the Battle of Sultan Ya'akov, and Yosef Fink, who was kidnapped by Hezbollah in February 86. The army consulted with Rabbi Ya'akov Ifergan, known as "the X-ray", in an attempt to find more missing persons. Even the naval officers who searched for the Decker submarine in '68 consulted some mystics. "We did it to calm the pressure of the families and clean up the noise," says Ofira Rotem, former head of the casualty section in the IDF.

We could not refuse

"We have never had such an influx of mystics as during the search for Hodya," says a police officer who was involved in the search. Most of them were very adamant, said they knew where she could be found and claimed she was alive. Some of them, particularly stubborn, were not impressed by their failures and claimed to see that Hodia had been moved to another place and demanded to search for her again quickly. The policemen will not forget the young woman who arrived at the early and rainy morning, with her baby in her arms, to the police's tent in the Kiryat Yuval neighborhood in Jerusalem.
The woman claimed that her sister, a mystic with receipts, knew where Hodia was. "My sister directs me to a small building across the street," she told the police, and asked for two to accompany her. In a few minutes, she promised, we will find Hodia. In the pouring rain, two policemen came out of the tent and accompanied the woman with the baby. She was talking on the cell phone with her sister who directed her to a warehouse of garbage carts. As we know, Hodia was not found there. The woman was shocked. "We are an old family of mystics", she said, "we are never wrong".

The idle guesses of the sixth sense experts did not end there. One mystic called the police and said that she saw a man holding Hodia in a trailer in the Jerusalem area. Police were sent to the area and found a trailer with an innocent family in it who didn't understand what they wanted from it. Another mystic led the police to an empty shelter on a street near the home of the baby's father. He described the shelter in great detail. Everything was there, just no thanks.

Another mystic arrived at the CPC tent and in a dramatic voice described a warehouse with a white door in the Ein Kerem area of ​​Jerusalem. She stood in front of the shocked policemen, concentrated with closed eyes on the image that came to her mind and informed the policemen that the warehouse door was not locked, you just had to kick it and it would open "and there you will find her confession". The police officers sent to Ein Kerem found the warehouse with the white door which was indeed not locked, but not Hodia.

A few policemen were even sent to the homes of families in Kiryat Yuval who, according to the descriptions of various mystics, held Hodiya. "We asked for permission to enter the houses," says a police officer who was involved in the searches. "Most of the families understood the plight of the family and allowed us to conduct a search." Some mystics came to the PAK with holy books and claimed that by reading the books, they knew that Hodia fell into the pits and crevices in the area of ​​her father's residence. Rescue team members were sent to the pits and found nothing.

Gal Rubin, a mystic from Kfar Saba, was among the dozens who contacted the police. "I told them what came to mind at that moment," she says. "It's something that comes from me and I have no control over it. I myself don't know where it came from. Regarding Hodia, I clearly saw a forest and that's it, I couldn't say anything beyond that. I didn't know if she was alive or dead, I just saw a forest, and I didn't even know which forest because I'm not from Jerusalem."

You didn't mind bothering the police who were busy searching?

"What is happening to me is stronger than me, I have no control over it, my voice also changes miraculously. I saw a very clear picture and I thought it was something they should know."

Another mystic claimed that she sees Hudia in the Lipta area. ZAKA personnel and a rescue unit that volunteered to assist in the search rushed to Lipta. The police tried to downplay the part of the mystics in the search, and the newspapers announced that the searchers arrived in Lipta, "where the toddler was seen for the last time", without mentioning the fact that the person who saw the toddler in Lipta was a mystic who saw her in her mind's eye.

"Usually the places the mystics sent us to were in field cells that we searched anyway," says Shmuel Ben Robi, spokesman for the Jerusalem district of the police. "Only in two or three cases did we go to places that were outside the search area, and even then they didn't send us to unreasonable places. We did it because we couldn't refuse the family members who treated this matter like a lifeline." The Kedem family refused to comment. "We want to be left alone in our grief," says Dr. Aryeh Kedem, Hodia's grandfather.

