‘We will rise’: Brother of hostage killed by IDF vows to build a better future

Yonatan Shamriz, the brother of Alon Shamriz, taken hostage and accidentally killed by IDF troops in December 2023, recounts at the national memorial ceremony how he sat in his Kibbutz Kfar Aza safe room with his pregnant wife and their two-year-old child, celebrating her birthday on October 7, 2023.

In his last conversation with his brother, Alon told him that terrorists had entered his apartment. He didn’t hear from him again after that.

“Right there, in the safe room, I made myself a promise: We will rise,” says Shamriz, who founded Kumu (Rise), the organization that put together the national memorial ceremony in Tel Aviv marking two years since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught.

“We emerged into a country where the only thing still functioning was the people. The people of Israel clothed us, fed us, and fought for us.”

“They were there when no leader showed up.”

When his brother Alon was killed, says Shamriz, he couldn’t find the energy to rise.

Three weeks later, his son Lavi was born, and he promised his two young children, “We will rise.”

“October 7 is not only a day of remembrance for those we lost,” says Shamriz. “It is a day of remembrance for negligence, for failed leadership, and for the abandonment of responsibility. On that day, a new commitment was born: To lead the State of Israel to a better reality — a far better one.”

“It’s not what we wanted, but it’s what fate has placed in our hands.”

He says the first step in rebuilding is bringing home the remaining hostages.

Noting that hostages listened to last year’s ceremony from the tunnels of Gaza, he says he hopes those still held hostage can hear this: “When you come home, and when this war is over, our generation will take off its uniforms, shake the ashes of the burned houses from its shoulders, and wash away the failures left to us by those before us,” says Shamriz.

The audience stands and applauds Shamriz.

“Our generation —Which inherited a country bleeding, isolated, fractured, and in pain — Will be the one to fix it,” says Shamriz. “It will be the best version of Israel, one that sanctifies the lives of its residents, that is built on truth, accountability and mutual responsibility.”

Shamriz says his generation will ensure that a state commission of inquiry is established — offering “a generation that will cultivate and lead a leadership that is unifying, egalitarian, principled, and Zionist.”

“We will bring back life. We will bring back hope. We have risen.
The people of Israel have risen,” says Shamriz.