Last update - 00:00 04/10/2006
IDF apologizes for absence of officer from Yom Kippur war ceremony
By Roni Singer-Haruti, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service
IDF Chief of Staff, Lieutenant-General Dan Halutz, on Tuesday apologized to bereaved families for the absence of an army representative from a ceremony commemortating the Yom Kippur war.
Halutz responded to a public outcry caused by a report that a high ranking IDF officer failed to attend a memorial service in which he was supposed to lay a wreath of flowers in honor of soldiers killed in the 1973 war.
Meanwhile, ceremonies in honor of the IDF's dead in the Yom Kippur war were held in two other locations on Wednesday.
The ceremony in Jerusalem was also marked by scandal after the lawyer of the woman who claims she was raped by President Moshe Katsav left it in protest after the crowd was asked to stand in honor of the president.
Attorney Kinneret Barashi, whose father was killed in the war, said Katsav should not have presided over the ceremony as long as he was under investigation for allegedly raping a former aide.
"I would have expected him not to have showed up at the ceremony and not humiliate me with his presence," Barashi said.
"For 32-years I've been attending this ceremony and this morning when we were asked to stand in his honor, after three months of being exposed to the suspicions against him, I no longer could."