The funeral for slain hostage Eliyahu “Churchill” Margalit was held at Kibbutz Nir Oz on Monday. His remains were returned from Hamas captivity on Friday, and his identity was confirmed on Saturday.
Margalit was killed on October 7, 2023 while feeding his horses in the kibbutz stables.
“Since that Saturday, I have felt that there are no words to describe the whirlwind of emotions inside me. I thought we would need to invent new words for the Hebrew language, because no existing word can capture what we’ve lived through these past two years," his daughter, former hostage Nili Margalit, said. She was released in the November 2023 hostage ceasefire deal.
“Ever since I returned from captivity, I’ve felt the need to etch this tragedy onto my body, not to have it engraved only on my soul,” she added.
Nili Margalit said that as time went by, she came to understand taht there is comfort in knowing that her father did not suffer seeing the “horrors, destruction, and abandonment of that day.”
“For two years now, pain has been building itself a home within my heart. The two chambers that once existed there feel empty, replaced by a vast space of absence and loss,” she said.
“Dad, you closed your eyes a very long time ago, and in just a few minutes your body will be in the ground the earth you loved so deeply will embrace you, and your journey in this world will come to its end,” she concluded, emphasizing that he will never be forgotten.
Margalit leaves behind wife, three children, grandchildren
Margalit was 75 at the time of his death, which was declared in December 2023. He leaves behind a wife, three children, and three grandchildren.
He was known as the “cowboy” of Nir Oz. He ran the kibbutz’s cattle department and horse stables for many years. He moved to Kibbutz Nir Oz in 1969 with Hashomer Hatza’ir, a Zionist-socialist pioneering youth movement, according to the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.