For three years, Israelis had been worried about their fellow countryman Elchanan Tannenbaum.
In October 2000, Tannenbaum was lured to Abu Dhabi under the guise of a lucrative drug deal. Instead, he fell into a trap set by Hezbollah operatives who smuggled him into Lebanon.
On 16 October 2000, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah announced on al-Manar TV station: "We have an Israeli colonel in our hands". Israel was initially unsure who that person might be, until Nasrallah confirmed it was Tannenbaum a few days later.
According to Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman Tannenbaum held an important position in the IDF Northern Command and served for as many as 150 days of reserve duty a year. He was privy to many important military secrets. According to Bergman, only five days before Tannenbaum was kidnapped, he was on reserve duty at the Northern Command bunker in Safed where he oversaw a sensitive exercise: a simulation of a full-scale war with Hezbollah and Syria. Tannenbaum could have exposed the details of Israel's war plans to Hezbollah
He spent the next three years in Hezbollah captivity.
After three years of negotiations, in a deal negotiated by Germany, Israel and Hezbollah agreed to a prisoner swap. Israel would release hundreds of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners in exchange for Tannenbaum and the remains of three IDF soldiers.
Initially, Israelis were overjoyed that Tannenbaum had been freed from Hezbollah captivity, however that joy turned dark when they discovered that Tannebaum had actually been trying to a drug deal when he was tricked by Hezbollah and captured.
Tannenbaum has connections with an Arab Israeli crime family that had ties to Lebanon. They persuaded him to participate in an attempt to smuggle drugs into Israel, in return for which he would be paid up to $200,000.
When he arrived in Israel, he was arrested. During investigations by the Shin Bet, the police and the army, he explained why he had left Israel. He was then released from arrest without being charged.
During his service in the army years before his capture, he fought in two wars (the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War) in an artillery unit. He was granted the title of Colonel when he served in the reserves. Notwithstanding this, in 2007, the IDF demoted him to the rank of private.
Tannebaum’s woes were not over though– his financial situation was still bad and in 2018, he was even sent to jail for a few months as a result of his efforts to better his finances.
He will be buried in Herzliya later today (Tuesday) and is survived by two children and two grandchildren.
The Times of Israel contributed to this article.
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