gibberish gibberish

The police don't reject the mystics out of hand, thinking that maybe something can be extracted from them, says Hefetz, who was a commissioner between 98-94. I remember the disappearance of a man in the Jerusalem area in the early 90s. and others, and one mystic in particular played very hard. They are not ignored, what they say is given weight. In my experience there has never been anything realistic about what they say, but throughout my career they have not been dismissed. At least we heard and included in the knowledge base what the mystics have to say."
They call the police and tell us it's on our conscience if we don't cooperate with them, says Avi Cohen, who was the head of the police intelligence division between 98-96, and since the police must receive any information that comes to them, we listened to them as well. If a mystic told me that he spoke with the Holy One, blessed be He, I did not pay attention to it, but if he said that he made an astrological map and it combined with other information, I also paid attention to this information." In general he is very skeptical about the ability of mystics. "They never pointed to a real direction. I have only had one case where a mystic came forward with real information about the location of the body of a murdered person. We searched the place he pointed to and found the body, but after a short investigation it became clear to us that he got the information from a person who was involved in the murder and wanted us to find the body."

Yaakov Grossman, who was the deputy head of the investigation department in the police ('98-'96), says that "for the sake of everyone's clear conscience, a detective usually goes to the place that a mystic has pointed to, but it is usually a jumbled mess. We listen to them because it relieves tension. I remember a case of a woman who called us to help us find a missing child. She made a very positive impression and said she saw the boy in the window. We ran there like crazy and then it turned out that she was a mystic who saw the boy in a dream. We just didn't hear her well."

In the police, therefore, everyone answers Serah with mystics, but no one dreams of ignoring them. Oron Jordan was kidnapped from the Savion center in June 80. Three weeks later, Zvi Gor was arrested, confessed to his murder and led the police to her body. During the three weeks of searching, says his father, Amos Jordan, they used everything possible to try and find him. "At a certain point, the police got so frustrated with the usual detective who didn't bring results in the first two weeks, that they were ready to sit with any end of the line. They heard about one in Petah Tikva who reads in a cafe. A policeman went to sit with her. In the end, everything was bullshit and guesswork. No one was close to the truth."

Even in the case of the disappearance of the girl Adi Jacobi, the police used mystics. Jacobi disappeared in December '96 when she was on her way to her friend's house in Netanya. Her father, Yossi Jacobi, says that when the police were unable to reach a result with their own means, they began to try other means as well. "Shortly before the intifada, contact was made with a Russian communicator who is known to be able to identify oil fields. Adi's photo was sent to him and he said she was in Tulkarm. We went there with the police and there was indeed a Jewish girl in that house, but she was not Adi. If someone really knew where she was, they would have already directed us to her."

The mystic Riki Pietro went with the Jacobi family and the police to a field in the southern region, where, she promised, it would be possible to find her body. "We searched there for a month," says Pitro, demonstrating on her arms how she was stabbed by thorns during the search. It was in vain. "Everyone makes mistakes," she says. "Doctors make mistakes, lawyers make mistakes, I can make mistakes too."

As a mother, this was a difficult experience, says Betty Jacobi, who was present during the search. "You try everything, you don't know who to go to, who not to. I was in the south not once but many times, sometimes policemen accompanied me, depending on how I ask for things and how I explain them. I want to believe someone. I will also believe a doll that will tell me where my daughter is."

mystic power

The army also uses mystics in most cases of disappearances, but in the army they try to hide it. The IDF spokesman denies the use of mystics and Col. Tsila Neuman, head of the Division for Locating Missing Persons, refuses to be interviewed on the subject. Officers go to mystics while dressed in civilian clothes. In the past, the officers of the missing persons division used to meet with mystics while they were dressed in uniform, but not long ago one of the female officers came to a meeting with a mystic dressed in uniform and decorated with ranks. The mystic, who wanted those waiting to be convinced that a senior officer was entering his room for a consultation, stood at the door of the room and announced her name and rank in a loud voice. Since then we have been going to meetings about civilians.

One such officer, dressed in civilian clothes, tried to test the reliability of a certain mystic. He showed her a photograph of himself in his youth. She told him the guy was murdered. In the missing persons wing, the story is told to the families of the missing who ask for the army's assistance in organizing meetings with mystics, but also refer families to different mystics.
One family was referred to a person in the US. He worked with the police, the army told the family of the missing man, he has many successes. Family members rushed to call him. He told them that he was a holistic healer who cured back problems and that he had never been in the business of locating missing persons.

