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Faith of a dead soldier's mother in the IDF is shaken In retrospect, says Margaret Kikis, I should have done the same as my neighbors from Karmiel, the Shneor family. When Ehud Shneor, a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces' Duvdevan unit, was killed in a training accident last August, his family conducted an effective public relations campaign - the practice of giving the soldiers the runaround was widely exposed; senior commanders were stripped of their posts or had their promotions held back; and junior officers were brought up on charges. But earlier in the year, in February, when Staff Sergeant Benny Kikis, 20, was killed, together with five comrades, during a terror attack on the Ein-Ariq checkpoint near Ramallah, the families' first choice was to show faith in the military establishment. When she was approached by the media a short while after her son's death, Margaret Kikis refused to give any interviews, and she asked to afford the IDF time to investigate itself. Since then, almost eight months have gone by; Israel has sustained more than 200 deaths; and the attack on Ein-Ariq, described at the time as one of the IDF's most shameful failures, has all but been erased from the public memory. The bereaved families are still waiting. Two weeks ago, a wide-eyed Kikis watched the media's detailed reports on the investigation into the battle in the Jenin refugee camp. However, all her efforts to receive the findings of the army's investigation into the circumstances of her son's death have come to naught. The investigation, the IDF says, is still underway. The attack on Ein-Ariq took place on February 19. The checkpoint was being manned by a team of conscripts from the Engineering Corps who arrived on the scene only hours prior to the attack. Two Palestinians approached the site and opened fire on the soldiers. An officer and five soldiers were killed. A seventh soldier was moderately injured, while an eighth, a sniper, hid and made no effort to assist his comrades. The initial investigation revealed that the soldiers offered little resistance to the attack. It appeared that the team had been ill-prepared for its mission. Conversations conducted between Kikis and comrades of her son have raised numerous concerns: The soldiers underwent a very brief overlap and hand-over at the checkpoint; the platoon commander who was killed, First Lieutenant Moshe Eini, had already filled a page detailing various shortcomings at the site that required his attention; the casualties were not quickly located and medical assistance was, therefore, slow in coming; the soldiers who survived the initial assault did not fight back; and the injured soldier, who feigned death, did not call for help once the attackers had left. The fact that no one has been made to pay for these shortcomings greatly angers Kikis. This month, her son's battalion commander was promoted to the rank of colonel; the company commander is now on study leave at the IDF's expense. "My son and his comrades were sent out to die," she says today. "It was a one-way ticket and no one is taking responsibility." But the thing that is compounding the family's anger is the fact that Benny Kikis should not have been at the checkpoint on the night he was killed. Six weeks earlier, Kikis had broken his arm during a training exercise and had returned to his unit after having the cast removed only two days before his death. It was his first posting in the territories. His mother says he was not ready for operations in the West Bank, that he had not participated in his unit's training and preparations for action there and that his injury was still affecting his use of his weapon. Even more worrying is the series of events that preceded Kikis's return to his unit: On February 12, Kikis underwent a medical examination at a military hospital. According to his mother, the hand specialist, Dr. Uriel Dreyfuss, refused to review the X-rays after the cast had been removed and wrote in his diagnosis that he saw no evidence of a fracture, ordering Kikis to return to his unit. The mother, a nurse, believed that the break had yet to heal and pleaded with the doctor to give her son more sick leave at home. The doctor refused and made do with a week of reduced duties back in the unit. Kikis asked his commander, Eini, for an extension of a few days on his leave so that he could at least begin physiotherapy. Eini agreed and Kikis subsequently returned to his unit on the Sunday before the incident. That evening, Margaret Kikis spoke to her son for the last time, pleading with him to see the battalion doctor. "I don't have time," her son replied. "It will be okay. I can take care of myself." Two days later, he was killed. The company commander said that Kikis "volunteered" for the checkpoint mission; he was unable to say why he had sent out a soldier who had not been fit for the task. The family reported the doctor's behavior to senior officers who paid condolence calls at the Kikis home during the shiva period. Since then, the IDF's Medical Corps has conducted three inquiries into the matter, but has failed to produce a final and conclusive report. Last week, the office of the chief of staff took up an interest in the matter, and Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon is expected to visit the family in the near future. A senior military source has admitted to Ha'aretz that there appear to have been problems with the soldier's medical treatment. The story of Ein-Ariq repeats itself, in various versions, in each and every one of the mass-casualty incidents involving the army over the past year. The IDF, bogged down by its daily troubles, is dragging out the investigations and the families fear cover-ups. For the the most part, these affairs expose a worrying, almost alienating, regard for the bereaved families on the part of the military. "They are making me feel like I'm a nuisance," Kikis says, echoing the sentiments of other parents. By Amos Harel

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