After 44 Years, Missing Idf Soldier Yehuda Katz Is Finally Brought Home

Forty-four years after he disappeared during one of the most painful battles in IDF history, the remains of Sgt. First Class Yehuda Yekutiel Katz have been recovered and returned to Israel.

Katz had been missing since the Battle of Sultan Yacoub on June 11, 1982, during the First Lebanon War.

His return brings to a close the decades-long search for the three Israeli soldiers who disappeared during that battle — Zachary Baumel, Zvi Feldman and Yehuda Katz.

The operation to locate Katz was the culmination of years of intelligence work involving the IDF and Mossad. His remains were brought to Israel and identified, allowing Katz, after 44 years, to finally be brought to a Jewish burial.

The Battle of Sultan Yacoub
Katz disappeared during a fierce overnight battle between Israeli and Syrian forces near Sultan Yacoub in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley.

An Israeli armored force became trapped among Syrian positions and fought for hours before withdrawing under heavy artillery cover.

Several Israeli soldiers were left behind or captured. Most were eventually accounted for, but three — Baumel, Feldman and Katz — remained missing.
Their names would become etched into Israeli consciousness.

For decades, successive Israeli governments, intelligence agencies and the IDF continued searching for them, even as the trail grew colder and their families grew older.

One by One, They Came Home
The first breakthrough came in 2019, when Zachary Baumel's remains were recovered from Syria after 37 years and returned to Israel for burial.

Then, in May 2025, the Mossad and IDF recovered the remains of Zvi Feldman in a covert operation, 43 years after Sultan Yacoub.

Only Yehuda Katz remained.
Israel continued searching.
Now, in August 2026, that search has finally succeeded.

All three missing soldiers of Sultan Yacoub have been brought home.

His Parents Never Lived to See This Day
Katz — whose full name was Yekutiel Yehuda Nachman Katz — was born in Ramat Gan in 1959 to Holocaust survivors Joseph and Sarah Katz.

He studied at Yeshivat Nehalim and later at the Kerem B'Yavneh hesder yeshiva before serving in the IDF Armored Corps.

His family spent more than four decades waiting for answers.
For years, they resisted efforts to formally declare him a fallen soldier whose burial place was unknown, holding on to the possibility that their son and brother might somehow still be alive.

His mother, Sarah, died in 2011.
His father, Joseph, died in 2014.
Neither lived to see their son come home.

But his siblings continued waiting — and Israel continued searching.

A Promise That Did Not Expire
Perhaps the most remarkable part of the story is not simply that Katz was found.
It is that 44 years later, people were still looking for him.

Intelligence officers who were children — or not yet born — when Katz disappeared continued working a case that began in 1982.

Files remained open. Leads continued to be pursued. Operations were planned and carried out.

The return of Katz is therefore about more than solving one of Israel's longest-running missing-soldier cases.

It represents a principle deeply embedded in Israeli military culture: a country does not abandon the soldiers it sends into battle — even after decades have passed.

Zachary Baumel waited 37 years.
Zvi Feldman waited 43.
Yehuda Katz waited 44.
Today, the last missing soldier of Sultan Yacoub has finally come home.