Israel begins burying its dead hostages
After the euphoria of the release of the twenty live hostages, the country mourns the loss of those who did not survive.
JerusalemTwo days after Israel celebrated the return of Twenty live hostages from GazaWednesday was a day of burials for the first dead to return from the enclave this week. under a fragile ceasefire agreement.
Thousands of mourners thronged the narrow paths between rows of uniform stone graves at Jerusalem's Mount Herzl Military Cemetery. They had come after sunset to attend the burial of Captain Daniel Peretz, an artillery commander killed in action on October 7, 2023, during the Hamas-led attack that sparked the two-year war in Gaza. Earlier on Wednesday, Guy Iluz, a sound technician who had been shot and kidnapped while fleeing a music festival during that attack, was buried in his hometown of Ra'anana, in central Israel.
It was a long farewell for Captain Peretz's family. The 22-year-old soldier died defending the border with his equipment against waves of gunmen coming from Gaza. One member of the four-man crew was later found dead, but the other three, including Captain Peretz, were missing. Months later, in March 2024, the Peretz family received notification from the army that Daniel had died and that his body was in Gaza. They then held a partial funeral and buried his bloody uniform. On Wednesday night, two days after his remains were returned, Captain Peretz's journey finally ended.
During the funeral, the Peretz family was surrounded by the parents of the other tank crew members where they served and accompanied by one of their own, Matan Angrest. Angrest survived the battle and two years of captivity in Gaza. He was one of 20 hostages returned alive on Monday. Visibly weak and pale, he had insisted on leaving the hospital where he was recovering to attend the funeral. "It was important for me to salute and pay my last respects to my commander Daniel, of blessed memory, who led our heroic battle on that fateful Saturday," he said in an emotional speech.
But he added that "the circle will only be closed" with the return of the remains of the fourth crew member, Itay Chen, so that he too "can be buried on Israeli soil, alongside all the fallen."
"Worlds We Don't Know"
The Peretz family arrived in Israel from South Africa when Daniel was thirteen. The captain's father, Rabbi Doron Peretz, spoke warmly in his eulogy of the camaraderie that now unites the parents of the tank crew members and the many other families scarred by the October 2023 assault and the war. Looking out at the crowd, he said, "We are not a small country. We are one big family."
Hamas militants in Gaza The remains of ten people have been handed over since Monday, out of a total of 28 bodies that the Israeli government claimed were in Gaza when the ceasefire was agreed upon. The identity of one of the bodies received is still unclear. But Hamas's military wing claimed Wednesday night that it had handed over all the hostage remains it could recover without additional equipment, potentially jeopardizing the truce.
The ceremonies for Guy Iluz, who was 26, began with a procession from a funeral home in Rishon LeZion. About 100 people waving flags walked silently through the streets behind the van carrying the coffin until it left the city for Ra'anana.
His father, Michel Iluz, spoke to him at the graveside, addressing him as "my Guyshuk." He described how his son had been captured by Gaza gunmen during the October 7 attack. They ordered him to turn around and shot him twice in the back, "just for the hell of it," he said. Guy Iluz was then kidnapped, wounded but alive, and hospitalized in Gaza. The Israeli military later reported that he died of his injuries because he did not receive proper medical care.
A freed hostage, Maya Regev, attended the funeral on Wednesday and recalled meeting Iluz in the Gaza hospital. She had been with him when he died. "You suffered for a week alone until I arrived," she had written the day before on social media, after his body was returned and identified. "We spoke of the simplest and purest things in the darkest and most horrific place known to humanity," she said.
Michel Iluz, Guy's father, thanked Maya Regev for her words and said his son had received a gift from having her by his side in his final moments. Now, he added, his son was back in the land he loved. "Rest," he said, "after a two-year journey through worlds we don't know."
© The New York Times
