Aviv Atzili, 49: Painter, cyclist and lover of the land

Aviv Atzili, 49, from Kibbutz Nir Oz, was murdered by Hamas terrorists in the kibbutz on October 7.

He was killed while battling the terrorists alongside the kibbutz’s emergency response team, and his body was abducted to Gaza. His wife, Liat, was also kidnapped but was released in November 2023 as part of a weeklong truce.

In addition to Liat, he is survived by their three children, Ofri, 22, Neta, 20, and Aya, 19, as well as his parents, Telma and Yossi, and his brothers, Ronen and Yiftah.

Aviv ran a garage for the kibbutz’s agricultural machinery and was also an artist.

“Aviv was one of the great pillars of the Nir Oz community,” said the kibbutz in a statement after he was declared dead. “Painter, cyclist, lover of the land. May his memory be a blessing.”

“Aviv was a hardworking man,” said his friend and former teacher Galia Heller. “Most of the time, he was busy fixing tractors and he worked very hard.”

Aviv was also an artist in his free time, painting scenes from the kibbutz in miniature on tools and pieces of machinery.

“He didn’t take himself too seriously in his art, he just created honestly and you feel it in his work,” Heller said. “There’s no ego. Aviv was an artist without calling himself an artist. He looked at things differently, he had a good eye and an excellent aesthetic sense.”

Shimon Ben-Shabbat, the owner of a gallery called Raw Art, saw Aviv’s work last year when looking for materials in Nir Oz and fell in love. He exhibited and sold Aviv’s art in his gallery.

“He had plans for a few projects,” he said. “He created until the last moment. The publicity and recognition for his art came at a time when he in any case needed to reduce his physical work and he told me something that I’ll never forget — ‘I’m lucky that until now I worked with my hands in agriculture, and now I can sit on a chair and work with my hands.'”

In a Facebook post in February, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum wrote that Aviv was a “peaceful and calm man with good karma” and that “everyone felt he was their best friend who always found the right words and advice.”

Aviv’s friend Yuval Mazour told Israel Hayom that he always had a smile on his face.

“He always helped everyone in the kibbutz,” he said. “He was always there for the elderly, always lending a hand and a shoulder. He would always tell the truth.”

His wife, Liat, told The New York Times in June 2025 that Aviv was “an exceptional, extraordinary, unbelievable human being… There were very few things about him that annoyed me or that I had criticism of, and they sort of became almost nonexistent. He’s like this presence, and I wish he was really here physically.”

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