Adi Dagan, 68: Lifelong kibbutznik ‘charmed everyone naturally’
Slain on October 7 after being taken hostage by Hamas terrorists inside Kibbutz Be’eri
Adi Dagan, 68, of Kibbutz Be’eri, was slain in the Hamas invasion of the kibbutz on October 7.
Adi and his wife Hadas hid in their safe room with the start of the onslaught, and were joined not long after by Yasmin Porat and Tal Katz, strangers who had fled the Supernova festival and had hoped to find safety in nearby Be’eri.
But Adi, Hadas, Tal and Yasmin were later pulled from the Dagan home by Hamas terrorists and forced to hole up with a number of other hostages inside the home of Pessi Cohen during the onslaught. As IDF troops closed in, the terrorists positioned themselves behind the hostages, using them as human shields and as bargaining chips to secure their safe passage back to Gaza.
In a highly contentious and investigated incident, IDF forces fired a light tank shell at the pathway leading to the house, which bounced off the ground and struck just above the doorway; shrapnel from the impact killed Adi and injured Hadas. Two hours later, special forces entered the home, engaging in a gun battle with the remaining terrorists; Hadas was the only one to emerge alive. Yasmin had been saved earlier as a Hamas terrorist used her as a human shield to surrender to the troops.
Adi was buried on October 25, 2023, in Kibbutz Revivim, and on September 8, 2024, he was reburied in Be’eri. He is survived by his wife, Hadas, their four children, Guy, Noa, Zohar and Sa’ar, and 11 grandchildren, as well as his sister, Anat. His older brother, Oshri, died of cancer when he was 11.
According to a kibbutz eulogy, Adi was born and raised in Be’eri, to parents who were among its founders. He served his mandatory military service in the elite Shayetet 13 naval unit, and during his reserve duty he took part in Operation Moses to evacuate Ethiopian Jewry from Sudan.
He and Hadas both grew up in Be’eri, but met when they both took part in a trip to Sinai, and later wed in 1980. Adi studied economics at Ben Gurion University and worked in a number of different jobs running the kibbutz finances until he retired.
In his post-work life, the kibbutz eulogy reads, he took up many activities he never had time for before — a new love of mixing cocktails as an amateur bartender, and regular volunteer work driving sick Gazan children from the border to Israeli hospitals for treatment.
His daughter, Zohar, wrote on Facebook that it was strange to initially bury him far from “the ground where I grew up and was raised to love this land… Dad, it’s not fair that after everything you went through, you gave, you contributed, fought for, protected, you were buried far from the land you loved so much, from the home you nurtured, from your strawberries and figs, from the pathways of your morning walks.”
At his second funeral in Be’eri in September 2024, his cousin, Dani Rabinovich, said Adi was “always surrounded by love, he charmed everyone naturally.”
“He didn’t try to find grace — grace found him, sat comfortably on him like a skyline resting on the horizon,” added Dani. “He never tried to be liked, never pretended to be nice… yet he was like a lighthouse spreading a smile through benevolent eyes.”
Dani said they were close as children, and “even when we grew up Adi was a constant source of stability, balance, direction… his life was a series of significant deeds and big achievements, yet his modesty all these years remained true and incorruptible.”
