KFAR MAAS, Israel: Two hostages whose bodies were recovered from Gaza last week were buried by family and friends in Israel on Monday in separate ceremonies.
The Israeli military on Friday announced the return of the remains of Idan Shtivi, 28, and Ilan Weiss, 55, from the Palestinian territory, nearly 23 months after they were both killed on October 7, 2023.
Shtivi, a student who had been attending the Nova music festival as a volunteer photographer when Hamas-led militants stormed the site, was laid to rest in Kfar Maas in central Israel.
His mother Dalit spoke in her eulogy of the “divine bond” with her son, asking him to “forgive me for not being able to protect and keep you safe” during the ceremony, where mourners gathered around his casket draped in an Israeli flag.
For nearly a year, Shtivi’s family clung to hope that he was still alive, before Israeli authorities informed them on the eve of the first anniversary of the attack that he had been killed.
The student had tried to flee the scene with two wounded people he was attempting to rescue, but lost control of his car, which crashed into a tree. The car was found riddled with bullet holes.
Ilan Weiss was buried in kibbutz Beeri, in southern Israel near the border with the Gaza Strip, in the community he had died trying to defend from Hamas militants.
His wife Shiri and daughter Noga, kidnapped at their home, were released in November 2023, during a first truce.
The Israeli military said in a statement on Saturday that Shtivi and Weiss’s bodies were recovered in a “complex rescue operation.”
Of the 251 hostages seized during Hamas’s 2023 attack, 47 are still being held in Gaza, including 25 the military says are dead.
Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 63,557 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza that the United Nations considers reliable.
