Israel

Kick Off the

Ya'acov Schwartz's
Disappearing Act

New Year in Style

r$1000 Off A Pedicure"

1

Why did this man fake
his own kidnapping by
terrorists?

*Coupon good for regularly priced pedicure only. May not I
be used in conjunction with any other coupon or special. I
I
Offer expires 11/29/97

_i

7,1r

L

LARRY DERFNER
Israel Correspondent

4141, 11

-14

n. s etc.

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the JUSTICE BRANDEIS AWARD from the Zionist

11/7
1997

52

Organization of America.

0

n Sept. 10, the day Secretary
of State Madeleine Albright
arrived in Israel, the country
became preoccupied with
another event: the disappearance of
Ya'acov Schwartz.
Police said they suspected the 63-
year-old Schwartz, whose car was
found abandoned near the Gaza Strip,
had been kidnapped by Palestinian ter-
rorists.
Suspicions like these often turn out
to be true, and with security forces on
high alert for terror attacks, it was
widely assumed that Schwartz had been
snatched by Hamas. It became a major
political incident.
Albright, at Netanyahu's urging,
asked Yassir Arafat to do everything in
his power to track down the kidnap-
pers. Arafat, at Yossi Beilins urging,
called Schwartz's family to reassure
them that he was on the case. Some
1,000 Shin Bet agents, soldiers, police-
men and volunteers, aided by blood- ,
hounds and helicopters, searched for
Schwartz.
Two days later, he was found alive in
an abandoned building in Ashkelon.
He said Arabs had kidnapped him,
handcuffed him, tried to strangle him,
stab him and set him on fire, but that
his prayers had saved him. It was a
"miracle," he said.
At the beginning of this week,
Schwartz admitted to investigators
what most Israelis following the leaks
in the case had come to believe: that he
had staged the kidnapping himself. "I
did it to unify the Israeli people," he
told police.
It turned out that Schwartz was not
just any old citizen. Owner of a metals
factory in Tel Aviv, and a resident of
the mainly ultra-Orthodox city of Bnei
Brak, Schwartz was a radical right-wing
activist who had a police file over a
threatening letter he had once sent to
left-wing Knesset Member Yossi Sarid.
According to acquaintances, Schwartz
was sympathetic to Yigal Amir, and
believed that Amir had been framed by
left-wing conspirators for the assassina-
tion of Rabin — a popular theory
among Israel's extremist right.
He was also a Holocaust survivor.
About a month ago he told a Chabad

newspaper in the United States how he
had hidden in a shed of a Nazi concen-
tration camp at the end of the war
while members of his family were shot
to death. The Holocaust was the prism
through which Schwartz viewed Israel's
relations with the Arabs.
In his confession, Schwartz a stroke
is
victim, told police, "After the recent
terror attacks, I had a vision that I had
to shock and unify the people of
Israel." He would achieve this unity, he
explained, by getting the people of
Israel to search for him and worry over
his fate. The vision came to him that
afternoon on Sept. 10, while visiting
family graves in an Ashkelon cemetery.
After leaving the cemetery, Schwartz
cloned his car on a dirt road near
abandoned
Gaza, rifling the insides of the car to
make it look like a kidnapping had
taken place. Within hours, Schwartz's
wife notified police, and, since Albright
was in town, an international incident
was born.

•

Religion, a
stroke, Holocaust
memories.

He hid out for the next two days in
his Tel Aviv factory, then went back to
Ashkelon and parked himself in an
abandoned building, where a police-
woman soon discovered him.
Immediately, gaping holes in Schwartz's
story appeared.
After he confessed, Israeli authorities
were understandably incensed. "This
man took up days of our time, kept all
the security forces busy on his behalf,
and almost ruined Albright's visit,"
Netanyahu's people said. Arafat's people
were gloating: "From the first day we •
knew this was a provocation by the
extreme Israeli Right, aimed•at sabotag-
ing Albright's visit."
Schwartz claims he acted alone, but
police are seeking potential accom-
plices. Justice officials were deciding
whether to hold him liable for the esti-
mated $300,000 cost of the search.
Schwartz's attorney described him as
"a man who loves Israel, who loves the
Land of Israel."
Schwartz apologized to his family
and to those who had gone searching
for him. But overall, he insisted, the
operation had been a success: "I think,"
he said, "I unified the people and
achieved my goal." ❑