‘Mourning without a grave’: Families of dead hostages call for them to be in deal

By Jessica Steinberg

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27 October 2024, 9:43 pm

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Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center

Bereaved family members Yael Adar (from left), Michel Ilouz, Roy Baruch and Bar Godard speak to journalist Ben Shani (right), during a ceremony at Hostages Square on October 27, 2024. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)

Family members of four people who were killed on October 7 and whose bodies were taken by Hamas terrorists to Gaza gather at Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square for “Mourning without a Grave,” a gathering to mark Israel’s Hebrew date of mourning and to represent the 36 bodies held in captivity in Gaza.

“We have to stop the war in order to bring the hostages home,” says Yael Adar, whose son, Tamir Adar, was taken hostage from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7 after battling the terrorists, and then died from his injuries in Gaza. His body is still held in the Strip. “The dead aren’t less important. We can’t miss any opportunities; the time has come to do it.”

The bereaved family members, participating in a panel with journalist Ben Shani, include Bar Godard, the daughter of Meni and Ayelet Godard who were killed in Kibbutz Be’eri, with Meni’s body kidnapped to Gaza. Godard says she thinks about what her father would say, believing that he would want the living to be brought back first.

Meni Godard was a lifeguard, first in Tel Aviv, and then was in charge of the pool at the kibbutz.

“I can hear his voice clearly all the time, and he would say that no one should die to get my body,” says Godard, who was seven months pregnant and with her husband and toddler in their sealed room in Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7. “He would say the women and kids first, and in a deal.”

A deal cannot be done in steps, said Michel Ilouz, the father of Guy Ilouz, a Nova partygoer who was taken hostage and then died of his wounds in Gaza. His body is still being held there.

“It’s either all or nothing,” said Ilouz. “We’ll never recover as a society if this wound will remain open; we’ll keep bleeding.”

Roy Baruch, whose brother Uriel Baruch was at Nova and only declared dead in March, though his body had been taken to Gaza by the Hamas terrorists in October, says that at this point, after 386 days, it is time to bring them all home at once.

“It should have happened at the beginning of the war,” says Baruch.