Finally, they are all home.
Eight hundred and forty-three days after Hamas launched its barbaric October 7 attack, all those it dragged from their homes – dead and alive – have now been returned. With Monday’s recovery of the body of St.-Sgt.-Maj. Ran Gvili, the last of them has been accounted for.
After tremendous sacrifice, they have all been brought back. For the first time since August 1, 2014, when Hamas snatched the bodies of Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul after breaking a ceasefire in an earlier round of Gaza fighting, Hamas no longer holds any Israelis hostage.
What many thought Israel would never be able to do – bring them all home – has now been done. Finally. Thankfully.
Many around the world, and many inside Israel itself, struggled to grasp why it was so important for the country to recover all the hostages, both dead and alive. They questioned the cost: changing the tactics of war, and even – some argued – forfeiting war aims.
Israel’s laser focus on returning the living hostages
Few countries would have gone to such great lengths or sacrificed so much – and so many – to ensure that every last hostage was returned, even at the price of releasing hundreds of convicted terrorist murderers.
The willingness to elevate this to a supreme Israeli value, one that at times subsumed others, earned both puzzlement and admiration abroad. If that was true of Israel’s laser focus on returning the living hostages, that puzzlement was multiplied when it came to insisting on the return of bodies.
“I spoke with mothers and fathers who said, ‘Please, sir, please return my son’s body.’ They want them as if they were alive,” US President Donald Trump said in September. On more than one occasion, he highlighted Israel’s insistence on bringing home not only the living hostages but also the fallen, speaking about it with evident respect.
But therein lies the secret of Israel’s solidarity: that we are a collective made up of individuals, and that the collective is only strong if each individual knows it will look out for them. And it does. This is a self-perpetuating process – one that gives the individual a sense of security and, in doing so, strengthens the collective.
What makes this even more remarkable is that it is taking place in a society riven by deep divisions – Right and Left, religious and secular, rich and poor, Tel Aviv and Itamar, those who love Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and those who loathe him. And yet, none of that ultimately matters. All are part of the collective called Israel, and that collective will not allow the individual to be left to the enemy.
That understanding gives the country strength. It ensures that soldiers will fight, knowing that no one will be abandoned. This is not just a cliché; it is an Israeli value, one that fortifies society, and one that Israel has demonstrated repeatedly of late.
But there is more to this insistence on bringing back even the bodies, on ensuring the dead receive a dignified burial. It is something hardwired into Jewish DNA, beginning with Abraham, who insisted on purchasing a burial plot for his wife Sarah in Hebron, and continuing with Joseph, who made his brothers swear to carry his bones out of Egypt and return them to the Land of Israel.
And still, there is more.
After Gvili’s body was recovered, the soldiers involved in the search sang “Ani Ma’amin” – “I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah; even though he tarries, I believe.” Chillingly, the tune they sang was the one Jews sang on the way to the death camps in Europe. That, too, is connected to this insistence on dignity in death.
Millions of Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis and their helpers, denied burial, their graves unknown. The Jewish state is an antidote to that reality. Its insistence that everyone will be given a decent burial – even those butchered by its enemies – reflects the dramatically transformed condition of the Jewish people.
And there is still more.
On October 7, Israel lost control – of its borders, of its security, of its sense of mastery over events. The achievement of bringing everyone home, down to the very last, is a cathartic symbol of control regained and reasserted.
The return of Ran Gvili – the first to go out to fight and the last to return – gives a family the space to mourn and the country the opportunity to finally exhale. It brings a long, painful chapter to a close.