Uri Ilan

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article does not cite any references or sources. (February 2007) Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

Uri Ilan (Hebrew, אורי אילן) was an Israeli soldier who committed suicide in a Syrian prison and became a symbol of courage and patriotism.

Uri Ilan was born in 1935 in Kibbutz Gan Shmuel. His mother was Fayge Ilanit, a member of the First Knesset. He joined the Golani infantry division in 1953. During his military service, he volunteered to place eavesdropping devices on Syrian phone lines. On one of its missions, the five-man team encountered a Syrian patrol and was forced to surrender. The soldiers were taken into custody in Quneitra and sent to a Damascus prison for interrogation.

The Israelis were sent to separate cells and brutally tortured. There were many dramatic events taking place at the time, which relegated the news about Uri Ilan and his comrades to the back pages. Efforts to bring about their release were apparently unsuccessful, and they remained in prison for a long time.

After five weeks of questioning and barbaric torture, isolated from his comrades, Uri Ilan hung himself in his prison cell using a rope made from the fabric of the mattress cover. In his clothing, Ilan hid nine notes addressed to his homeland, Israel, and his family. The most famous is a scrap of paper on which he wrote the Hebrew words "לא בגדתי" ("Lo Bagadti") - I did not betray.

It turns out that two of his comrades (Meir Ya'akobi and Meir Moses) had broken down in questioning and revealed to the Syrians the whereabouts of the eavesdropping devices.

Ilan's suicide and the notes he left behind set off a great outpouring of grief in Israel, but also a sense of national pride. His life story became a symbol of heroism and self-sacrifice in Israel's ongoing struggle for survival.

In 1956, the four remaining soldiers were returned to Israel in exchange for 40 Syrian POWs. Meir Ya'akobi and Meir Moses were tried for treason and demoted. Ya'akobi was killed soon after, in the Sinai Campaign of 1956. Documents discovered 11 years later, during the Six-Day War, showed that both Ya'akobi and Moses had tried to kill themselves and their Syrian captors by walking into a mine field. In 2005, Meir Moses received a full pardon from President Moshe Katsav.