Another family went on a search for the body of the missing family member. The delegation was headed by a well-known mystic and was accompanied by several soldiers. For a whole day they dug in a field of thorns with the mystic overseeing the work and sending the soldiers to different digging tasks. At the end of the day, when the body was not found, the mystic explained to the soldiers that they must have been negligent in their work, because according to all her predictions, the body must be found in the field.

"If the army was not able to find a missing person through precise and scientific means and the family was desperate, we would be willing to search even in the places that mystics pointed out," says Rotem, who was head of the casualty section between 2000-'95. "Mystics didn't send me to crazy places. What do we mind going to check? It only costs a few soldiers with hoes or a professional who sniffs."

But the adventure doesn't always end with a few sniffing soldiers. Nachshon Waxman was kidnapped on Sunday, October 9, 94. The search for him was conducted for five days. On Friday, the army tried to rescue him from the house of Babir Naballah, and during the operation, Waxman and an officer from the raiding force, Nir Forez, were killed. But even before that, soldiers were sent to break into a house in Gaza, following detailed instructions from a Kabbalist who claimed he was being held there.

In the days when the searches were conducted, says Esther Waxman, Nachshon's mother, they were contacted by many mystics who said they knew where Nachshon was. "There were those who asked to be given Nachshon's clothing and according to that they would receive vibrations and be able to locate him. I didn't even talk to them, I just hung up the phone. We are religious people and for us this is idolatry. But on one of the days of the searches, they pressured us to turn to a rabbi who is considered a very great rabbi. When you are in the situation we were in, you also do things that you don't see. The accepted was in the USA, we spoke with him on the phone. He described an exact place near Yad Gaza, explained how to get there, literally described the street and the house. The army took the information very seriously and rushed there because they also thought at the time that he was in Gaza. When soldiers arrived at the scene, it became clear that there was no house there at all, and in the end Nachshon was held in Bir Naballah and not in Gaza."

But she is not angry. "On some level of mine, not on the intellectual level, I think that maybe there are people with special powers. But there are also many charlatans in this field. This Kabbalah was not a charlatan, he was one of the innocent. I believe that he really has knowledge beyond my mind, but he doesn't always manage to help."

Don't you think it's strange that the army acted according to the instructions of a Kabbalist?

"It doesn't exactly fit with the army's image, so I actually appreciated the fact that the army checked its instructions. I was amazed that they don't mock or despise, but are ready to check anything and do anything, even something like this."

Even during the search for Sharon Edri, the army acted according to the instructions of a mystic. Adri was kidnapped in September '96 when he hitched a ride near the military base in Zerifin. He was murdered during the trip and buried in a field near the village of Zurif. His body was discovered six months later, in April 97. "During the seven months of searching, we met with dozens of mystics," says his brother Shlomi. "No one demanded money but everyone said that a donation wouldn't hurt and in the end we donated a lot of money to them. In the army they tended to believe in mystics, although we tried not to drive them crazy with every mystic."

But one of them was particularly compelling. "He was an old man from Jerusalem. We got to it with an officer from the army who came with maps. He was working with a pendulum that he held above the maps and he told us that Sharon was in the clinic in Kfar Bidu. It would seem as if we put a stamp on the place where Sharon is. After our pressure, the army risked nothing and entered the village by hand. The description of the place was accurate but Sharon was not there. They were simply at a loss and were inclined to our pleas to listen to these celebrities."

A meeting with Rabbi Kadori gave birth to a similar disappointment. "He said that Sharon is alive and will return in a month. My father raised a mountain of hope on this date and after a month, when Sharon did not return, he again went to Rabbi Kaduri who said he would return in two months. When he didn't come back even after two months, we didn't go to multi-ballet anymore. I actually think that the Kabbalists themselves are good people, it's just that there is a whole industry of con artists around them. I'm not at all sure that Rabbi Kodori understood the question."

Uri Geller not only understood the question, but also had a clear answer. "Geller said that Sharon is dead and the body is in the Jobrin house. There is a military base there in the area. We explained to the soldiers who we were and they helped us dig. We turned every stone. We found corpses there but not Sharon's body. We felt we could no longer trust anyone. After all, there were so many stories about Uri Geller, he is not some old man who reads in a glass of oil. We thought his information was more reliable."

