Baumel, a dual American-Israeli citizen, was taken along with two Israeli members of his tank crew, Yehuda Katz and Tzvi Feldman, during Israel’s foray in the Lebanon War.
All three were photographed in Damascus on the day of their capture. Several eyewitnesses, including a Time magazine reporter, said they watched a parade in which the tank and crew were led through a major street in Damascus and flaunted to cheering crowds. The ceremony was the last occasion the soldiers were seen publicly.
In March 2005, Yona Baumel, Zachary’s father, told this reporter that sources he had cultivated in Syria told him they visited his son that year at a Syrian military installation just north of the border with Iraq. Yona Baumel, who died in 2009, was also given a book from a confidante of a family in Syria that contains coded messages Baumel claimed could have been written only by his son.
From that 2005 interview:
Zachary Baumel was born in Brooklyn and attended yeshiva until his family immigrated to Israel in 1970, where he graduated high school and enlisted in the Israeli army. Baumel nearly finished his military service when he was called up to serve in the Lebanon War. Just hours before the declaration of a cease-fire, Zachary was sent into battle near the Lebanese village of Sultan Yaqub and subsequently captured. That day, 21 Israelis were killed and many more were injured.
Several weeks after Baumel was captured, Syrian officials said they buried four bodies in a Jewish cemetery. Baumel was thought to have been among the dead. But a year later, the Red Cross exhumed the graves and found the bodies were that of three Arabs and one Israeli missing from the same battle.
Syrian officials since have given conflicting reports to the media, including claiming that Baumel and his three Israeli crewmen are still alive.
Also, Israeli diplomatic sources told this reporter in 2006 that Syrian officials have implied through third party messengers that Baumel was still alive.
Prior to the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, PLO leader Yasir Arafat presented Israel with half of Baumel’s dog tag and claimed he had information on the missing soldier’s whereabouts. Arafat later refused to release further details.