By David Israel • August 21, 2026
Jerusalem, 21 August, 2026 (TPS-IL) — The funeral procession of Staff Sgt. Yehuda Yekutiel Katz, who fell in the June 11, 1982 Battle of Sultan Yacoub and whose remains were returned from Lebanon this week, departed Friday from the yeshiva where he studied, and made its way to the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, where Yehuda was buried.
Fourty-four years after he was last seen, critically wounded inside a damaged tank in the heart of Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, Yehuda Katz was finally brought home following a sustained intelligence and operational effort that pieced together fragments scattered across archives, military units and individuals, amid a transformed Middle East that created new international opportunities.
Rabbi David Turgeman, who was Katz’s Torah study partner on base, was in his armored platoon when they drove into a Syrian army ambush. By the time Israeli artillery began striking the Syrians and giving the ambushed platoon relief, Turgeman had already evacuated his tank, he recalled to The Press Service of Israel.
“We advanced into the open space; there was no intelligence. Such an intelligence failure. It needs to be said again and again – they misled us,” Turgeman told TPS-IL. “I dragged myself through the field until they came and got us out.”
Rabbi Mordechai Greenberg, dean of the Kerem B’Yavneh yeshiva, eulogized Katz, saying, “Some people think that yeshiva students are negatively influenced by their military service. With Yehuda, it was the opposite. He wrote down special spiritual commitments for himself that he intended to uphold while serving in the army.”
The battle 44 years ago was fought between Syrian and Israeli forces on the sixth day of Operation Peace for Galilee. At the end of the battle, 20 IDF soldiers were killed, dozens were wounded, and six were missing. Three of them remained missing for decades. The body of Sgt. Maj. Zachary Baumel was returned seven years ago, while the remains of Sgt. Maj. Zvi Feldman were recovered last year In a special operation deep inside Syria.
“I used to think, sometimes I had naive thoughts,” Rabbi Turgeman said, describing his hope over the years that Yehuda would return alive. “But no – you have to bless the true and good Judge, so… so that [Yehuda will] be brought to burial, God willing. When that happens, I’ll come to some kind of closure,” he said.