"All the armies of the world and all the police work with people like me," says Geller, "and many times people manage to find. I helped the CIA set up a network of 'remote viewers' at Stanford University. In the US, I discovered bodies when the FBI failed."

You could not find Sharon Adri.

"So many people contact me that I don't remember this case. But I don't always succeed."

The only one who was right was a guy with Down syndrome in their seat, Shlomi concludes. "One day I was sitting on the balcony with my mother and he passed by our house. We asked him when they would find Sharon. He said on Purim and then corrected himself and said on Pesach. And really, on Purim, the squad that murdered Sharon was revealed and his body was found a week before Passover. And he didn't ask for money."

We didn't stop her from anything

Hadassa Fink, mother of Yosef Fink, was helped by the army to reach a mystic. Fink was kidnapped together with Rahim Alsheikh in February '86 in southern Lebanon. His body was returned in July 97. At one of Hadassah's meetings with the Chief of Staff, she said she wanted to go to a mystic, says Yona Tilman, who was the head of the division for locating missing persons ('90-'86). "The Chief of Staff told her that as far as he was concerned there was no problem and that if she wanted I would join her. We reached a mystic who was very optimistic, said he was alive and that he would return. She said it was by a river and described the place and the big house, her description was very colorful. I went back to her one more time alone and she added a little more color and said that people are holding him, that he is not free but his health is normal. I had the feeling that she was grinding water."

So why did you go?

"To give the family a good feeling. In the terrible predicament that the parents are in, they cling to every last thing, and if you tell them no, they will feel that their chance to see their son is gone. We didn't deny them anything, even when it cost thousands of dollars."

The parapsychologist Hanan Avraham says that one of the government ministers asked him if there was any point in carrying out a rescue operation to free Fink and Elshich. "I told them there was no point, they were already dead. But about Zachariah Baumel I said he was alive, I also sat with an officer from the Missing Persons Unit and at the General Staff and with the family. I said he was holding his hands on his chest and was barely breathing and he really had asthma. When I perceive then I perceive. I get out of myself and fly after the person."

Yona Baumel, Zechariah's father, remembers the meeting. Baumel has been missing since June 12, '82 after the battle in Sultan Yaakov. "There was one thing that did not give us rest. At a certain moment Hanan went into a trance and after that he supposedly came back and said that the spirit left the body and found Zachariah in Damascus and he described how Zachariah was sleeping. It was amazing. I'm an epicurean in these things, but he described 100% how Zechariah slept."

Baumel also met with a well-known Parisian fortune teller. "After an 'examination' she said that Zachariah was alive. It didn't speak to me. My attitude is cold and square, I do not believe in the hidden world, although it is better to hear that he is alive than to hear that he is dead." He had already sent an officer to meet Baba Sali. "I met with Baba Sally once in the twilight of his life. He was not in the best condition and it was impossible to talk to him. After a while they called me and told me that the day was clear and that I would arrive immediately. I didn't want to go again. The army went in my place. Baba Sali said that Zachariah is alive."

In a similar way, the army also helped Penina Feldman, the mother of Zvi Feldman, also one of the missing from the battle in Sultan Yaakov. "I've been to a lot of mystics," she says, "most of them said he was alive. I didn't go to them out of hope, but out of despair, like a person drowning in the sea and holding on to a thread, I sought consolation from them. I'm a poor woman, I don't have a grave and I don't have anything, I don't know anything about my son's fate."

When she got tired, officers from the Missing Persons Division went to the Arab mystic from Jaffa. "They wanted to check its reliability and came with maps. She pointed out to them Sultan Yaakov." Feldman was told by a mystic that her son is alive but "it will take a long time". Now she only believes in her dreams. "I dreamed that my mother Rachel told me that my fate is like hers. I hope that in a year and a half, when 22 years have passed since my son's absence, they will find him."

