Operational File · Captives & Missing Persons Unit
Classification: [REDACTED]
The book was rejected for publication by Israeli military censorship until the last living hostage was returned home.
"Strike approved," I announced, scrawling a shaky signature on the target sheet. The company sergeant called the strike cell. I ran to the war room.
For long minutes I stared at the screen, unable to blink. Finally I saw a large plume of smoke rising from the building in Shati. "Hang in there, Noam, we're here with you," I whispered, lips trembling.
At three in the morning, the message we'd been waiting for arrived: "The dirty one is dead. The clean one is alive. Mazel tov."
from "Matir Asurim"
Matir Asurim follows Uri Meiri, a reserve officer who is pulled into the Captives and Missing Persons Unit in the first days of the war. Through his eyes, the reader experiences the tension between speed and precision, the gap between information and understanding, battles over accountability, friction between units, initiatives born from the ground up - and the people trying to build order inside a situation where almost nothing was clear.
The book moves between thriller, human story, and documentary record. It tells you what happened - but just as much, it tries to understand how a system full of talented, dedicated, exceptionally capable people can fail, and how it can change.
Characters and events in the book are based on reality but have been fictionalized and altered to protect the identity and privacy of real people involved.
All of the author's proceeds from the book, his lectures, and his related work are donated to organizations supporting reservists and those affected by the war.
