IDF, Mossad Recover Body of Missing Israeli Soldier from Syria After 43 Years
IDF: “In a special operation led by the IDF and the Mossad, the body of Sergeant First Class Tzvika Feldman was located in the heart of Syria and returned to Israel.”
In a daring operation deep inside the Syrian territory, the Israeli military recovered the body of an officer missing for 43 years.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the intelligence agency Mossad located and retrieved the remains of Sgt. First Class Zvi Feldman, who had been missing since the First Lebanon War of 1982, Israeli officials disclosed Sunday.
“The Mossad and the IDF have recovered and returned to Israel the body of the missing soldier, Sergeant First Class Tzvika Feldman, who fell in the Battle of Sultan Yacoub 43 years ago,” the military said in a statement.
After 43 years, the body of the missing soldier, Sergeant First Class Tzvika Feldman, was recovered and returned to Israel.
In a special operation led by the IDF and the Mossad, the body of Sergeant First Class Tzvika Feldman was located in the heart of Syria and returned to… pic.twitter.com/rNyVUbMC9x
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) May 11, 2025
The military identified the remains before informing Feldman’s family, including his sister Anat, and his two brothers, Shlomi and Itzik. “In a special operation led by the IDF and the Mossad, the body of Sergeant First Class Tzvika Feldman was located in the heart of Syria and returned to Israel. Following the recovery, the body was identified at the Military Rabbinate’s Genomic Center for Identifying Fallen Soldiers, and the family was notified by the IDF in the presence of the Prime Minister,” the IDF statement added.
Prime Minister Netanyahu at the Feldman family home, delivering the news:
The body of First Sergeant Zvi Feldman, missing since the 1982 Sultan Yacoub battle, has been brought back to Israel. pic.twitter.com/DQZ7YuOCjL— daniel hanukayeb (@LionsOfZion_ORG) May 11, 2025
The IDF described the recovery of Feldman’s body in hostile territory as “a complex and covert operation, enabled by precise intelligence and the application of operational capabilities that demonstrated ingenuity and steadfast courage.”
Feldman was one of three IDF soldiers who went missing at the battle of Sultan Yacoub, fought between Israel and Syria in 1982. He went missing along with Sgt. First Class Yehuda Katz and Sgt. First Class Zachary Baumel. In 2019, the IDF recovered Baumel’s body. Katz remains missing in action to this day.
The Israeli news website Ynetnews reported the details of the fateful battle:
The Battle of Sultan Yacoub took place between June 10–11, 1982, during the sixth day of Operation Peace for Galilee. Israeli forces were ordered to seize a strategic junction near the village of Sultan Yacoub in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, just before a cease-fire with Syrian forces.
The battle resulted in 20 Israeli fatalities, dozens wounded, and six soldiers missing. Over time, the fates of three were clarified: Zohar Lifshitz was killed in action and returned for burial after the war; Arik Lieberman was captured and released two years later; and Hezi Shai was held by Ahmed Jibril’s terrorist group and released after three years in the infamous Jibril prisoner swap.
The IDF releases footage showing the moment the remains of Sgt. First Class Zvi Feldman were returned to Israel, nearly 43 years after he went missing in the First Lebanon War's battle of Sultan Yacoub.
The video shows a coffin draped in an Israeli flag, as troops recite the… pic.twitter.com/DRV6iApjyt
— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) May 11, 2025
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on Sunday, vowed to ‘bring home’ Katz, the third and the last missing soldier from the Sultan Yacoub battle.
“For decades, Zvika was listed as missing, and the efforts to locate him—alongside the other soldiers missing from that battle—never ceased. Six years ago, we brought back Staff Sgt. Zachary Baumel for burial in Israel. Today, we bring back Tzvika. We will not stop until we bring home Staff Sgt. Yehuda Katz, who is still missing from that same battle,” Netanyahu said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at the start of the Government meeting:
"I have just come from the family of Sgt. First Class Tzvika Feldman, of blessed memory. He was an Armored Corps fighter who fell in the Battle of Sultan Yacoub 43 years ago. https://t.co/sdrEZ3jKnm pic.twitter.com/Y3QpIzZMkX
— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) May 11, 2025
Revealing the details of the five-month-long covert operation, the Israel Hayom newspaper reported that “Mossad deployed assets on the ground and used sophisticated deception tactics.”
“Recovering Feldman’s body required a complex intelligence and operational campaign, during which Mossad assets risked their lives. Although the team was initially barred from digging at a certain location, it ultimately returned under the cover of an elaborate ruse that enabled its presence,” the newspaper observed.
The Ynetnews disclosed that “Mossad agents posing as a non-Israeli team” ventured “deep inside Syria” to locate and bring back the body.
Israel did not seek the help of Syria’s newly installed Islamist regime for the extraction. According to the Jerusalem Post, “the new government was not involved in the operation.”
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I’m hoping all the Anonymous” sources are wrong about Bibiand Trump
That Trump is very upset with baby going behind his back with waltz, who was just recently taken out of the position he was in and put in th UN… why not just get rid of them. Apparently waltz and baby were devising a plan to take out Iran’s nuclear capabilities while Trump was negotiating.
Trump is wrong. You can’t negotiate with these Muslims. Bibi is right and I support him.
Ffs G 🙄 Stop wanting shit to be true 😂😂
Islam is by it’s nature subversive and brutal. A religion which advocates conversion or death.
It is time for people to recognize it as a threat to civilization as we know it.
I also appreciate how the Jewish people never leave their soldiers and hostages behind. They’re always working to bring them home.
What is it with the F’g arabs that they steal the dead bodies of their adversaries? Absolutely no humanity at all.
You want humanity, it’s not in Islam
Read the Quran, understand that it is literal, the do it to them first!
“Missing” Israeli soldier
Left unstated but strongly implied is that this soldier was never really missing — the Syrians knew where his body was all along.,
Of course they did, but the Israelis didn’t know whether he was alive or dead. Any of the three of them. I remember for years congregations all over the world added a prayer for all three to the standard service, in the hope that they were still being held prisoner somewhere.
All three were students at the same yeshivah, Kerem Beyavneh, which is popular with American students, so there were a lot of American Jewish communities that felt a personal connection to them.
In case anyone’s confused about his name being variously given as Zvi, Zvika, and Tzvika:
The name צבי, which means “gazelle”, is properly pronounced “Tz’vee”, with the apostrophe representing a schwa sound, so it more or less rhymes with “degree”. But in normal speech the schwa sound is dropped, so it’s pronounced as one syllable, “Tzvee”. That can be spelled in English as “Zvi” or “Tzvi”, depending entirely on one’s whim. “-ka” is a common Israeli suffix that is added to names to form diminutives, like “-y” in English. So his family and friends called him “Tzveeka”, which you can spell in English as Zvika or Tzvika.
PS: In older English publications (100+ years old) you sometimes find it spelled Zevi or even Zebi.