Interior Security Minister Amar Bar-Lev revealed Tuesday details about an undercover military operation, whose details have been under a strict gag order for no less than 38 years.
During an interview on the Kan Bet radio channel, Bar-Lev revealed that in December 1984, Israel conducted a sensitive operation in the depths of Syria -- during which one of his former commanders, Sgt. Barak Sharabi, was killed.
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Interior Security Minister Amar Bar-Lev, Sgt. Barak Sharabi
(Photo: Yoav Dudkevich, Yizkor website)
Sharabi’s resting place has been kept under wraps to this very day due to national security concerns.
The Military Censorship later demanded the minister’s interview be removed - but later agreed to affirm where that the covert operation indeed took place inside Syria.
Sharabi -- according to the Yizkor website commemorating fallen IDF soldiers -- enlisted in October 1981 to the military flotilla, but later volunteered for Sayeret Matkal -- a renowned Israeli reconnaissance and commando unit.
In an interview conducted a few years ago, Sharabi’s parents said that they were informed that their son had been killed in a car accident.
At his funeral, though, very senior IDF officials were present, who later told them in secret about the operation in which he participated and apparently fell.
Later in the interview, Bar-Lev was asked about the latest terror wave, in which 15 Israelis were murdered in several separate attacks throughout the country.
"We are with 15 people killed before the holy month of Ramadan, and also hundreds and thousands who were killed over the years, before the establishment of the state to this day,” said Bar-Lev.
"It seems silly to me to get into such nuances, but in the month before Ramadan there were no murders," said the minister -- even though the terror attacks in Tel Aviv, and most recently in the West Bank city of Ariel, took place in the midst of the month-long holiday.
"In the month before that, there were three or four very serious terrorist attacks against the citizens of the State of Israel.”
“The Israeli police found themselves dividing… between those terrorists and the citizens of the state,” he added.