Slain hostage Amiram Cooper’s son, in eulogy, says his story ‘should have ended differently’

Rotem Cooper, son of Amiram Cooper, the slain hostage kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz whose body was released back to Israel last week, eulogizes his father as a man always devoted to the kibbutz, never leaving their home, even during the hardest days under rocket fire.

“And so it was on that Black Saturday, when you and Mom were kidnapped by despicable murderers and abandoned by small and cowardly leaders,” says Cooper, one of the more visible family members in the struggle to bring home his father’s body, referring to the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, onslaught.

Amiram Cooper was assessed by the IDF to have been murdered in captivity in February 2024. The IDF confirmed his death in June 2024.

Cooper notes that his mother was released after 17 days in Gaza’s tunnels, and imagines how his father must have struggled during the weeks and months of captivity.

He asks his father’s forgiveness, “for our collective failure, from the prime minister of Israel down to its last citizen, to free you and your fellow captives in time,” says Cooper, saying that there wasn’t a responsible, courageous leadership that could have secured the release of his father and other hostages.

“This story, Dad, could and should have ended differently — and for that, there can be no atonement,” says Cooper.

He says they will bury his father in the kibbutz he loved, alongside his friends from Nir Oz, “one more grave in a heartbreakingly long row dug since that Black Saturday,” says Cooper.

Cooper says the burial of his father, the final Nir Oz hostage brought back from Gaza, represents a sense of closure for the kibbutz, while its members will never forget the remaining 11 other bodies of hostages still held in Gaza.