Grief and anger in Israel as recovered hostages are laid to rest

NIR OZ, Israel - Funerals were held Wednesday for some of the six Israeli hostages retrieved from southern Gaza in a military operation the day before, their bodies returned for a final time to the kibbutzim from which they were abducted.

Over the rumble of gunfire and explosions from Gaza, families eulogized their loved ones and pleaded for forgiveness - for receiving them home in a coffin, for not being able to save them.

“I just want to say sorry, because you deserved so much better,” said Rimon Kirsht Buchshtab, 36, addressing her husband, Yagev Buchshtab, as he was laid to rest near their home in Kibbutz Nirim. On Oct. 7, the pair tried to barricade themselves in their safe room, but were dragged to Gaza by Hamas militants. Rimon was released in late November after 50 days in captivity, during a short-lived pause in the fighting. She had hoped Yagev, 35, would soon follow.

Keren Munder, 54, had believed until Tuesday that her father was still alive in the tunnels beneath Gaza. On Wednesday, 79-year-old Avraham Munder was buried in Kibbutz Nir Oz, where 1 in 4 residents were killed or taken captive during the Hamas assault. “We were not with you as you were abandoned again and again, to your death,” Keren said, speaking not just to her father but also to her brother, Roy, who was killed on Oct. 7.

Keren was kidnapped along with her son, who turned 9 in captivity, and her mother, all of whom were released during the week-long cease-fire. When they arrived back in Israel, they were overjoyed to learn that Avraham was not among the dead that day, and might still be reunited with them.

“How naive we were, just like on Oct. 7,” Keren said Wednesday. “We did not know that the Israeli prime minister would be sacrificing you for his ‘victory image,’ would choose over and over to leave you to die.”

Of the roughly 250 people taken hostage in Hamas’s cross-border assault, when militants killed about 1,200 in communities across southern Israel, 105 are still in Gaza, according to the Israeli government. Only 71 are still thought to be alive. Their families, suspended in an agonizing loop of despair, have pleaded for months with Israeli politicians and international diplomats to bring them home.

On-again, off-again talks to free the hostages and end the war in Gaza - which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and more than 300 Israeli soldiers - appeared to hit another impasse this week, despite a new round of talks in Doha, Qatar, and a trip to the region by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has introduced new obstacles, negotiators say, including a demand that Israel be allowed to maintain a lasting military presence along the Gaza-Egypt border. Hamas leader Yehiya Sinwar, believed to be hiding underground in Gaza surrounded by dozens of hostages, has refused to provide a list confirming which captives are still alive and which are already dead, Israeli officials say.

The bodies of Avraham and Yagev were discovered Tuesday behind a “false wall” in a subterranean tunnel beneath Khan Younis, according to the Israel Defense Forces, alongside the bodies of Chaim Peri, 80, Alexander Dancyg, 76, Nadav Popplewell, 51, and Yoram Metzger, 80.

Ayala Metzger, Yoram’s daughter-in-law, said the return of his body “flooded me again with a lot of anger, a lot of emotion toward a government that chooses not to return them.”

Metzger has taken part in escalating protests by hostage families, who have filled streets, blocked highways and stormed parliamentary hearings, calling for Netanyahu to secure a deal - whatever the cost - or step down to allow another leader the chance.

“We keep hoping, we can’t stop,” she said. “But I am angry at myself even now, as I expect a deal to happen.”

Only rarely have the families received signs of life, and even those have been painful. In December, Hamas released a propaganda video featuring Peri and Metzger, their heads shaved and their faces gaunt, made to plead for their release.

The IDF declared Peri, Metzger and Popplewell dead in early June, citing intelligence gathered by troops on the ground and interrogations in Israeli prisons; death notices for Dancyg and Buchshtab came in late July. On Tuesday, after reports in Israeli media that the hostages may have been inadvertently killed by the military, IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said an investigation was underway and that the results would be made available to the families and the public.

For now, there is only the grief.

“On the one hand, there is a grave and my grandfather can return to the land he loves so much - the land of Nir Oz that he worked for 50 years - but it is also the realization that he was kidnapped alive and returned in a coffin, and that this is the end of the story, which is very, very painful and unimaginable,” said Talia Dancyg, the 18-year-old granddaughter of Alexander Dancyg.

Dancyg, a Polish-born historian, dedicated his life to promoting Holocaust education. Hostages who were held with him early in the war and freed in November said he would give history lessons to help pass the time.

“He had a captive audience,” his relatives joked darkly.

Peri and Metzger made similar efforts to comfort and protect the younger hostages, former captive Yelena Trupanov said in an interview with Israeli radio, even though they “knew the truth” of the situation. They were “very smart, salt of the earth, the founders of kibbutzim,” she recalled.

Trupanov’s husband was killed on Oct. 7. As the first anniversary approaches, her 28-year-old son Sasha remains in Gaza.

“I’m afraid that, God forbid, I will reach that date and my son will not be with me,” she said. “And I do not know what it will do to me.”