The purported remains of Oded Lifschitz, 84, one of the founders of Kibbutz Nir Oz, were returned to Israel on Thursday, as part of the first phase of the hostage deal after his death was all but confirmed a day earlier. Lifshitz was abducted from his home during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack alongside his wife, Yocheved, who was freed last year in the first hostage exchange.
The body was handed over to Israel on Thursday as part of the latest swap in the hostage deal with Hamas, after which confirmation of its identity through forensics analysis will be carried out.
On October 7, Five Hamas operatives broke into the safe room where the couple was sheltering; Oded was shot in the hand and lost consciousness, while Yocheved was pulled from her bed. It was later discovered that Oded was initially held in an apartment in Khan Yunis, but after 20 days in captivity, when his health deteriorated, his whereabouts became unknown.
Yocheved was freed about two weeks after the abduction together with Nurit Cooper, whose husband, Amiram Cooper, was killed in Hamas captivity.
Yocheved Lifshitz speaks to the media outside Ichilov Hospital after she was released by Hamas (Getty Images)Getty Images
"After 50 days, when the released women came out, it turned out that one of them, a member of Nir Oz, was with him," Yocheved said. "She told us that he was alive and said that he functioned well and helped her a lot because she was having a very difficult time. On the 20th day, he felt unwell, and they dragged him out of the room. Since then, his whereabouts have been unknown, and we know nothing about him."
Oded Lifschitz was a journalist, a prominent figure in the kibbutz movement and a peace activist. He volunteered with the Road to Recovery organization, which transports Palestinian children who are ill to hospitals in Israel. In their yard at Nir Oz, Oded and Yocheved nurtured a magnificent cactus garden, which remained abandoned after their abduction. Dozens of volunteers came together to rehabilitate the garden as a symbol of solidarity and hope for his return.
London-based Sharon Lifschitz, whose parents were taken hostage from the Nir Oz Kibbutz (Getty)AFP via Getty Images
Oded’s daughter Sharon, an artist based in London held multiple press conferences over the last 500 days, pleading for the return of her parents. In a piece for the Guardian last month, Sharon wrote: “It is hard enough being the adult daughter of hostages – I cannot imagine being the parent of one. I know that amid the joy of witnessing Doron, Emily and Romi embrace their mothers, other parents, waiting agonisingly for their children, can find the reunions hard to watch. My mum tells me when she closes her eyes at night that she is back in the Hamas tunnels in Gaza, with the hostages she left behind. “Until they are all back,” she says, “I cannot escape the tunnels.” We are in this together.”
In her first press conference in October 2023, Sharon said: “You have to be a special sort of person to take an 85-year-old out of her bed.” They had, she said “taken her out and disconnected from her oxygen and loaded her on to a motorbike”.
She revealed that her father “met [the late Palestinian leader] Arafat”, and once fought a successful campaign in the Israeli courts to restore ancestral land to the Bedouin, adding: “We had relationships with many people in Gaza, we were a community that wanted to work together.”
Her father, she said, was not the only Nir Oz resident who used to take Palestinians to hospital: “Others who were slaughtered were part of that.”
Oded’s grandson, Daniel Lifschitz, a former goalkeeper for Israeli soccer clubs and the national under-21 team, has also been campaigning since the kidnapping to secure his grandfather's release. "This is an impossible situation to prepare for," he said previously. "The last thing I want is to prepare for a celebration and a funeral simultaneously."
