The story of the disappearance of Mali and Liel Yahalomi, who were eventually found safe and sound on a bus in Argentina, proves just how impossible it is in the modern world to truly disappear — as long as there are people who are truly looking for you.
Plots and subplots were woven around the story: Had hostile or antisemitic elements abducted them and were holding them? What illegal steps had the two taken during their escape journey, which, as far as is known so far, included three continents and a variety of means of transportation and location tracking? Even the shares of the bank where the mother works suffered a temporary drop in value after speculation emerged that a story of embezzlement might be involved.
Liel and Mali were surprised whenan Israel Police representative boarded the bus and addressed them in Hebrew
(Photo: Israel Police spokesperson)
In the end, it turned out that no new script for "Thelma & Louise" had been written here, and that this was about two women who made every effort to flee for their lives and escape their fate — for reasons fully known only to them. They took no criminal step and violated no law, because a person has every full right, well, to run away from their own life.
But today, we cannot truly run away completely. Even when we think we have taken all the necessary steps to cover our tracks, it turns out that always, and without understanding just how much, we will leave digital and other footprints that will allow Big Brother to connect the dots and close the circle around us.
Fact: The mother and daughter made every effort to disappear — and yet the police found them. They disconnected their cellphones and got rid of them, bought replacement phones — information that reached investigators in Israel and from which they concluded that the disappearance was planned. When Austrian confirmation arrived that the two had left the country on their own, the effort to trace them shifted from trying to determine who had made them disappear to trying to understand why, or from what, they were running and along what route.
Intelligence followed the international route, Europol searched for indications of destinations, and a civilian team of former cyber unit members managed to reconstruct their consultations with the Gemini AI engine — until, finally, an assessment was reached that they had flown to South America, and the search for them narrowed until the bus on which the two were ultimately found was located.
And indeed, from the look captured in the published photograph, one can understand how deep their astonishment was when an Israel Police representative boarded the bus, addressed them in Hebrew after identifying them, questioned them on the spot, made sure they were safe and sound and that no one was threatening them, and released them to continue their mysterious journey, because no suspicion of criminal conduct was found in their actions. And that is how the affair should be left — and they should be left alone.
In today’s world, even when someone actively tries to disappear, in order to get from place to place they must use the infrastructure of the modern world, and we have no real chance of disappearing from the radar. We constantly leave behind an uninterrupted trail of data — phones, purchases, flights, borders, cameras, transportation, reservations, accounts, digital connections — and all that is needed is for the people who find it interesting and troubling enough to come along, make the links and connect the threads between the pieces of information.
May there also be those who search this way for Haymanut Kasau, who has been missing for nearly 1,000 days, until she is returned to her family.