Yair Gladwasser Speaks About His Brother

Yair Goldwasser brother of Ehud Goldwesser
War Isn’t Over for the Goldweisser Family
Aug. 20, 2006 0:30
By TOVAH LAZAROFF
Yair Goldwasser’s last contacts with his brother Ehud were so normal it seems bizarre in retrospect. He ate dinner with Ehud and his wife, Karnit, in their Haifa apartment. Then there was an ordinary phone conversation a few days before Ehud left for the final leg of his reserve duty on the northern border.
His family has not seen him since, because on July 12, Hizbullah gunmen kidnapped him and fellow reservist Eldad Regev, 26. The word normal has become a stranger for Yair and his family.
For more than five weeks they have subsisted on a diet of hope and anxiety, with no word on the fate of the tall environmental engineering student. Their belief that he was wounded only makes matters worse. While fellow Nahariya residents are breathing in relief at the cessation of the Hizbullah rocket fire, the war is not over for Yair Goldwasser, 26, and his younger brother Gadi, 23.
“This is where our battle begins,” said Gadi as he sat with Yair in their childhood home. On wooden shelves behind them were clay pieces sculpted by their mother. The guitar that Ehud – known in the family as “Udi” – loved to play lay on a dining room chair. The warning sirens have fallen silent and the rockets have stopped since Monday’s cease-fire. But the two young men, who have been pleading with officials from around the world for some word about their older brother, are hardly at peace. They believe he is alive, but they would like to bolster that faith with concrete evidence.
Yair Goldwasser dismissed encouraging words from Vice Premier Shimon Peres, who said Wednesday that Ehud was alive. There isn’t sufficient evidence behind those words, he said. Gadi and Yair told The Jerusalem Post this week they feared that as people returned to their normal routines they would forget about “Udi” and Regev.
“We know this. We are not blind,” said Gadi. He and the family are doing everything in their power to keep the two men’s fate on the top of the national agenda.

…. Yair was home in Nahariya watching television when his world was turned upside down. Gadi was traveling in India with his girlfriend and a friend. Their parents were in South Africa, where the family has lived on and off since 1987 due to father Shlomo’s work as a cargo ship skipper.

Yair said he been about to start working on his car when he suddenly had a premonition telling him to stay put. “Four minutes later officers knocked on my door and gave me the news that my brother was missing in action,” Yair said. He was the first in the family to know that Ehud was gone. He e-mailed brother Gadi and sent a text message asking father Shlomo to break the news to their mother.
The IDF officer stopped Yair from calling Ehud’s wife, Karnit, suggesting it was better handled by a professional team.

….Unlike many of their neighbors who fled Nahariya during the war, the Goldwassers stayed put.

“We don’t believe in leaving our home. It’s ridiculous to even think about it,” said Yair. The rockets falling around them paled in comparison to the pain caused by the sudden absence of their big brother. They didn’t head to a protected room or a bomb shelter. Yair said he was more likely to head to the roof to see where the rockets had hit.
Two rockets exploded at a nearby elementary school, one landed 50 meters down the road and another dropped 100 meters further away, he said.

….. Yair said he understood from the start that they were in for a long haul. “We have to be patient, strong and have a lot of hope,” he said. “We are not in grief. We are not in mourning. He [Ehud] is not dead. We can feel that. By standing strong we help him and send him all of our strength.”

The brothers said they were neither diplomats nor government officials. They were simply two young men who wanted their brother back, they said. “I would turn the world upside down to do that,” Gadi said.

Ehud Gladwasser

Wild Things’ comment…..
Prayers for Ehud Goldwasser, Eldad Regev and Gilad Shalit and their families and loved ones.