Elhanan Tannenbaum, (Hebrew: אלחנן טננבוים, 12 August 1946 – 7 October 2024) was an Israeli "shady businessman and a colonel in the reserves" who was captured by Hezbollah.
In 2000 he was lured to Dubai, offered a "lucrative drug deal",[1] captured by Hezbollah, and transferred to Lebanon.
He began his compulsory military service in the Israel Defense Forces during his academic studies, and served in the Artillery Corps between 1965 and 1968.
[3][4] In 2000, Tannenbaum, who was in debt due to gambling and business failures, was approached by his childhood friend Qais Obeid [he], an Israeli-Arab, who was working for Hezbollah, and who had previously been tried by an IDF military court in the Gaza Strip for a planned operation to abduct an Israeli in Gaza and taking him to Lebanon by boat.
[5] On the night of 3 October 2000, Tannenbaum flew to Brussels, where he met Obeid and Biro, who gave him a forged Venezuelan passport.
Tannenbaum claimed that he was then driven to an affluent neighborhood in Dubai, where he was attacked by two or three individuals and blacked out after being beaten with a club.
[6] Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah declared on 16 October 2000 on al-Manar TV station: "We have an Israeli colonel in our hands".
Bergman wrote that only five days before Tannenbaum's abduction, he was on reserve duty at the Northern Command bunker in Safed overseeing a sensitive exercise: a simulation of a full-scale war with Hezbollah and Syria.
[7] Following the abduction operation, Obeid moved to Lebanon to avoid prosecution in Israel, and is considered a wanted fugitive by the Israeli government.
These two individuals were kidnapped, in 1994 and 1989 respectively, for use as bargaining chips in the effort to secure the release of the most famous of the Israeli MIAs, Ron Arad.