Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lays a wreath at Ran Gvili\u2019s funeral in Meitar on Jan. 28. <\/i>(photo \u00a9 Amos Ben Gershom \/ GPO)<\/i><\/p>\n
Yasam (Israel Police Special Patrol Unit) Master-Sgt. Ran Gvili z\u201dl was buried on Jan. 28 in his hometown of Meitar. The last remaining hostage from the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, his body was brought back to Israel on Jan. 26. After 843 days, the clock in Tel Aviv\u2019s Hostages Square stopped ticking, and the displays of the kidnapped at Ben-Gurion Airport and the National Library of Israel were removed. For the first time since 2014, not a single Israel Defence Forces soldier or civilian is being held hostage in the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n
Two years, three months and 20 days after Gvili, 24, fell in a battle at Kibbutz Alumim near the Gaza Strip, the hero was given a fitting military funeral. Thousands of police officers, IDF soldiers and residents stood in silence along the streets of the Beer Sheva suburb as the funeral procession passed.<\/p>\n
The service was attended by President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Police Commissioner Daniel Levy and Sephardi Chief Rabbi David Yosef, alongside senior political and security figures. The sombre ceremony was the first funeral of a hostage from Oct. 7 attended by the prime minister.<\/p>\n
Netanyahu eulogized Gvili: \u201cHe considered his injured shoulder meaningless because he believed with all his heart and strength that the security of the state rested on him and the shoulders of his comrades.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe saved lives \u2013 many, many lives,\u201d said Netanyahu.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The prime minister also announced that a new town, Renanim, would be established near Meitar in Gvili\u2019s memory.<\/p>\n Addressing the family, Herzog apologized on behalf of the people of Israel, saying: \u201cI\u2019m sorry we were not there for him. I am sorry that, along with so many other families, you had to wait so many long, agonizing days for the return of your loved one.\u201d<\/p>\n He added: \u201cWithout hesitation and without asking, again and again, [Gvili] said, \u2018Here I am,\u2019 and went into the line of fire to protect us.\u201d<\/p>\n When the attacks began at 6:29 a.m. on Oct. 7, Gvili was at home, where he had been recovering from a broken shoulder sustained in a motorcycle accident. As news began trickling in of kibbutzim and cities near the Gaza frontier being overrun and their residents massacred, he decided to join the battle. Though on medical leave, he reached for his gun and his uniform, and went to help.<\/p>\n His father, Itzik Gvili, told Ynet News that his son \u201cjust put on a uniform and said to me, \u2018Abba, I\u2019m going.\u2019 I said to him, \u2018Where do you think you\u2019re going?\u2019 and he answered, \u2018What do you think? Do you think that my friends will fight alone? I\u2019m going to help them.\u2019 He didn\u2019t ask me. Rani can\u2019t be stopped.\u201d<\/p>\n Driving west toward the carnage at the Nova music festival, Gvili rescued an estimated 100 people fleeing the rave. He then engaged in a battle with dozens of Hamas gunmen near Kibbutz Alumim, killing 14 terrorists before being fatally shot when he ran out of ammunition. At 10:50 that morning, he texted friends that he had been shot in the leg.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n For months, Gvili\u2019s family held out hope that he was alive and being held hostage somewhere in the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n His mother, Tali, told Haaretz<\/i> in November 2024 that the family had received photos from Oct. 7 showing him arriving unconscious at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, and later in Zeitoun on the back of a motorcycle, \u201cbut they aren\u2019t conclusive … in this situation, hoping for a miracle feels reasonable.\u201d<\/p>\n Gvili\u2019s body was recovered by IDF search teams following a months-long intelligence operation. Under combat conditions in the northern Gaza Strip, some 700 bodies were disinterred at al-Bats Muslim cemetery in Shuja\u2019iya and Gvili\u2019s was identified by IDF dentists after carrying out the forensic examination of 249 corpses.\u00a0Many noted that the word ran (singing) has a numerical value in gematria of 250.\u00a0Gvili was still wearing his uniform, and he was buried in it rather than in shrouds as is customary for civilians.<\/p>\n According to the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, \u201cRan had a passion for motorcycles, enjoyed gatherings with friends, cherished moments with his sister and brother, and relished playing the guitar while sipping lemon arak.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Gil Zohar<\/b> is a journalist and tour guide based in Jerusalem.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lays a wreath at Ran Gvili\u2019s funeral in Meitar on Jan. 28. (photo \u00a9 Amos Ben Gershom \/ GPO) Yasam (Israel Police Special Patrol Unit) Master-Sgt. Ran Gvili z\u201dl was buried on Jan. 28 in his hometown of Meitar. The last remaining hostage from the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48340,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4329],"tags":[4330,22729,22725,24603],"class_list":["post-48339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-israel","tag-israel","tag-israel-hamas-war","tag-oct-7","tag-ran-gvili"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}