Montreal prof attends funeral of Israeli soldier

By DAVID LAZARUS

Canadian Jewish News, February 12, 2004

When Chaim and Edna Avraham buried their 20-year-old son, Benny, on Jan. 30 at the Kiryat Shaul military cemetery near the Tel Aviv suburb of Petach Tikvah, among those looking on with grief and a full heart was Gil Troy of Montreal.

Troy had rushed to Israel as soon as he had heard the news about Benny’s return and was staying at the Avraham home in Petach Tikvah. A history professor at McGill University, he has been a close friend of the family since they met in Jerusalem in June 2001, during a Birthright Israel trip.

By that time, Avraham, now 55, had been on an eight-month crusade to free Benny, who had gone missing along with two other Israeli soldiers – Adi Avitan and Omar Suwad – after they were ambushed and kidnapped near the Lebanese border by Hezbollah terrorists.

Speaking to The CJN a few days after the remains of the three men were returned to Israel in exchange for the release of more than 400 prisoners, Troy, 42, recalled the emotional intensity of his first meeting with Avraham and Edna, when they pleaded for support from the Birthright group.

Over coffee, a friendship blossomed between Troy and the Avrahams. Edna was a nurse and Chaim worked in public relations for the Histadrut, Israel’s federation of labour. Troy said Chaim used every ounce of his PR savvy while travelling around the world on his campaign to free his son.

“He was really determined to put the story front and centre,” Troy said. “Chaim travelled more, he spoke more, than anyone I’ve ever seen.”

The campaign was not only to lobby the Israeli government and rally Jewish communities to do what they could, but to put international pressure on Hezbollah to let Benny go.

The Troy family and the Avrahams have kept in regular touch since the Birthright trip. In July 2002, Troy met them in Washington, D.C., where the Avrahams were continuing their crusade, and Troy gave them with a copy of his book, Why I am a Zionist.

Eight months earlier, in November 2001, the Israeli government had declared the three men dead. But “as long as there is a thread of hope,” he recalled Edna saying, “we feel he’s alive.”

In October of the same year, the Avrahams travelled to Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto, where they accepted a 10,000-name petition organized by Renana Goldhar that asked the Canadian government for humanitarian intervention into the case.

While in Montreal, the Avrahams stayed with Troy and his family. The Avrahams returned the favour two months later when Troy visited them.

In Israel, the campaign to free Benny seemed to capture the public imagination like no other. In Canada, thousands of dollars were raised by selling ribbons, pins and T-shirts with the slogan, “Moms Waiting at Home.”

Troy said he played a minor role in the crusade, adding that he was certainly not deserving of the praise Chaim used to bestow on him.

“I talked about it as much as I could. I dedicated some of the proceeds from my book for the Petach Tikvah library on behalf of the three families. I had an article in the National Post. It was my way of saying that this was important, but I didn’t do all that much.”

Troy said even though the family probably knew that Benny was dead, they never gave up.

But they were forced to abandon their hopes on Jan. 24, when word got out about a prisoner swap, and that the three soldiers – whose remains were positively identified in Germany – would be coming home. The deal also included the return of kidnapped businessman Elchanan Tannenbaum. Some Israelis, including the family of kidnapped air force navigator Ron Arad, strongly objected to the exchange, warning it would legitimize Hezbollah and give the group reason to kidnap more Israelis.

Troy spoke to Chaim the next day, and the moment classes ended on Jan. 28, he got on a plane. He arrived in Israel just a few hours before the bodies arrived at a hangar adjacent to Ben-Gurion Airport for a military ceremony he attended as a guest of the Avraham family.

At the ceremony, Troy said, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon spoke of the “Jewish values” that made the swap, in his view, a more than fair exchange.

Some of the images that remain clear in Troy’s mind include Benny’s older sisters, Efrat and Dafna, looking solemnly on; and well-known Israeli media personalities commiserating emotionally with the Avrahams and the families of the other soldiers, then regaining their composure for interviews.

“I felt I was there representing all the people from Montreal who couldn’t come,” Troy said.

Benny’s body made several stops before reaching the cemetery – at B’nai Brak, where the family first lived, to a street to be named after him, to their synagogue, to their new home in Petach Tikvah. Troy sat in a car a little back in the convoy. A passersby who was stopped by the traffic got out of his car and placed his kippah on his heart. The driver said you would not see this in any other country.

The erev Shabbat funeral, carried live on Israeli television, was a “mob scene,” Troy said, and tears and memories flowed copiously. Labor party leader Shimon Peres spoke of the “cruel world in which you cannot know what happened to your son.” Avraham repeated something Troy had said in the privacy of their home: that Benny served not only the State of Israel, but Am Yisrael.

There are now two Benny Avrahams buried only about 20 metres apart in Kiryat Shaul cemetery, Troy said: Chaim’s brother, who died during the Yom Kippur War in 1973, and his son, who was named after his late uncle.

The Aron Kodesh at a synagogue in Petach Tikvah has been dedicated in the younger Benny’s name, as is a town park. And a painting drawn by Troy’s 31/3-year-old son, Aviv, hangs in the Avraham home.

But for the Avraham family, Troy said, the most important memory is the son with “a beautiful smile and lovely eyes.”

The confirmed death of Benny and an actual body to bury has brought the Avrahams an element of closure, Troy said, but not before they had to endure “31/2 years of purgatory and very public exposure of a very private pain.”