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NIR ‘OZ, Israel: Hundreds of people gathered on Tuesday at a small cemetery in a southern Israeli community to bid a final farewell to Oded Lifshitz, a kibbutz founder who died in captivity in Gaza.
Palestinian militant group Hamas returned Lifshitz’s body to Israel last week, part of an ongoing truce deal that has halted the Gaza war — triggered by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack in which the veteran journalist was abducted from his home.
“Dad, now you’re home,” said his son Arnon Lifshitz at the cemetery in Nir Oz.
Among the attendees at the funeral were lawmakers, activists, European diplomats and Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who asked for “forgiveness that the State of Israel did not protect you, your family and your kibbutz.”
“In the face of such inhuman cruelty, you were left to stand alone,” said the president.
Lifshitz, then aged 83, was taken hostage from his home on the kibbutz during Hamas’s 2023 attack. His wife, Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, was also seized but released by Hamas after 18 days.
Israeli officials said Oded Lifshitz was murdered by his captors from militant group Islamic Jihad, which has fought alongside Hamas in Gaza.
In addition to Lifshitz, the bodies of three other Nir Oz residents taken hostage and killed in captivity — Shiri Bibas and her two young sons — were returned last week.
The three members of the Bibas family will be buried on Wednesday.
At Lifshitz’s funeral, Hen Avigdori, whose wife and daughter were taken hostage from a neighboring kibbutz and released in the war’s first truce in November 2023, said that “it should have ended differently, he should be here with us.”
To Avigdori, seeing the row of graves “of people who were murdered here on October 7, and those who are waiting for their loved ones to be returned, is a difficult feeling.”
“This kibbutz has become a symbol of the neglect.”
Lifshitz had a long career with the now defunct, left-leaning newspaper Al Hamishmar, and was a long-time defender of Palestinian rights.
In 1972, he defended Bedouins who were expelled from the Sinai Peninsula by occupying Israeli authorities.
A decade later, during the Lebanese civil war and Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, he was one of the first journalists to report on the Sabra and Shatila massacres in which Israeli-backed Christian militias killed between 800 and 2,000 Palestinians in Beirut refugee camps.
More recently, Lifshitz, an Arabic speaker, had been actively involved for years with Road to Recovery, an organization which helps Palestinians receive medical treatment in Israel.
Shlomo Margalit, also one of the founders of Nir Oz and a friend of Lifshitz, said that “Oded was a man of peace.”
“All his life, he worked for the well-being of our neighbors.”
Yocheved Lifshitz said that in their 67 years together, she and Oded “fought... for social justice and peace.”
“Unfortunately, we received a terrible blow from those we had helped on the other side.”
Hamas and its militant allies took 251 people hostage during their October 2023 attack.
Of those, 62 are still being held hostages in Gaza, including 35 the Israeli military says are dead.
Bibas and her two sons, Kfir and Ariel, had become symbols of the ordeal suffered by the Israeli hostages.
Ariel was aged four at the time of the attack, while Kfir was the youngest hostage, just nine months old.
At the cemetery, one of Lifshitz’s grandsons Dekel Lifshitz told AFP that the cactus garden his late grandfather had cultivated on the kibbutz was a sign of his “determination.”
“It takes years to succeed in growing a garden like this, and it reminds me that he was always active.”