NIR OZ, Israel — The bodies returned for the final time to the villages that, in life, they had called home. Months of anguished waiting at an end, mourners embraced, wept, read tributes and lowered into the soil the remains of Israeli hostages recovered this week from the Gaza Strip.

But grief had to share space with fury at Israel’s leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for not agreeing to a cease-fire with Hamas that might have saved the captives’ lives.

“You were abandoned, again and again, by the prime minister and his ministers, to Hamas’ tunnels,” Keren Munder — herself a former hostage — said as she buried her father, Abraham Munder, on Wednesday in his hometown, Nir Oz. Distant explosions and crackles of gunfire occasionally interrupted her eulogy, reminders of the war between Israel and Hamas, now in its 11th month.

Related Story: Israel’s Evacuation Orders Have Displaced 90% of Gazans: UN

Israeli Forces Recover Six Bodies

Israeli forces this week recovered the bodies of six of the people taken hostage in the Hamas-led Oct. 7 assault on Israel: Abraham Munder, 79; Haim Peri, 80; Yoram Metzger, 80; and Alexander Dancyg, 75, all from Nir Oz; and Nadav Popplewell, 51; and Yagev Buchshtab, 35, both from a nearby community, Nirim.

It remains unclear precisely when or how they died. On Thursday, the Israeli military said forensic pathologists had tentatively concluded that the bodies of all six hostages showed signs of gunfire, but did not say whether the shots were fatal. They were found next to four other bodies without any bullet wounds, who were presumed to be their captors, the military said.

“They were very much alive. They were not abducted dead. I was with them, I slept next to them,” said Danielle Aloni, a freed hostage who spent time with five of the men while captive in Gaza. “They could have been saved, and they should have been saved.”

Hamas led a massive surprise assault on Israel on Oct. 7 that killed roughly 1,200 people. About 250 people were taken hostage during the attack. More than 100 of those kidnapped were released during a weeklong truce in November — many of them women and children, including Keren Munder, Aloni and Buchshtab’s wife, Rimon.

Israel responded to the Oct. 7 attack with a ferocious bombing campaign and invasion that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, destroyed wide areas of the enclave, and forced nearly all its residents to flee for their lives.

Related Story: Harris Confronts Democratic Divisions Over Gaza War in Convention Speech

More than 100 of the captives remain in Gaza, including dozens who are presumed dead by Israeli authorities. There have been conflicting, unverified claims during the war that hostages were killed in Israeli bombardments or murdered by their guards.

Netanyahu has resisted intense and growing pressure from international allies, Israeli security chiefs and many ordinary Israelis to strike a cease-fire deal that would include the release of the remaining hostages. He has stiffened his conditions for a truce in recent weeks, and accused Hamas of doing the same.

Netanyahu Vows ‘Absolute Victory’

Vowing “absolute victory” over Hamas, Netanyahu has called it the best way to free the captives. His critics call those goals contradictory.

“It is clear to all that the return of the hostages is only possible through a deal,” the Hostages Families Forum Headquarters, a support group, said in a statement Thursday. “The recovery of the six bodies is no achievement; it is a testimony of the complete failure to reach a deal in time.”

Israeli military rescue operations have freed just seven hostages, while killing scores of Palestinians. The Israeli military has said such operations cannot free all the captives, many of whom are believed to be scattered in Hamas’ extensive warren of tunnels.

On the winding road to Nir Oz on Wednesday, a handful of people in black T-shirts held up signs asking the Munder family for forgiveness that its patriarch was not rescued in time.

The Oct. 7 assault devastated Nir Oz, a quiet, tightly knit kibbutz less than 2 miles from the Gaza border, where more than a quarter of the 400 residents were killed or abducted.

Families Embodies Suffering

The Munder family embodies that suffering. Abraham Munder died in captivity and his son, Roy, was killed Oct. 7. Three other family members were also kidnapped, and freed in November: Ruti, wife of Abraham Munder; their daughter, Keren, and Keren’s son, Ohad, who was 9 years old.

Merav Mor Raviv, Abraham Munder’s niece, described him as a gentle, humble man devoted to his family. She said the family had been informed that he survived at least until the beginning of the March.

Related Story: Disagreements Over Israel ‘Last-Minute’ Demand to Keep Troops in ...

“They could have brought him back — there were enough possible deals on the table,” she said.

Addressing her father at his burial, Keren Munder accused the government of “sacrificing you and those like you. If only they had not searched for an illusory picture of victory.”

The funerals drew relatives, friends and neighbors, but also strangers who drove in from around the country to stand in solidarity with the survivors. With characteristic Israeli informality, some mourners stood beside the graves in T-shirts, jeans and flip-flops.

Larry Butler, 74, lost dozens of friends and extended family members in the Oct. 7 attack on Nir Oz. He said the kibbutz’s left-leaning residents felt profoundly abandoned by the right-wing government, for failing both to protect them and to bring home the hostages.

“It makes you wonder if there’s really a future in Israel,” Butler said, gazing at graves that had joined the cemetery’s silent ranks since the attack.

All six of the hostages whose bodies were found Monday were believed to have survived their ordeal for months, according to their families. The Israeli authorities had announced by last month that five of them — all save Abraham Munder — were presumed dead.

–

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Aaron Boxerman/Avishag Shaar-Yashuv
c. 2024 The New York Times Company