Police on Monday were searching in the Galil for a 19-year-
old yeshiva student from the U.S., who is feared missing.
Investigators have not ruled out other possibilities, but a
vast search effort is underway. Police, meanwhile, are
bolstering forces at junctions nationwide due to additional
threats of kidnappings.
Police have mapped all the intersections in the Galil and are
putting extra forces at those deemed problematic.
On Sunday, the student and a group of friends traveled to
Meron from their Jerusalem yeshiva to visit the tomb of Rabbi
Shimon Bar Yochai. The friends went off hiking in the area
and left their friend by himself at the tomb. When they
returned a short time later, he was missing.
The friends searched the area themselves for a few hours and
then contacted the police. Around 100 police officers and
volunteers, mostly yeshiva students, are looking for the
missing yeshiva bochur. His family in the US has been
informed.
Hundreds of police and volunteers were also searching for
Donna Bennet of Tiveria who has been missing since last week.
Her relatives says that she is a shomeres mitzvos and
very responsible and does not do things without informing her
family. She went missing in the early hours of Friday morning
after completing a waitress shift at a restaurant in
Tiveria.
Police say that they have no real information about what is
behind the incidents. Concerns are high because of the recent
murder of Oleg Shaichat, a soldier from Upper Nazareth, in
the same area. There was also an attempted abduction of
another soldier near Yokne'am last Thursday. The soldier had
come from his base on the Golan Heights by bus and was
waiting at a junction for his brother to pick him up, when a
car pulled up. Two passengers tried to force him inside after
he refused the offer of a lift.
He resisted their efforts and managed to put a magazine into
his rifle, cock it, and aim the weapon at his would-be
kidnappers, who sped away. The report of the soldier was,
apparently, not taken seriously by the army at the time, but
now it is.
