After 843 days in captivity, the final hostage from the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre returned to Israel on Monday—not alive, but as a body that had to be hunted down, identified among 250 Palestinian corpses, and finally brought home for burial. St.-Sgt.-Maj. Ran Gvili, 24, a police officer who rushed toward danger, became the last piece in a hostage saga that held the nation captive.
The Israel Defense Forces located Gvili’s remains at al-Batesh cemetery in northern Gaza at around 2:00 p.m. on Monday, following intelligence extracted from a captured Islamic Jihad terrorist. Twenty dentists worked through the night examining teeth from 250 exhumed bodies before forensic experts at Abu Kabir confirmed what his parents, Itzik and Talik, had feared—their son was dead.
The return of Ran Gvili’s remains echoes this week’s Torah portion. As the Children of Israel prepare to leave Egypt after 210 years of bondage, Moses searches for the bones of Joseph, who had died centuries earlier. The text states: “And Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for he had made the children of Israel swear, saying, ‘God will surely remember you, and you shall carry up my bones from here with you'” (Exodus 13:19).
The Sages teach that Moses understood what the people did not—no exodus is complete when the dead are left behind. Joseph made his brothers swear an oath because he knew that redemption means bringing everyone home, the living and the deceased. The promise to Joseph represented a fundamental principle: you do not abandon your own, even when it would be easier, even when it would be faster, even when the body has been dead for generations.
Gvili’s story mirrors this ancient commitment with striking precision. On October 7, 2023, he was awaiting surgery for a broken shoulder at home in Meitar when reports of the Hamas invasion reached him. He threw on his uniform, jumped on his motorcycle, and sped 50 minutes to Kibbutz Alumim. There, he battled Hamas terrorists for hours before being killed. His body was then taken to Gaza.
The Israel-Hamas ceasefire, signed in early October 2025, mandated the return of all hostages within 72 hours. That deadline passed as bodies trickled back intermittently over two months. By early December, Gvili was the only one remaining.
A breakthrough came from a captured Islamic Jihad terrorist interrogated by the Shin Bet about a month before Gvili’s discovery. Under questioning, the terrorist revealed not only where Gvili was buried but also the identities and locations of other operatives who had moved the body multiple times. This intelligence pointed to al-Batesh cemetery, where the IDF suspected Gvili might be among the dead.
The military had four potential locations. After checking a tunnel, the IDF investigated the area under Shifa Hospital and the central areas of Gaza City. The search intensified over the weekend with clandestine operations determining the cemetery was the likeliest location.
The search team included mandatory service soldiers, reserves, engineering units, rabbinic advisers, and dentists. The process required examining 250 bodies, matching dental records, and confirming through fingerprints or DNA. The L. Greenberg Institute of Forensic Medicine, rabbinic advisers, police, and the IDF all participated in the final identification.
IDF sources suggested that Palestinian Islamic Jihad may have buried Gvili in the mistaken belief that he was one of their own fighters, or at least Palestinian. Hamas, meanwhile, claimed credit for his return, with spokesman Hazem Qassem declaring that “the discovery of the body of the last Israeli captive in Gaza confirms Hamas’s commitment to all the requirements of the ceasefire agreement.” Israeli officials, however, emphasized that the intelligence came from proactive operations, not Hamas cooperation. Military sources implied that recent Hamas information about Gvili’s location may have been deliberate misdirection.
The soldiers who returned Gvili’s body recited the Mourner’s Kaddish.
The Mourner’s Kaddish, known in Hebrew as Kaddish Yatom—the Orphan’s Kaddish—is not a lament and does not mention death. Its central line is a public sanctification of God’s Name: Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei rabbah, “May His great Name be magnified and sanctified.” The Sages shaped the prayer as an act of defiance. When death tries to reduce the world to chaos, the mourner stands and proclaims that God’s sovereignty remains intact.
The soldiers then sang Ani Maamin (I believe), which refers to the essential Jewish belief in the coming of the Moshiach (Messiah).
President Trump told Axios that Hamas “worked very hard to get the body back” and that “they were working with Israel on it.” Israeli officials made no mention of such assistance, focusing instead on the IDF’s intelligence work and field operations.
When IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir called the Gvili family on Monday afternoon, he told them: “We kept our promise to leave no one behind.”
Standing over his son’s flag-draped coffin, Itzik Gvili appeared at a loss for words. For 843 days, he and his wife Talik had held the slimmest hope their boy was alive, despite overwhelming evidence otherwise. Now, with police officers and soldiers surrounding them, Itzik spoke to his son.
“You dummy, you had every chance to stay at home,” he said, a soft smile on his lips. “But you said, ‘Dad. I won’t leave my friends to fight alone.'”
He continued, “You should see the respect that you’re getting here, everyone who brought you. The whole police force is with you, the whole army is with you, the whole nation is with you.”
His hand patted the coffin. “I’m proud of you, my son.” Then he bent down and kissed it.
Talik, speaking outside the family home Monday night, said: “We’re very proud to get to this place, especially because we know that those who took Rani out of that cursed place were IDF soldiers. Our pride is much, much stronger than our pain. The people of Israel live and are strong.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quoted the prophet Jeremiah: “For ‘the sons have returned to their borders, and the daughters have returned to their borders.'” He thanked President Trump, envoy Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner for their support, then pivoted to what comes next.
Netanyahu opened his speech at a special meeting of the Knesset with a blessing thanking God for the return of our last hostage from Gaza.
“The next phase is not reconstruction,” Netanyahu declared at the special Knesset session. “The next phase is disarming Hamas and the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip. It will happen the easy way or the hard way. But it will happen.”
Trump echoed this demand in his Axios interview: “Now we have to disarm Hamas like they promised.” Both leaders drew a comparison between the once-improbable return of all hostages and the now-daunting task of disarming Hamas. There is widespread skepticism in Israel that Hamas will surrender its weapons. The terror group has previously rejected the idea.
Gvili’s funeral will be held on Wednesday in Meitar. Israel will hand over at least 15 Palestinian bodies to Gaza’s Health Ministry following his return—the standard ratio for prisoner exchanges. As the final hostage, Israel may transfer even more.
President Isaac Herzog posted a video of himself removing his yellow hostages pin, a symbolic act marking the end of one chapter. IDF Chief Zamir, along with soldiers from the 252nd Division, saluted Gvili’s remains and sang Hatikvah, the national anthem, as his body crossed back into Israel.
Gvili’s brother Omri said: “Our pride today is much greater than our sorrow. I had the prize of being the brother of an Israeli hero, who did the unbelievable.”
His sister Shira added, “I just feel a crazy sense of freedom. I feel relief. I’m sad, very sad, that it ended this way. But it needed to end sometime, and I’m so happy he’s come back home. Rani is on the way. Rani is coming.”
Itzik reflected on his son’s character: “If you’d have asked Rani how he wanted to go, it would have been like this. This is his way. He saved us, saved the people of Israel, saved Kibbutz Alumim, he saved everyone. Rani always loved bringing people together, and now he’s united the country. I don’t know how, but he did.”
Gvili’s mother Talik called him “the first to go and fight in defense of the Gaza border communities, and the last to be returned—our hero.”
The nation kept its promise. Moses would have understood.
