Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, moved to tears by the death of 73 Israeli soldiers in an air crash, said in interviews published on Friday that the disaster recalled to him the loss of his brother 20 years ago.
Yonatan Netanyahu was killed in July, 1976, while leading an Israeli commando unit on an operation to rescue hijacked airline passengers in Entebbe, Uganda. The daring operation was depicted in a number of Hollywood films."I would take my job and everything I have gone through and happily give it back to God, if he would only bring back my brother," the prime minister told Maariv newspaper of his elder brother. "I think that's how every family feels."
The newspaper quoted a close aide of Netanyahu's as saying the leader told him once he had not cried since his brother died.
But on Wednesday, the aide said, Netanyahu broke down in tears after attending the funeral of one of the fighters killed on Tuesday when two Lebanon-bound army helicopters ran into each other and crashed over northern Israel.
Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper asked Netanyahu whether the disaster - the worst Israeli military accident - would prompt him to reconsider Israel's occupation of a south Lebanon strip intended to prevent attacks on northern Israel.
"This is a time to feel the mourning, not the time to take decisions," he replied.
"When I meet bereaved parents I don't stop asking myself whether I could have acted differently," he said. "Could I have prevented what happened? Yes, I feel personal responsibility. I am not saying I make decisions out of emotions, but my calculations are not only cold calculations."
Israeli media said on Friday the air force had resumed flights ferrying troops to Lebanon in its Sikorsky CH-53 transporters, the type of aircraft involved in the crash. An army spokeswoman was checking the report.
An official investigation into the accident was expected to submit preliminary findings within days.