‘Let’s get to work’: Ex-hostage Gadi Mozes calls on Nir Oz members to rebuild
In a letter to kibbutz residents, Mozes, 80, says he believes that with hard work the community can ‘return to being a warm and vibrant home’
Amy Spiro is a reporter and writer with The Times of Israel
Former hostage Gadi Mozes, who was kidnapped from Nir Oz on October 7, 2023, and freed in January after 482 days in captivity, is calling on his former neighbors to rebuild their destroyed kibbutz and help return it to its former glory.
In a handwritten letter to members of Nir Oz shared online by the kibbutz on Tuesday, Mozes said he knows the community has gone through “moments of terror and fear. I saw on your faces the existential question marks and the lack of security. I saw the fear and the anger over our abandonment and neglect by those who were responsible for our security.”
Mozes, whose partner, Efrat Katz, was killed during a Hamas kidnapping attempt on October 7, said that despite all the shared fears, he has decided “to buckle down, to roll up my sleeves and to join all those who want our home, Nir Oz, to return to being a warm and vibrant home, a home that has culture and education, health and creativity, hope and security.”
The freed hostage, who turned 80 in captivity, called on all the members of the kibbutz “to stand up, to work shoulder to shoulder so that this happens as soon as possible.”
He said he has nothing against those “whose strength has run out and cannot, at this time, join in.” But Mozes said he is confident “in my ability and our overall ability to stand up, stand on our own two feet, and rebuild our home, Nir Oz.”
Mozes, who was a resident of Nir Oz from the age of 20 and was a longtime potato farmer and agronomist, implores members of the kibbutz to join his efforts as soon as possible.
“Time is the most important factor. With all due respect to our new and spacious homes in Carmei Gat, our place is not in apartment buildings in Kiryat Gat, but in single-family homes in the fresh air near our fields in Nir Oz,” added Mozes, referring to the urban apartments where most Nir Oz residents settled after the kibbutz was destroyed in the October 7 attack.
“I join all those who didn’t lose their confidence in our ability to drive out the darkness and see the light,” he said, quoting a popular Hanukkah song. “Let’s get to work.”
Of the kibbutz’s approximately 400 residents, 117 were either killed or kidnapped on October 7, 2023, and 14 are still being held in Gaza, including nine whose deaths have been declared by Israeli authorities.
Only seven out of 220 homes in Nir Oz were untouched by the violence of October 7, and many were entirely destroyed.
Mozes’s letter this week echoed comments he made just moments after he was released from captivity on January 30, 2025.
“I’ll do everything I can to rehabilitate Nir Oz,” he said in a video from an IDF facility just across the border from Gaza, his first stop after being freed from the Strip.
Upon his release from the hospital a week later, Mozes said he hoped to “return soon to the fields and contribute to the rebuilding of Nir Oz.”
Members of Kibbutz Nir Oz overwhelmingly voted in November 2024 to rebuild their community, although they are still exploring ways to move forward.
Meanwhile New Hope lawmaker Ze’ev Elkin, a minister in the Finance Ministry, was booed on Tuesday by members of kibbutzim in the Gaza envelope when he got up to speak at a kibbutz movement conference.
Many in the audience walked out, and others heckled Elkin, whose party rejoined the coalition in September 2024, demanding that the government agree to the next stages of the ceasefire deal to bring the remaining hostages home. Others asked Elkin: “Why would you sit in a government with a prime minister who still hasn’t visited Nir Oz?”