Another V in the diary

Yael Artzi does not need mystics. She is a mystic herself. Her husband, the pilot Yitzhak (Aki) Artzi, disappeared on December 1, '67 while flying in the skies of Egypt on a photography mission. His plane was hit by Egyptian fire and exploded in the air over the Suez Canal. My countryman and the navigator, Elhanan Raz, fell into the sea. Atzi's helmet was found near a Greek ship sailing in the area. Their bodies have not been found to this day. "A few minutes after he fell into the sea, he contacted me, told me that he fell and described the place where he was," says his wife. She learned channeling from an African pagan doctor in the late 50s while staying in Ghana with her father, a foreign ministry official. "My husband appears in the form of a butterfly and all these years he tells me that he is still at the berth of ships that enter the Suez Canal from the south, at a depth of 30 meters."

Artzi also communicates with the spirit of actor Johnny Weissmiller (Tarzan). "When I was a child, I lived for two years in New York and practiced swimming. My coach was also Weissmiller's coach. We met at the pool and fell in love. Every time Weissmiller came to New York he would take me to movies and plays. Since he died I call him and ask him about my dead husband. He always appears to me when I'm at the beach because he calls me to the water. He says my husband is there, where I think he is, and encourages me to keep looking for him."

The army, she says, refused to search where her husband was, even though she is talking about a limited area of ​​ten nautical miles. "I didn't hide that I rely on communication, but also on eyewitnesses. The army didn't want to hear from me, but two years ago they decided to look for a name. Then the intifada broke out and the place became dangerous. In any case, it is clear to me from communicating with Aki that even today, 35 years after he disappeared, that the remains of his body can still be found."

Prof. Nachum Maged from the Department of Religious Studies at the Hebrew University is looking for his missing brother, Yaakov Migovski, with the help of a Tel Aviv mystic. The army helps him look for the body in the place that the mystic pointed out as Migovsky's burial place. Yaakov Migovski, a Nahal soldier, disappeared in October '55 when he went hunting pigs near Kibbutz Gonen. Signs of blood and drag were discovered near the kibbutz, but his body was never found. Syrian documents revealed in '67 revealed that an Israeli who crossed the border that day was shot.

Maged turned to a mystic a few years ago. "Sometimes the impossible is the only possible," he says. "The mystic seemed credible to me, she didn't know anything but guessed about the geographical area and marked the Syrian outpost from which the people who kidnapped him got off. She saw a path and an asbestos roof and that's what was there." Army officers joined him when he met with the mystic. "They brought a map with them and it marked exactly where he was. In the army at first they didn't take her seriously, but when they heard what she said they treated it differently."

About a year ago, soldiers were sent to dig in the place where the mystic painted, but they did not find Migovski's body. Maged does not give up. "We have not yet reached the floor that was 47 years ago. The army agrees to dig again in the area. We were supposed to go back to the digs last week, because of the rain and mud it was postponed. I don't want any form of testing. Maybe there is knowledge in the world that I don't know, maybe there are areas in the human soul that I don't know. I have a feeling I have to try it. It is not a correct approach not to try, from a preliminary position that these things are not true."

Chaim Avraham helps the army collect data on mystics. "When I ask them for information about a certain mystic, they give me data about him," he says. His son, Benny, was abducted together with Omer Suad and Adi Avitan in October 2000 in Mount Dov. A year later, in October 2001, the army announced that "there is a high probability that the three soldiers are dead". Avraham met with dozens of mystics, "without any result." A caller from California that the army gave me details about showed up at my house one day and only after I gave him NIS 400 was I able to get rid of him. Rabbi Kadori told me three times 'in life', after a few months the army informed me that my son had died. A mystic from Ashkelon took thousands of shekels and told me things he read in the newspaper. A mystic told me that he is in a dark place, he has an injured leg and before the first Hanukkah he will return. When the Hanukkah holiday approached, we were all in eager anticipation, we believed in her wholeheartedly. It created a point of light for me, it seemed to me like a decisive date when my life would change. When it didn't happen there was a real downfall in the family. She continued to roll out another date and in the end informed us that she was no longer communicating with him." Pitro, who predicted Avraham's return in Hanukkah, says that "what I got is what I said".

*

It is very convenient for the army to run around the country with me from mystic to mystic, says a father whose son went missing many years ago. "It doesn't require creative thinking or hard work. They come with us to the mystics, do more V in their diary and feel that here, they have done something for us. It is much more convenient to run with me to the mystics than to seriously search for my son." *

The knowledge website was until the end of 2002 part of the IOL portal from the Haaretz group